Learning from History

Today would have been my father’s 98th Birthday. I know exactly how he would have spent it, he would have watched the news. My father had an interest in current affairs, particularly international politics and the Nine O’clock news was compulsory, collective family viewing throughout my childhood, an insistence for which I am grateful.

The news today would have fascinated him not least, as a Dane, because of the echoes of 9th April, 1940, the day Nazi Germany invaded Denmark during what Russian state media guidelines would now, presumably, call the Second World Special Operation. The parallels may not seem especially close, Denmark stood down its army after about six hours. Then people chose what to do next. It is that variety of choices which may seem familiar in both Ukraine and Russia.

Some collaborated, most invasions are welcomed by someone and any narrative that claims one side to be entirely virtuous is probably incomplete.

Some accepted things and went about their business, some resisted. How they resisted, how violently and at what personal risk varied considerably, but no resistance is useless. Russians quietly standing with Ukrainian colours are making a statement worth making. As Desmond Tutu said, “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

Some sensed that the occupation might be relatively benign for them, but not for all. They resisted by getting people whose outlook would, otherwise, have been bleak away from the fanatics, mainly to the safety of Sweden. Helping people escape from evil led to the Resistance being honoured at Yad Vashem.

And some resisted, as countless Ukrainians now are doing, with a great force, bearing a greater risk and some paying the greatest price.

What of Putin? Popularist are often authoritarians who know how to appeal to people’s basest instincts. They feed prejudice with misinformation and pander to an unfocussed sense of grievance while encouraging a misplaced sense of superiority. If need be, they re-write history, casually, and disgracefully, scattering their gas-lighting with words like Nazi and genocide, and, in Putin’s case, providing hooks on which any with an ill-defined dislike of NATO and/or the US can hang their views.

If the façade of such popularism is lifted and the lies are exposed, repression takes over, truth is further repressed, often, ironically, as “fake news” and the preferred twisted fantasy is presented as fact. At this point some liberals really don’t help by feeling they have to listen to both sides for balance. For a side to be worth listening to it should have at least some track record of integrity. 

My Russian friends have to make a decision, they have to decide if and how to respond. We are all responsible to some extent for actions made by our government in our name -the social contract does not have a partial opt-out. As a British citizen, I have to take responsible for Priti Patel, whose actions in the face of the crisis have, quite remarkably, managed to reach a new low only excused by the fact that she is completely out of her depth. Russians have a greater challenge thanks to Putin. 

My Ukrainian friends have starker, harder choices. The dozen 12~14-year-olds we were due to welcome to York in a couple of weeks are now either sheltering or fleeing. As the war progresses, they are increasingly in my thoughts. 

Are there double standards? Was there an equal outpouring of concerns for Syrian refugees? There should have been. However, compassion is a principle, not a finite commodity. I am troubled that, as with Syria, an all to British obsession with red tape (always, ironically, more our weakness than Europe’s) will diminish our actions. A drowned child on a Turkish beach, a dead child in a Ukrainian hospital, both are stains on humanity. 

And what is my “little bit of good”? One of my father’s motivations for founding, with my mother, our language school was a belief in communication, a belief that to understand another’s language is to understand another’s culture and understanding is the key to harmony. My father spoke fluent German, loved Germany, and had German friends, who he cherished because a shared past as enemies had become a shared present as Europeans. Language can be a bridge as easily as a barrier. 

We are re-opening for Easter and any Ukrainians who get past Putin on the way out, or Patel on the way in and make it to York will be welcome at no charge to any available spaces on our Junior Easter Course. It is, I think, what my father would have wanted.