Bucha

I was promised, "never again". They lied.

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Snow covers the valley, but not enough.

The soil here remembers the shapes.
Bodies, then the shovels,
then boots of visitors who try not to look down.

A menorah leans against the sky,
its metal pitted, cracked by a new attack.
Not 1941.
Today.
Now.

Someone says it was the blast.
ruSSia lies it was an accident.
No one says it wasn’t the same hate finding a new voice.

Bucha is not far from here.
The same wind chills both places,
carrying the same ash,
the same unfinished prayer.

When the ruSSians left Bucha,
they left the bodies as they fell.
Just as others once did,
believing the ground would hide their crimes.

But the land remembers.
It remembers everything.

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The Truth

Babyn Yar (Kyiv)
Historical trauma: Massacre of 33,771 Jews in two days (September 1941).
2022: Russian missile strike hit the area near the Babyn Yar memorial, March 1 2022 - civilians killed near a Holocaust site during attack on the Kyiv TV tower.

Drobytsky Yar (Kharkiv)
Historical trauma: Over 16,000 Jews murdered near Kharkiv in 1941–42.
2022: Menorah monument damaged by Russian shelling, March 26 2022 - the symbol of remembrance shattered.

Odesa synagogue ruins (Nachlas Eliezer / Old Peresyp)
Historical trauma: Once a spiritual heart of the Jewish quarter; destroyed during earlier waves of antisemitic violence.
2025: Russian drone strike damaged the historic synagogue site, August 2025 -continuity of cultural erasure.

Bucha (Kyiv Oblast)
2022: Mass killings of civilians uncovered after Russian withdrawal, April 2022 - the same as mass graves of earlier wars. The perpetrators remain free and unpunished

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