Yeva Skalietska - You Dont Know What War Is - The Diary Of A Young Girl From The Ukraine

BLOOMSBURY CHILDRENS BOOKS

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland

This electronic edition published in 2022 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published in Great Britain 2022 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Main text 2022 Yeva Skalietska

My Friends Stories 2022 anonymous authors

Cover art 2022 Anastasia Stefurak

Map illustrations 2022 Olga Shtonda

Photo by Ger Holland Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2022

Photos 2022 Iryna Skalietska, with the exception of:

Photos 2022 Sally Beets

Photos 2022 Paraic O'Brien

Photos 2022 anonymous

Photos 2022 Catherine Flanagan

Translation by Cindy Joseph-Pearson

This book is based on real events as the author remembers them. However, the names and identifying characteristics of certain individuals, including all minors and people still based in Ukraine, have been changed to protect their privacy.

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-5266-5993-4 (PB)
ISBN: 978-1-5266-6014-5 (eBook)
ISBN: 978-1-5266-6013-8 (ePDF)

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For Granny

Foreword

You dont know what war is.

Its a good title, a statement, a challenge words spoken from the heart of someone who does know. We read this book and hear Yevas voice, loud and clear, telling us the truth. After we have read it, we may still not know what war is, but we understand so much more how it is for those, young and old, families and communities, who have lived through war and are still living through it today. Once read, we will have lived it with Yeva, through her words. Once read, we dont forget. Yevas utterly compelling story stays with us: one young writers descent from everyday life into hell, and ultimately, into salvation.

I have written often about war in my stories: ancient wars; world wars; of mans inhumanity to man; of our courage to fight on when all seems lost; of our ability to endure suffering and grief; of our will to survive, to make peace and seek reconciliation. But I have never known war, not at first hand as Yeva has.

I was born in 1943. I was evacuated, was in a sense a refugee, but I have no memory of it. I grew up in post-war London, and that I do remember. There was the ruin of war all about me, a bombsite next to our house where we played played war-games mostly. There was grief in my mothers face when she spoke of her brother Pieter, who was a wonderful young actor, killed in the RAF aged twenty-one. His photo was always gazing out at me from our mantlepiece. I never knew him. But I know and remember his face now better than any other relative. He stayed the same, never grew old.

Then there was the wounded soldier Id see on the way to school, sitting on the pavement outside the shop, medals pinned on his jacket, his dog curled up beside him. Id cross the street often, partly to avoid the dog, but mostly so that I didnt have to look again at his neatly folded empty trouser leg and be reminded again of what war did to human flesh.

My whole family was fractured by war. My father survived it, but his marriage to my mother didnt. War lingers on, goes on wrecking lives, I discovered, long after the fighting has stopped. So it is hardly surprising that I have often written about war, and about our longing for an end to it, for reconciliation and peace.

It is not surprising either that this unique book of Yevas has made such a huge impression on me. No fiction I could write about war can carry the same intensity or power as her first-hand account of the shattering effect of war on her life, on her family, her friends, her community, her country. Here is an insight into war as it happens to her, as the world falls about around her.

For us all, Yevas diary is a reminder that war is not a story told by journalists, nor by TV or films or history or fiction. It is lived day-by-day, night-by-night. In Yevas book it is lived viscerally, in front of our eyes, becomes immediate, will not allow us to look away. Lives and worlds are destroyed. Yeva, like Anne Frank, speaks a truth that all of us, young and old, must listen to. Her words will bring understanding, and in time, reconciliation, because anyone who reads them will know and remember what war really is for those who live it, and will remind us too that hope does spring eternal.

Michael Morpurgo

July, 2022

Prologue

Everyone knows the word war. But very few people understand what it truly means. You might say that its horrible and frightening, but you dont know the true scale of fear it brings. And so, when you find you suddenly have to face it, you feel totally lost, walled in by fright and despair. All of your plans are interrupted without warning by destruction. Until youve been there, you dont know what war is.

BEFORE

14 February 2022

LEADERS IN FINAL PUSH TO AVERT
UKRAINE INVASION

- The Times

BIDENS NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER
SAYS RUSSIA COULD INVADE UKRAINE
ANY DAY NOW

- CNN

PRESIDENT DECLARES FEB. 16 UNITY DAY
FOR UKRAINIANS