HISTORICAL IRONY Personal Naïve Reflections of a son of a Holocaust Survivor from the safety of my home The present crisis prior to February 23 seemed so distant, indeed geographically and sentimentally as well. Ukraine simply represented a historical reference to my ancestral genealogy in southern Galitzia and Bucovina. Ukraine in my “book” was the former Soviet Republic that annexed the former Austro-Hungary (later Southern Poland and Romania) provinces of Southern Galitzia and Northern Bucovina. Thursday morning February 24 Breaking News: “Missile Strike to Ivano-Frankisk”. Unexpectedly, felt like a bucket of iced water over my face. The crisis was no longer distant, it played out in “my home”. Ivano Frankisk, has been the focus of my research as my GGG parents (Eisenthal) and their children studied in their highly regarded Yeshivot of Stanislawow and Kolomyya. There is no doubt in my mind that we are witnessing regrettably again a fight between good and evil. There are no grays here. Clearly black and white. The image of a powerful armored Russian tank intentionally and unprovoked crashing a defenseless unarmed civilian vehicle says it all. (https://youtu.be/cDnNsCKm5m4) Nevertheless, as the son of a Czernovitz deported Transnistria child survivor, I cannot escape reflecting on history’s irony. Today’s aggressors were yesterday’s liberators (albeit oppressors later) and today’s victims might have been descendants of the Ukrainian para-military fascists that welcomed my mother’s family with forced labor, typhus, starvation and murder. Ruth Gold’s journey so well described in her book, was also my mother’s. And those images are part of my memory. A memory of a “Vanished World”… However, and despite these reflections, the plight of our fellow 40 million human beings and over 200 thousand jews is no longer a distant event. There is no justification for the loss of human lives at the whims of a tyrant. Both Ukrainian and Russian mothers deserve better. Rony Eisenthal
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