Why are we letting Russians commit atrocities against Ukraine on our watch?

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

I fear that this statement is true. The horror stories being lived in Ukraine today are painfully reminiscent of the ones I heard as a small child from my relatives about their time in Lithuania, and then as refugees in Germany and Soviet Russia during and after World War II. Though some of the particulars are different, the evil inhumanity is the same.

My mother and father were in grade school when the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania. I am discovering that their stories, their experiences, live in me in a ways I never could have imagined. As I watch what is unfolding in Ukraine, the horror and suffering from their stories is coming alive in me through what feels like cellular memory. I am experiencing anguish, horror, anger, terror, and profound helplessness. Tears flow. How can the world in 2022 be standing by and watching millions of innocent human beings be driven from their homes in terror — children and mothers ripped apart from their brothers, sons, and fathers, tortured, murdered, raped, maimed, and deported to prison camps. Every cell in my body is screaming why is no one stopping this? Why is no one coming to the aid of those who are so bravely defending themselves and protecting their loved ones? Who are we as people to…