Week 22’s theme of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge is At the Cemetery. Between at least one person in the house being sick for the past 3 weeks (sharing is caring, I guess) and getting sucked into a new-to-me program called Personal Historian, I don’t have a post about cemeteries per se.
I do have a very special video project to share instead, and as it has quite a bit to do with war, it’s fitting that it follows Memorial Day. My husband asked me several months back if I’d help him with a Victory Day project that combines my love of genealogy with his love of music, so of course I said yes. Victory Day is a special holiday in Europe that celebrates the end of WWII. Most of Europe celebrates it May 8th, but Stalin was basically a gigantic psycho and wanted his own holiday. He legit waited a whole other day before telling his citizens that the war was over, so Russia celebrates it on May 9th. Since the war in Ukraine started, Russia has co-opted Victory Day. Instead of a day to celebrate the defeat of Germany and honor the brave soldiers who fought and the indomitable citizens who survived the 900-day siege of Leningrad, Russia is using it as a show of might and power. They’re taking this whole, “We defeated the Germans, and we can do it again in Ukraine!” stance. Ummm…what? There’s a huge difference between defending oneself from a hostile, aggressive country and being a hostile, aggressive country. Alex is angry about this, as are all the other former Russian citizens we know. His grandmother survived the siege of Leningrad. He learned he had more family members than he realized who fought in, died, or survived WWII. This project is his way of bringing the focus back on the veterans and victims of war where it belongs.
I hope you find this tribute moving. The video is about 6 ½ minutes long and features 2 Russian songs sung by Alex. The information on the slides is in both Russian and English. I compiled the pictures, information, and histories either from his family, or from a couple of Russian websites. It was a labor of love on both our parts. This tells the story of one man’s ancestors. There were millions of families just like his.
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