The Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv invited me to teach at their Summer Language School. Until last week I worked with ~50 Ukrainian students from about 10 in the morning to 5 in the evening monday through saturday. We met daily in classrooms, on the lawn outside, and in pubs over food and beer. The main purpose of the Summer School for the 17-21 year old students was to learn German as their second, third, or fourth foreign language. Their Ukrainian teachers knew every rule of German grammar, spoke perfect German, and half of them had PhDs in German literature, linguistics, education, and/or language theory.
Students and teachers alike love their country, their faith, and their freedom deeply. All hate the war that Russia wages on them personally: Every day Russia tries to kill them by drones and missiles, tries to erase their history, tries to pillage their resources, and tries to exterminate their language, culture, and freedom. Russia’s war is present in Ukraine at every location for every person at all times. Nevertheless, I went to open-air concerts, bars, restaurants, and churches filled with joyous young and old people with and without small children. This very public life serves as a defiant and powerful act of resistance to Russia’s war as does vibrant street art and music.
The people of Ukraine need our weapons to protect their freedom to be human and to be free from the violence, terror, and oppression imposed by Russia on them. Never have I seen a people believing in God as strongly as the Ukrainian students and teachers whom I met last 3 weeks. Furthermore, Lviv centers many overlapping faiths with churches of the Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and even a small Jewish community. Furthermore, I met both atheist and agnostic students studying at the Ukrainian Catholic University. This rich and diverse tapestry of believes exists in overlapping circles of ancient history, song, prayers, and common purpose. All are united and opposed to Russia’s terror of random death by drone or missile. People are tired, yes, tired and exhaused by 3.5 years of war, but people are united for the noble purpose to be free, to be at peace with their neighbors, and to be part of a liberal and democratic Europe. Russia responded to these desires with war, because Russia perceives a free, creative, and productive Ukraine as a threat to its own sclerotic, decadent, and corrupt society.
Unlike Russia, Ukraine values individual life and liberty, but Russia has 4 soldiers for every one Ukraine has. How can I best help my Ukrainian friends in their just defence to protect their freedom and to be part of a peaceful Europe? They need air defence radars and missile systems, they need artillery shells and cannons, they need tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets, they need drones and electronic jamming gear. I struggle with this question, write and call my U.S. senators and Congresswoman in Delaware to support Ukraine, and talk to friends and family about my travels to Ukraine, but it all seems puny and I am frustrated and impatient. In those moments I recall the wise words passed on to me 2 weeks ago by an older man of Irish-Catholic faith:
Act like the world depends on you, but pray it depends on God.
An air raid alarm interupted my first night’s sleep near Rynok Square in Lviv, Ukraine at 2:30 am on June-12, 2024 after 22 hours on a train the day prior. Sirens outside, mobile loud-speakers on the streets, and my cell phone all blared the message “Attention. Air Raid Alert. Proceed to the nearest shelter. Don’t be careless. Your overconfidence is your weakness.” Unsure on what to do, I listened, if there was any commotion outside my AirBnB in the stairways of the 3-story appartment building with residents moving whom I could follow. As there was no such noise, I did nothing, and quickly fell back asleep. At 5 am I woke again, got up to check e-mail when yet another such alarm started. This time I decided to go outside to see what the city does during an air-raid alarm at 6 am. All I saw were a few men my age cleaning the sidewalks and joggers passing me in a forested park:
My plan for the day was to find the 250-year old Lychakiv Cemetery that was established 1787 when the Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary controlled Lviv and Galicia as a result of the the First Partition of Poland in 1772. The cemetery is a large wooded park in a hilly area near the Botanical Gardens to the East of the city. Today it is a “State History and Culture Museeum” of Ukraine that Polish and Ukrainian volunteers have restored, both lovingly and at times illegally, for the last 50 years. Prominent Lviv citizens of culture, science, and politics as well as soldiers and victims of war and oppression both past and present are buried here. Meandering paths lead through lush vegetation with old trees and artful sculptures, grave stones, and icons.
I spent well over 3 hours wandering along wide and narrow pathways up and down the hillsides to marvel at artful displays to remember those who walked the streets of Lviv the last 250 years. The style of letters, mosaics, sculptures, and vegitation changed from section to section all added over the centuries when different countries ruled Lviv from the Austria-Hungarian empire (1792-1918), the newly establish Poland (1918-39), the Soviet Union (1939-41), Nazi Germany (1941-44), the Soviet Union (1944-91) until it finally became part of independent Ukraine in 1991.
My favorite memorial is that of a person on a boat crossing a wavy river. The copper-colored boat even as an eye at its forward head just above the water line. The river appears to come down from the wooded hill behind it, but the boat floats above the the water bridging the river perhaps indicating another “spiritual” dimension. It all merges in a harmoneous way in multiple directions indicating both time and space. The river falls down at the edge, however, the river also falls farther towards graves of soldiers from both past (1918-19) and present (2014-present) wars. Three Americans aviators such as Edmund Pike Graves are burried here also. More than 100 years ago they supported Polish troops flying early bi-planes against Ukrainian nationalists.
Among the many graves is that of the Polish mathematician Stefan Banach (1892-1945) who did pioneering work in the 1930ies when he was teaching at Lviv University. His fundamental work on vector spaces (“Functional Analysis” in English or “Funktionen Theorie” in German) applies to how I analyze climate data from the waters, ice, and glaciers around Greenland. Learning about Banach and the Lwow School of Mathematics, I discovered that the scientists living and working in Lwow/Lviv until 1939 also contributed to the Manhattan Project and the Nuclear Age. On my subsequent visit to Krakow in Poland 200 miles to the West, I found a bench in a park with a sculpture of Dr. Banach and some of his work:
A young Dr. Banach sits on the right in a conversation during his school years in Krakow. He left to teach mathematics in Lviv in 1918 where he lived until lung cancer killed him at age 53 in 1945. He is burried near the entrance of the cementary.
Figure: Polish Military Cemetery 1918-20 (“Eaglets Cemetery”) in Lviv, Ukraine of the 1918-20 war between Poland and Ukrainian Army of Galicia (bottom) adjacent to the memorial to the Ukrainian Galician Army (top left). Three U.S. American aviators are burried here also (top right).
The last burial field I visited only from a distance, because it is here where Lviv buries her current war dead. Almost every day new graves are dug and filled. From the distance it looks like an ocean of flags both of the blue and yellow of Ukraine and a range of battle and historical flags of different military units. I noticed that the people who enter this section first checked a large board near the entrance to see where in this section their loved-ones are buried. The long list of names and grave locations includes the dates of birth (1962-2005) and death (2022-present).
The war and terror forced by Russia onto Ukraine presents itself on main squares in central Lviv as well. One prominent public space that I passed every day included about 16 poster boards of 25-year old combat medic Iryna Tsybukh whom Russian invaders killed near Kharkiv the week before my arrival in Lviv. And every days I saw school children, shoppers, workers, and tourists passing this place dedicated to a brave local women. A year before her burial at Lychakiv Cemetery she wrote to her younger brother describing her wishes in case of her death
I don’t like seeing you mourn, but time and this despair will pass, and we’ll have to continue living life. So don’t waste time suffering; live on.
Iryna Tsybukh (1998-2024)
An equally eloquent obiturary appeared in the New York Times on Aug.-22, 2024. I took the photo of a poster board in Lviv bottom right, the other photos are from her Instagram page and public sources.
This was my only my second of four day as a tourist in Lviv, but here and then I decided to extend my stay. The public life I saw, the people I met, the food I ate, the art I admired, and the history I smelled at every corner made me extend my stay for another 4 days. There was a concert at the Opera and a Ukrainian Wine Festival on the weekend I did not want to miss. Furthermore, I will travel to Lviv again this summer, but this time I will stay for 2-3 weeks as part of a summer language program of the Ukrainian Catholic University. I met one of its mentors on the bus from Lviv to Krakow in Poland as we both returned from there by train to Germany. I am very excited to meet, converse, eat, and live with young Ukrainian students for 2-3 weeks.
References:
Mick, C., 2011: Incompatible Experiences: Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in lviv under Soviet and German Occupation, 1939-44, Journal of Contemporary History, 46 (2), 336-363.
Snyder, T., 2003a: The causes of the Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943, Past & Present, 179, 197-234.
Snyder, T., 2003b: The Reconstruction of Nations – Poland Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 367 pp.
Snyder, T., 2010: Bloodlands – Europe between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books, New York, NY, 524 pp.
Zhurzhhenko, T., 2013: The border as Pain and Memory – Commemorating the Polish-Ukrainian Conflict of 1918-1919 in Lviv and Przemysl, Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, DOI:10.1080/00905992.2013.801416.
The Russian dictator Vladimir Putin claims Ukraine based on a false reading of “Kyivan Rus” (see map below) about 1100 years ago. With equal ignorance I here claim it for Sweden or Denmark or Lithuania or Poland, because the Kyivan Rus were a mishmash of Slavic, Viking, and nomadic tribes who settled and ruled the forests and steppes between the Baltic and Black Seas between 800 to 1100 AD. Furthermore, while “Rus” is the root for “Russia” (or “Russland” in German), “Rus” derives from the Old Norse “rods” which means “men who row.”
Putting another spin on old histories, I proclaim that Russia is, historically, a fringe principality that belongs to Ukraine. So, lets call Putin’s claim to Ukraine what it is: A colonial, imperialistic land grab along the same lines of an Adolf Hitler and a Joseph Stalin who divided Eastern Europe in 1939 with no regard to the people they both oppressed and slaughtered. Visiting Lviv in the summer of 2024, I find the bloody histories of these “Bloodlands” (Snyder, 2010) everywhere:
On my evening stroll on my first day in Lviv I stumble across an overgrown and unkept green space at the end of a small and winding residential street up a hill. Along my accidental path I find a 10 feet high wooden cross near semi-collapsed and overgrown one-story buildings that resemble barracks. Red poppies and barbed wire enclose the cross while burnt candles litter its base. An inscription in both Ukrainian and English tells me, that I am standing within Stalag-328 where 140,000 prisonors of war (POW) were murdered 1941-44. Nazi-Germany maintained this POW camp where the death rate among its Soviet, Belgian, French, and Italian soldiers exceeded 50%.
Half an hour later I find a huge 3-story building along a busy road that covers an entire city block. Later I find out, that this is the St. Bridget’s Convent for Women built in the 17th century, but it serves as a prison for the last 250 years which perhaps explains its decrepit look on Horodotska Street. On one of its walls I find a plaque in Ukrainian, Polish, and English stating that the Stalin’s Secret Police, the NKVD, shot 1,172 citizens of Lviv in this building on 19th of June 1941. This massacre at the Brygidki prison was part of a mass killing throughout Soviet occupied Poland and Ukraine.
For context, the Hitler-Stalin treaty of 1939 divided Poland such that Lviv was occupied by Stalin’s troops from 1939-41. About 1.25 Mil. “Enemies of the People” of Polish and Ukrainian descent where deported in 2 years. This occupation ended when Nazi-Germany invaded the Soviet Union and captured Lviv on 30th of June 1941. Throughout Lviv, Poland, and Ukraine the NKVD committed massacres of local populations. In Lviv alone about 7,000 Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish citizen were shot or blow up in their prison cells days before Hitler’s troops entered the city to start another massive killing cycle.
Immediately after German troops occupied Lviv progroms of the Jewish population started. Encouraged and supported by German authorities members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) belonging to militias of Stepan Bandera participated in the progroms June 30 to July 2 and July 25 to July-30 (Himka, 2011). More than 6,000 Jews were murdered this first month of German occupation of Lviv. Inciting the local population to round-up, humiliate, and kill Jewish men, women, and children, German propaganda justified the progroms with the NKVD massacres by falsely blaming the Jewish population for it. While OUN leadership never directly endorsed participation in the progroms, they also did nothing to stop their members who participated enthusiastically. Their hatred of Poles and Jews, however, was part of an ideological program modeled on the German and Italian totalitarian regimes headed by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
The photo above was taken the first day of the Lviv Progrom July-1, 1941 by an unknown photographer who stands on Vesela Street a block north-east of the Opera House. I walked those streets admiring street art and murals not knowing what had happened on these streets 83 years before: A grown woman has her dress ripped off, has her face bloodied, and is chased with wodden sticks by a mob of teenagers. She has only shoes and undergarments left to protect her, as she runs up a hill in terror while a large crowd of spectators in the background care not. Himka (2011) reproduces this photo and places it into a larger context.
On my way home from Brygidki Prison I pass a beautiful mural that brings me back into the present. The blue and yellow of the mural reminds me of the colors of the Ukrainian flag. The braided flowers on the head perhaps symbolize this person as a women from Ukrainian. In my present sad mind, I see the the same human in both the symbol of a Ukrainian woman in this mural and the actual Ukrainian women in the 1941 photo. The paint peeling reveals red brick and an arch, but I also see an accidental thumbs-up sign in red. The mural is about two blocks west of the Opera House and thus near the center where the Lviv progroms took place.
The bottom photo shows the Opera House from the north. There probably is a story in the small peaceful statue and the building directly behind it, but I do not (yet) know it.
Later that day my first Air Raid Alarm woke me up at night. In this war Vladimir Putin wants to re-establish the old Soviet Empire with the boundaries that Hitler and Stalin had agreed upon in 1939. The past is in the present and both are insane.
P.S.: Edited Oct.-20, 2024 by rewriting the last paragraph and removing some ill-fitting photos.
References:
Himka, J.-P., 2011: The Lviv Pogrom of 1941: The Germans, Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Carnival Crowd. Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol. 53, No. 2/4, 209-243.
Plokhy, S., 2021: The Gates of Europe, a History of Ukraine, Basic Books, New York, NY.
Snyder, T., 2010: Bloodlands, Europe between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books, New York, NY.
Cobble stones pave the streets of Lviv everywhere. The pedestrian Old Town merges sidewalks and streets with its center at Rynok Square. In Old Town restaurants, cafes, churches, museeums, and small shops all spill onto sidewalks in front of the 150-200 year old buildings. On the 2-3 floors up people live in appartments with 10 foot ceilings. My 1-room appartment was in one of these. Exiting the building and turning left, I reached Rynok Square within two minutes. Turning right, I entered Dominican Church within a minute. Along the short ways I pass several shops, cafes, and a small flea market. Electric trams but not cars zip across Old Town and for 20 Hryvnias ($0.50) one can hop on and go as far as the tram goes.
Walking past Old Town, I quickly found street vendors and a farmer’s market within a mile or so. Both local (currants, strawberries, cherries, gooseberries) and foreign fruit were sold. I bought half a pound of cherries and half a pound of “mirabellen” (small yellow plums) to eat during my first morning stroll through Lviv. Initially I spit the pits into the street, but I stopped when I noticed how clean both the streets and sidewalks were. This differs from all cities I have visited previously. Lviv expunges any and all litter in public places. So, my cherry pits went back into the bag.
Later I discovered that fruit and vegetables are grown within city limits in small garden plots that people nurture. On half the space of my Delaware gardens they grow twice the fruit. The soil in the Lviv gardens is a dark and black. One such plot nestled in front of a large residential appartment complex adjacent to a religious shrine. Three sides of the shrine are framed with stained glass window pains similar to those my wife Dragonfly Leathrum makes. Looking closely, I discern identical designs of the flowers, however, the variation of the glass color and its arrangement is not. It is only now that I see the design and its symmetries, but I do recall the soothing and calming effect the shapes and colors had on me when I walked past it 15 days ago.
The tiny garden contained an apple tree, several Red Currants bushes, grapes growing up and along the fence, beans, carrots, beets, and cucumber. The stage of all these plants was similar to those that I grow in my own garden. A plastic bag of kitchen scraps for a compost was hanging over the door to enter the plot. It almost seems that neigbors left these for the owner to work into the soil. My sister Christina does the same for me when she visits sundays and leaves her kitchen scraps for my compost.
Rain moved me away from the shrine and its adjacent garden to seek shelter. I quickly found a restaurant with covered outdoor seating. My first meal since arriving in Ukraine was Borscht. Tiny rib bones with meat were in the soup, the pure white pork belly fat was on dark rye bread, and a shot of vodka came with it at the end. The presentation of the plate, too, reveals artful intent. The red onion, pepper, pickles, garlic, and scallion are all arranged carefully. Even the sprinkles of red chili flakes on the white fat are no accident and like a painting complement the red of the soup. The outstanding restaurant has a website, e.g., https://marinad-meat-bar.choiceqr.com/, as I just learnt 😉
Talking about art in public places, I return to a mosaic sculpture at the farmer’s market. The market sits on a wide corner at the intersection of two large cobblestone streets. A tram line goes towards the shrine and the restaurant where I had my late lunch. A low wall encloses the fruit and vegetable stands inside and on one side this wall contains an exquisite mosaic of tiny colorful tiles. From afar colorful strands emerge that intersect and overlap smoothly without any color or strand dominating. Someone had to design this and someone had to put this together and I do not know who did this when, but I admire their love, care, and dedication to colorful and diverse cultures.
Notice also the mural on the wall above the market of the residential building. Two women tend to something and a line of symbols emerges along the base. Like most street art in Lviv, this one is not signed by the artist(s) either. I discern a peace dove and a sunflower … Again I only now notice this detail in the photo.
Icy Seas 