The war in Ukraine evokes memories in the elderly: We had to watch without any protection how bombs were dropped on our homes

Immediately after waking up, Wanda Traczyk-Stawska goes to the living room and turns on the TV. Every morning, since February 24th. As if on duty. The 95-year-old will know if the Ukrainians continue the fight against the Russian occupiers. She wants to be with them, even if only from the chair where she is sitting.

Traczyk-Stawska knows well what it means to fight: During the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupiers in 1944 she was a 17-year-old soldier, a member of the Polish army illegally. In conversation with Deutsche Wellen, she tries to recall the noises, voices and tastes of that time. Sometimes she closes her eyes and begins to speak slowly, as if trying to taste every word.

Wanda Traczyk-Stawska

“In the early days of the war I saw how the Germans killed a baby,” says Wanda Traczyk-Stawska, lowering her head. “Until then, I never thought people could be so mean.” From that day on she wanted to grow up as fast as she could to fight.

“I hate war, it is the greatest mistake of humanity,” said Traczyk-Stawska.

But for two months she has been confronted with her fears. “I would like to no longer live to see what I see, but since I am still alive I feel compelled to fight. And I can only do this by calling on the world: Help the Ukrainians! ”

The sky over Ukraine

Traczyk-Stawska remembers well the feeling of not having protection in the fight against the Germans. The fact that the skies of Ukraine remain “open”, ie without no-fly zones, reminds her of 1944. “We did not have air defense at that time. And planes can not be shot with a pistol. We had to watch unprotected as bombs were dropped on our homes. This is our biggest trauma. “

Wanda Traczyk-Stawska

“What is currently happening is a great burden for people who have experienced World War II,” explains Agnieszka Popiel, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist at the University of Warsaw, SWPS. The professor, who co-runs the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Clinic with a colleague, focuses on trauma, among other things. Her high school has set up a hotline for people who have fled the war in Ukraine and continue to feel intimidated and worried about family members or have experienced the loss of loved ones.

Dream with the monster

Stanislaw Walski experienced great pain during World War II. He was born in 1933, the year Hitler came to power in Germany. “The Russian attack destroyed my psyche. After all the atrocities I experienced in World War II I thought it would never happen again. “Unfortunately, sick people always go to war,” he told Deutsche Wellen by telephone.

Stanislaw Walski

Today the 88-year-old lives in Breslau. He participates in the action “Never again war” of the historic center “Zajezdnia” (Depot). People who have experienced World War II condemn in short films the war in Ukraine. In his video, Walski shows that when he was 11 years old, he was taken and put in a camp in Neumarkt / Oberpfalz. For years he saw a dream of how hovering in the air, monsters try to grab him by the legs.

“I think the psyche of a child, as I was at the time, is not able to withstand the appearance of corpses. “The sight of people falling on barbed wire,” Walski said. He remembers the noises, the winds and the great famine. “It was unbearable. “When a fly fell into my mouth, I did not spit on it but ate it.”

Broken age evokes memories

Agnieszka Popiel says older people remember more what they experienced in their youth than what they experienced recently. “The experiences of that time are strongly connected with memory, what happened in recent years, when the force releases, is remembered less and less.” Hence the memories from youth come back reinforced.

Psychology explains that people unconsciously set up a defense mechanism: Whoever has experienced horror, keeps in their head concrete stimuli such as noise, smells or images, to prepare the body in the future to defend itself in similar situations.

“Germans are very reluctant”

“I often hear it said that we have been an extraordinary generation. This is not true. “We were just like humans today,” said Wanda Traczyk-Stawska. In conversation with Deutsche Wellen she reiterates several times that she does not advise Ukrainian women to stay in Poland, which has returned to the front line, but to go further west. “I know women think about the men they left behind in the war. And they want to be close to them. But this is wrong! “For men who have stayed in the war, it is important to know that their wives and children are safe.”

Phosphorus bomb

When I leave thanking her, the World War II fighter remembers that she should be thanked for the opportunity she is given to speak directly to the Germans. “I want Germany to fight for world peace. There is no peace as long as the war continues. The Germans are very reluctant. “

Before I leave. Wanda Traczyk-Stawska says emphatically: “If I were younger I would be fighting the Ukrainians.” She says people in the neighboring country should not give up. She is convinced that Ukraine will win: “Because the people there know as much as I do what freedom is and what human dignity means.” / DW