Where are the Ukrainian children?

Are you paying attention? Did you hear about the children? Thousands of them are missing. They have been lost in the war, stripped from their families, and taken east.
Some have been placed with new families, and others are being indoctrinated at re-education camps or facilities — or whatever is the polite name for such places in the 21st century. Will you remember the first time you heard about the Ukrainian children? Do you wonder if your parents or grandparents read a story like this about the Jews in Europe once? In what year did they read it — 1937, 1934, 1942, or did they not know anything at all until it was all over?

The Washington Post and Missy Ryan have done their best to inform, and now you know the truth about Russian depravity, war crimes, child abuse, kidnapping and genocide. What will you do, and more importantly, what is it that you will demand America do? Looking away is a choice as much as directly intervening. Neither is an option, but the terrible choices the information presents are nullified by the evil of the actions in clear contravention of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions. Something must be done, and whatever it is, it must start with communicating effectively about the presence of evil and the destruction that follows it when it unleashes wars of conquest.

Before continuing, there is a story you should know about a man who did everything he could to keep it a secret. His name was Nicholas Winton. He was an ordinary man who did something so extraordinary that he was considered an angel. His anonymity allowed for such speculation because there was no explanation for the miracle he delivered.

Nicholas married a Danish woman named Greta he had met after World War II while he was working with a refugee organization in Paris. They were downsizing their London flat in 1988 when she found scrapbooks in her attic. They contained names, details and addresses for 669 Czech children, who were saved from Nazi gas by the work of Winton and a small group of people who rushed forward towards the evil to save human lives at the edge of a catastrophe that would beggar imagination. The British government allowed for the admission of Jewish refugees under 17 so long as they had a place to stay and financial security. Winton and his associates saved as many as they could. The last trainload of children called the “kindertransport” didn’t make it. The Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia before the train could leave. Two of the 250 children aboard survived the war.

In 1988, Winton was deceived into attending an episode (please click on this link — you must see this) of BBC’s ‘That’s Life’ as an audience member. During the program, his scrapbooks were unveiled, and the host asked if there were any children present who had been saved by Winton. The men and women in their 50s, 60s and 70s rose around him. Next, the host asked if there were any children or grandchildren present of the saved. The rest of the room stood. The “Angel of Prague” had been revealed to the world.  Winton was 79 years old in 1988. He would live to be 106 years old, and would die of a heart attack on the 76th anniversary of 241 children departing to safety from Prague.

Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2003, and received the highest award of the Czech Republic, the White Lion, at the age of 105 for giving the Czech children the “greatest possible gift: the chance to live and be free.”

The chance to live and be free is fundamental to America’s purpose. Though America cannot impose democracy, freedom and liberty, it can always stand tall for human rights, values and dignity.

There is a question that must be put forward onto the world stage. It must be placed there by the president of the United States. The time has come to ask the question directly: where are the Ukrainian children, Mr. Putin?

The war in Ukraine is escalating. The Russian commitment is increasing. The level of violence and targeting of civilian targets is increasing. The chances of the war spreading increase with any Russian advance. The world is at the edge of a dangerous hour, and the American people are looking up from their phones for a change. Unfortunately, they have traded hypnosis by screen for hypnosis by balloon.

American politics has become a cesspool of corruption, self-interest and insanity, where the mentally ill and common grifters can excel as gladiators in a bread and circuses spectacle, in which the media barons get rich and the nation is sundered. The danger doesn’t yield because of the unfitness of political leadership in the MAGA movement. It grows and metastasizes.

Two nights ago, the parents of three Michigan State University students learned their children didn’t make it. They didn’t survive another American mass shooting. They went to college not to learn, but to be murdered. Whose child will be next? Sadly, the answer will be known very soon.

What about the children? Do we not owe them anything beyond the banalities of a debate about nothing except vanity and ego? Is there no obligation this generation has to the next, and the one after that?

As you go about your day, think about the children. Think about the Ukrainian children and think about those of America. Think about the children laboring in mines to power electrical vehicles in Africa, and the denial of basic rights to girls across vast swaths of the globe. They deserve a second of consideration. After all, there may be a weather balloon overhead.

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