My friend Olha recently wrote to me on social media: “Emiliia, I’m at home in Kiev. It’s so beautiful here, everything is at home: my city, my apartment, my language. It’s also so quiet here when if there was no war. I don’t want to go back to Germany. I want to stay here forever.”
I’ve known Olha since we went to university together. Like me, she escaped from the war and has been living with her daughter and her elderly parents in a small town in Bavaria for about a year. There she teaches English and German to Ukrainian students. Now she has traveled back to Ukraine for the first time since the beginning of the war.
I was quite surprised that it’s supposed to be so quiet in Kiev, I didn’t expect that. Other acquaintances I speak to regularly, and last but not least my husband, always report how stressful it is to constantly hear the sirens or the air defense systems. Mostly at night, of course, which robs people of their sleep. Quiet and Kiev somehow don’t go together.
And so it was just wishful thinking for my girlfriend, which was quickly caught up in reality. A few hours after her first message, Olha wrote that she heard explosions nearby and they were just as loud as in the first days of the Russian attack on my country. My girlfriend quickly had doubts about whether it was a good idea to stay in Kiev with a child.
Olha is one of many refugees in Germany who went home for the holidays. Also in the bridge class that I teach there are quite a number of children who go to Ukraine for the holidays because they miss their fathers just as much as the mothers miss their husbands. In return, they accept being on the road for two or three days in order to then spend a week or ten days at home. Not to mention the risk of getting caught up in a Russian attack somewhere.
Mothers’ Fear: Are Children Alienating From Their Fathers When They See Them So Infrequently?
Vacation in Ukraine? Whether this is correct is also being discussed on social media. The main concern is that children become estranged from their fathers if they only see them once or twice a year. Meanwhile, the children grow up, their interests and priorities change often, and they learn a language their fathers don’t understand. Here another tragedy could be unfolding for the families separated by the war.
It is undoubtedly a difficult decision for every mother whether or not to take her children home for the holidays. So far I’ve decided against it myself. I want to protect my daughter from the experience my friend Olha is going through in Kiev now. I don’t know if it’s right, but there are probably no right decisions in such situations.
Emiliia Dieniezhna, 35, fled from Kiev with her then four-year-old daughter Ewa Pullach near Munich. She works voluntarily for the non-governmental organization NAKO, which aims to fight corruption in Ukraine. She also teaches German to Ukrainian refugee children. Once a week she writes a column for the SZ about her view from Munich on the events in her home country.