Thursday, July 15, 2021

Covid is a blip compared to sufferings of earlier generations

People are objecting to how Covid regulations are keeping pubs and restaurants closed. There are priests too, who are objecting to Covid regulations, restricting liturgical celebrations. Indeed, there are priests who flagrantly break the rules of the State and of their diocese.

Eighty years ago Germany invaded Mother Russia. Between 1941 and 1943 Soviet battlefield deaths numbered perhaps 10 million. Of the 5.7 million Soviet soldiers taken into captivity, 3.3 million died of starvation, disease, or in the case of at least 140,000 individuals, at the point of an executioner’s gun.

Fifteen million Soviet civilians died as a direct result of Germany's attempt to obliterate the Soviet Union.

It is embarrassing and annoying to  listen to people, including priests, moan, groan and break rules and regulations that have been put in place to protect us all.

In July 1941  Red Army soldier Dmitry Tkachenko wrote to his daughters Vita and Lyusya: “I am so far from you. Perhaps you have already begun to forget your daddy.

“Girls, so many children are here living in fear of air raids .... Please, I want you to help your mammy and look after her. Don’t be lazy. Anything can happen to me. Maybe I’ll never see you again. Perhaps you will be left just with mammy..

“I would love so much to be with you just for one day. To look at you and play with you. Please make sure the house is always clean, both the rooms and the kitchen.

Hugs and kisses, Your Daddy.

He was killed on October 30, 1941, four months and eight days after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union.

But the Red Army would turn the tables and rout the German aggressor.

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