2022 was off to brutal start with the full scale invasion and war on Ukraine by Russia. A war that is going on as I write this with all the atrocities and trauma that come with it. Whether it takes place in the last or in this century makes no difference.
How do you cope with this situation, when you sit in your office in Berlin? Or as you stand in your backyard watching the robin in the blossoming apple tree? While you know that men and women are laying in the trenches defending their country? Colleagues under arms alternating between two weeks at the front and two weeks at home and in the office, taking care of their families and filing their next document production request in some commercial dispute?
How do you help? How do you cope?
It so happened that we had one of our digital „arbitrattoria lunch bowl“ talks planned for the day after the outbreak of the full scale war. We spontaneously changed the topic and gave the platform to Olga Hamama to present the United For Ukraine initiative with a large group of people mostly from the arbitration community, joining from all over the world. Some of them got involved in the project.
Patricia Shaughnessy, Alicja Zielinska-Eisen and Dr. Eveli Lume immediately kicked off the “Safe Harbor for Ukrainian Students” Program, allowing Ukrainian students to seek temporary internship opportunities and housing in different places, including Berlin. Many wonderful colleagues opened their doors and provided living space in their private homes. This initiative allowed us at WagArb to host Masha for a few months and to learn about the goodness in many people and about a country that I knew only little until then.
And we organized an art exhibition at our office that received substantial attention with paintings by Franz Göttlicher on the topic of war, Nazi-Germany, and transgenerational trauma. Christoph Paulus was so kind to curate the exhibition with a keynote that none of us present that day will forget.
The greatest danger next to what war is as such, is that it becomes normality. Routine. That one dulls inside, that one resigns, and leaves things, leaves people to themselves. Whether it is happening in Ukraine or in Israel and Palestine.
We try to support as much as we can. WagArb and I personally have supported several organizations that provide humanitarian help on the ground, who avocate on an international and/or socio-political level, and who are engaged in international exchange and education. Some examples include Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), MissionSiret, Arolsen Archives, YFU – Deutsches Youth For Understanding Komitee e.V. , A Bleistift FOR EVERYONE, ProvideTheSlide.
Let’s not allow this war — or any war — to become routine. Stay awake. Stay engaged.
🔜 Next: Reflection #20 — 10 Years in the Making.
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