Russian invasion reminds us: Do good, seek peace

I never met my grandfather on my mother's side. I never met any of the male members of her family. They were crushed by Soviet tanks during a round of Russian adventurism.

My mother, her sister and her mom endured Russian assaults, gunfire and artillery; they hid under floorboards, in basements and in forests as they made their way out of Hungary in 1948 to escape the occupation of their homeland.

When I was a kid, I used to stay at my great-grandmother's apartment. Every night, when we'd come home in the evenings after shopping or whatever, we had a unique ritual. She'd lock the six or seven deadbolts on the front door to her apartment, and we'd spend the next 15 or 20 minutes stacking every pot and pan she owned behind the locked door.

The idea was that if a Russian soldier tried to force his way in, it would knock over the tall stack of metal pans and wake up everyone on the floor. This was a time before commercial burglar alarms were available. Still, we were in downtown Detroit, so the likelihood of a Russian attack was non-existent.

When she moved here to New Mexico to live with us, she had a ritual of checking every door and window in our home every hour or so to make sure they were securely locked. If I walked outside to get the paper or check the mail, I would often hear the door slam and the locks click shut behind me. So terrified was my grandmother of Russians storming into our home, that she kept constant vigil on every way in.

My father had a bar that you could see through the front windows of our home. Every night, she would cover the bar with newspaper to hide it from prying Russian eyes. If there was a bottle of liquor on top of the bar, she would pour it down the sink, much to my father's chagrin, wrap the bottle in newspaper and throw it in the trash. When I asked her why she did that, she explained that it would attract Russian soldiers and they'd break in to steal the booze.

More than once, she told me that "the only thing worse than a Russian soldier is a drunk Russian soldier."

She told me that the Russian troops were like well-armed thugs; when they broke into Hungarian houses during the occupation, they would wash their faces and hands in the toilet bowls. Many of the soldiers had never seen a toilet before and had no idea what it was for.

It was clear that the Alzheimer's Disease that eventually took her life was setting in, as many of the symptoms were surfacing. But so profound was the PTSD she was wracked with after her home was invaded by the Russians, and her witness of their cruelty and barbarism, that even after her escape she lived in constant fear of them.

My mother kept me awake with stories of her escape from her beloved Hungary. She told me how her mother's toe was shot off by a desperate Hungarian father, who reasoned it was better to die than to suffer at the hands of the Russians. He offered to kill my mother, her mom and sister, to keep them from being ravaged by the invaders. My grandmother wrestled the gun away from him, but lost part of her foot in the process. He went on to kill his children and himself after my mother's escape.

My mother told me stories of being urinated on, hit with cars and bicycles, and being screamed at, shot at and insulted by Russians and even Germans, as they eventually made their way into Germany as they ran from their home. She never saw her father, her grandfather or any uncle again, as they were put to death by the Russian occupiers.

She spent much of her life trying to find where her father's body was buried and narrowed it down to an area of Soviet-occupied Romania, but never found his location. She didn't return home to see the land of her ancestors until 1996 just after the Iron Curtain fell.

Now, the curtain rises again in eerily similar circumstances in Ukraine. I don't pretend to know everything that's going on over there; I don't know the players, their politics or their past. All I know is that innocent men, women and children, who want nothing more than a modest life and chance to raise their families, are being crushed under Russian boots once again.

My brain tells me that we don't belong in a conflict over there, and it tries to analyze all the perils that would come with our intervention into this regional conflict. However, my heart tells me that Russia either has to stop or be made to stop. I've seen what their exploits have done to people. And it's wrong in so many ways.

For now, I'll continue to pray. I'll invite everyone I know to pray. Ask the lord Jesus Christ to guide us out of this horrible situation. That no child should ever again have to watch his parents and grandparents suffer the devastating direct and indirect effects of war.

Psalms 34:14 - Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.

Bob Farkas lives in Clovis. Contact him:

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