I could never have imagined that the two most cataclysmic events in recent world history (and consequently in my life) have taken place during the past two years. I am, of course, referring to the Covid -19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

These two happenings seem to me to be recreations of events I had previously only encountered in my readings of history. The pandemic made me think of the reign of ‘King Cholera’ in Victorian England. Asiatic cholera (originated this time in India) spread to Europe in the early years of the nineteenth-century. In Britain its first cases were diagnosed in 1831 and the epidemic reached London in February 1832. In France alone over 100,000 died from the disease. (It also reached the part of the world where I live now – Lucchesia Italy – as the archaeological excavations of the cemetery at Benabbio castle reveal). And, of course, there was the ‘Spanish Flu’ of 1919 which decimated more victims than fell on the battlefields of World War One.

The unprovoked obscene war currently festering through Ukraine (but isn’t all war obscene?) reminds me of what I learnt about the indescribable tortures of the Thirty Years War, the wiping out of a whole generation in the Great War, the death marches of the Second World War, the building of the Burma-Siam railway, the massacres of Babi Yar and, sadly so much more suffering making one think that any thought of Humanity has disintegrated.

Could I possibly be living in an age which my parents assured me I was lucky to have been born into since I would never have to witness the horror of war, the trauma of being a refugee or the dread of famine like they had to? For much of my life I felt fortunate enough to only have to experience the tragedies of the holocaust, the Ukrainian famine or the destruction of Dresden by reading about them and browsing at photographs. I could never have imagined that I would not have to peruse a history book or view archive film to learn something about what innocent humanity has had to experience from indiscriminate tyranny.  

No I never imagined further ….now, however, all I have to do is switch on the television to be plunged in some of the worst atrocities perpetrated by the human race at any time and all ……in real-time!

What is slightly different about the Ukraine war from other wars is the extensive presence of mass-media. The internet, social media and blogs means that so much of what is happening there is being recorded by individuals for posterity. The latest atrocity, that of a Russian cluster bomb with the script ‘for children’ daubed on it, exploding at a Ukrainian  railway station crowded with civilians waiting to catch a train that would carry them to a safer place has been captured on mobiles and instantly transmitted to the world through Wi-Fi. Furthermore, there is today a much greater number of journalists and reporters embedded in the Ukrainian army and in the field than was ever before the case in previous world conflicts. Moreover, a very large number of these reporters are women who are showing incredible guts in facing the situations they are daily encountering there, both physically and emotionally.

We are lucky here at least not have to face the daily routine of air-raid sirens, the absence of food, water, electricity and medical supplies and the fear of being blasted from the face of the earth by Russian GRAD-21 multiple rocket launchers. However, the war must surely be having a certain psychological effect on us all, even though we might be a few hundred miles away from its centre. Every day we must prepare ourselves for more atrocities to be screened on our television sets, see more women and children killed and maimed, witness ever more horrors and tortures suffered by a martyred populace, see ever more insult to our planet by pollution from burning fuel supplies and wrecked civilian cars and tank hulks.   

How much more can we take? Couldn’t we watch a classic serial instead or merely switch the damn goggle-box off? Just shrug our shoulders and say it’s nothing to do with us? Then we would surely be subject to the condemnation of indifference, that coldest of words and one that is inscribed on the fateful platform at Milan Central station which transported thousands of citizens to the Nazi death camps.  

It is almost impossibly difficult to be indifferent to something that is happening in our European continent, something that connects all people who live here with an interrelated history, with others of a similar Christian-based culture. Although all men are born equal and there should never be any taint of racism it must be said that we are ever more drawn to the tragedy that is daily unfolding in Ukraine because so many of the agonised faces we see could in their looks be next-door neighbours or even our relatives.

It is often said that the final version of history is written by the victors. I sincerely hope that Ukraine will be in a position to write the genuine account of what is happening to it now. The bravery of its people and the maturing of its president into a great war-time leader can ask for nothing less.