Eve Conant interviews her mother, who was born in 1934.  Her National Geographic article, “Caught between Hitler’s troops and Stalin’s:  How one family escaped,” captures vivid memories of her mother living in Kiev when Germans invaded the Ukraine in 1941.  This poem attempts to capture the darkness of war, then ending with the light of freedom.  This May marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.

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Memories of war, never fading

Dreadful darkness, haunting many lives

Living as refugees, now homeless

Caught between nations, bloody war thrives

Millions facing harsh deportation

Never to return to their homelands

Surviving in freezing factories

Providing labor in foreign lands

Escaping from a train, fate calling

Always moving, life stays on the run

Sleeping outdoors, sometimes in cold barns

Blistered, painful feet for everyone

Witnessing death, in deserted fields

Scars of war, visions never ending

Eyes and ears skyward, fearing warplanes

On the run, danger not pretending

Surviving life’s dark, brutal escape

Recalling this journey’s final trek

Arriving on American soil

Drawing freedom’s card, from life’s new deck

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