Suddenly there was chaos in the house. They began to seal the windows to prevent the glass from breaking inside, but Oksana knew this was not enough. He had to get down in the basement. It was by no means a bomb shelter. It was never made for this. But it has to be done. There was no time to go anywhere else.
“A child started screaming,” Oksana told CNN. “I was trying to calm her down: ‘Look at me, breathe, we’re gonna seal the windows, everything’s under control. Now we need you to stop the panic and help us,'” she said. .
Tatyana, another Ukrainian woman affiliated with the SOS Children’s Village, manages to survive the war with her six foster children, without hearing about the bombing. But he had to make a terrible decision. Live in Ukraine with your family or drop and rescue your foster children.
“I have a daughter and mother in Ukraine, I am very worried, but these children need to be saved,” said Tatyana from the SOS Children’s Village in Bilgóraj, Poland, near the Ukrainian border.
Tatyana decided to raise children because she always wanted a big family. Now that family is forcibly separated.
A girl whom Tatyana has raised since she was just a year old was with her while we were talking. Now 13, she looks calm and has a sweet smile to strangers before opening up about her feelings.
“I’m worried, scared,” she said. “I am concerned for my relatives, for all Ukrainians.”
hurt and frightened
The trauma of war is affecting children whose lives have already had a difficult start, said Oksana, psychologist and art therapist at SOS Children’s Village. The organization calls itself the world’s largest non-governmental organization that supports children who do not have parental care.
“Before the war, our children were physically, mentally, financially and sexually abused,” she said. “They were victims. They didn’t have a childhood.”
And now, they are refugees of war.
A total of 107 children have left the village of SOS in Ukraine for Poland, along with foster mothers known as “mother counselors”, like Tatyana. Oksana said that some fled from areas where the war had not yet reached, while others were watching it closely.
“There is a girl who is coming to us, she broke free from the hell of Irpin, a city that has been leveled, and saw a family being shot before her eyes,” Oksana said. “I’m scared to imagine his condition right now.”
She escaped from the new stresses the children were facing. “They now know what explosions are, they know what a bomb shelter is. They know what it’s like to sit in that cold pit. Some are now even afraid to go to the toilet without their mother’s mentor,” he Said. “It’s just awful.”
Fear for the children she works with and the state of her country brings psychologist Oksana to tears as she talks. Children are not the only victims. Trauma does not discriminate.
But her sadness is heightened when she speaks about the man she blames for waging an unprovoked war on Ukraine: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin is the second Hitler, this is serious. If the world doesn’t stop him, there will be a third world war.”
She said the fight has already changed everything for her and her children.
“Our lives are divided before and after the war.”