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We stand with the people of Ukraine

On the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we remember the people who are suffering from the constant attacks on residential areas, hospitals, schools, and supply systems. Russia invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine eight years earlier. Since then, ASF has been unable to send volunteers to Ukraine. Instead, ASF supports humanitarian aid on the ground with the BerlinOdessaExpress. Ukrainian volunteers are also active in volunteer programs in Germany and Poland, such as Khrystyna. She remembered the people in her country in a special service at the Protestant Church of Reconciliation at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site.

Picture of Vasyl Volodko next to three candles and a red rose.
The memorial church service commemorated Vasyl Volodko, a survivor of the Nazi regime.

Russia’s relentless attacks on the civilian population affect society as a whole and hit the most vulnerable particularly hard, such as children and families, poorer and sick people, and many elderly people. In rural areas, many of them live in remote villages, often alone. They cannot or do not want to leave their small houses with gardens and animals, and are often the last to remain near the front lines. In regions such as Kherson, Russian drones are specifically targeting the last remaining residents and the people who care for them under the most difficult conditions.

Among these elderly people are still eyewitnesses who, now in their twilight years, survived the Holodomor, the Nazi war of extermination, the Shoah, and Stalinist repression as children over 80 years ago, only to have to endure a new war under the most difficult conditions today.

We stand by their side, as we stand by the side of all other people in the country. We hear their voices, their call for a just peace in freedom and security. In a memorial service last Sunday, Khrystyna, the Ukrainian ASF volunteer at the Protestant Reconciliation Church in Dachau, said this prayer:

We commend to you Vasyl Volodko from Hlewacha near our capital Kyiv. He survived the Dachau concentration camp, is now 101 years old, and is once again in mortal danger because of the war, as are my family and so many people in my country, Ukraine. Do not abandon her and all of us.

Liturgist: We call upon you:

Congregation: Have mercy!

Vasyl Volodko was born in 1924 in Shyroka Dolyna, Poltava region. He grew up on a collective farm and survived the great famine in the Holodomor. At the age of 17, he experienced the Nazi occupation. He was arrested while putting up resistance posters. He was forced to perform hard labor in the Saarland mines and survived several concentration camps, torture, and death marches, including the Dachau concentration camp. After the war, he became an engineer. Today, he lives with his wife and daughter near Kyiv.

Memorial church service

The church service was broadcast on Deutschlandfunk and Saarländischer Rundfunk and can be listened to here:

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/evang-gottesdienst-aus-der-versoehnungskirche-der-kz-gedenkstaette-in-dachau-100.html

BerlinOdessaExpress

ASF supports the humanitarian deliveries of the BerlinOdessaExpress with its aid network for Nazi survivors in Ukraine.

www.berlinodessaexpress.de

Impressions from the church service

ASF volunteer Khrystyna, Pastor Björn Mensing, and student Marlene Anwender (Sophie Scholl Gymnasium Munich) at the church service on February 22.
ASF volunteer Khrystyna from Ukraine is involved in community work at the Reconciliation Church in Dachau.
The Protestant Reconciliation Church at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site near Munich. Photo: Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site