It's our job to witness

Mariupol

I am humbled over and over again that victims of trauma entrust me with their stories and lives.

On Monday I am interviewing a women who escaped Mariupol, Ukraine and endured a Russian filtration camp. Filtration camps are exactly what they sound like: the place where Russians hold women, children, men then force them at gun point or through torture, rape, etc., to pledge their alligence to Russia. Many of the men - civilians - are sent to be executed or to Russia - never to be seen again. Women and children - yes - children are being raped by Russian invaders.

Some of these women are in fact ethnic Russians. This is important to understand, too.

This is exactly what happened during WWI and after WWII. Czechs, Slovaks, Poles - people from behind the Iron Curtain - were sent to forced labor camps to die - in CZ it was uranium mines that killed scores of civilians in order to feed the Soviet nuclear war machine. Arbitrary arrests were made across Eastern Europe - through the 1950s - and sent to camps, extrajudically executed, or simply never seen again.

I don’t know what comes next with this - there are so many more women reaching out and many stories to tell - but I will let you all know.

This is a screen shot of my conversation with a woman in Ukraine who is helping facilitate my conversation with the woman who escaped Mariupol. I am redacting her information. She is quite public on her own but that is not up to me to share her name. I will also be using a pseudonyms throughout my reporting.