Ukrainian War Diary (139): sleeping in the bath, calls for donations on Instagram

31.5.2023
I’ve never been able to orientate myself well. The invention of Google Maps has made my life a lot easier, but even that doesn’t always work. Like now, for example, when I’m on my way to a theater rehearsal in Leipzig and trying to find out where the right tram stop is. And then I finally recognize her by the tram that is leaving right in front of my nose. I have to wait 15 minutes for the next one. It’s good that I can see an antiquarian bookshop right next to it. So the quarter of an hour will pass quickly for me.

There’s a box with the 1-euro records in front of the door, so I’m through very quickly – a bit of hits and the usual suspects: James Last, Karel Gott and Ivan Rebroff. I go inside and find myself in a spacious room with bookshelves carefully organized by subject.

Social media is full of experiences of war

Fiction straight ahead, esotericism and Judaism on the right, World War II on the left. There, a young man with glasses is taking a book and taking it to the checkout. Is he a student or just interested in history I wonder? The shelf is filled with numerous German and some English volumes, some older and others recently published.

Obviously, the Second World War remains a topic that arouses great interest among readers – even 78 years after its end, new information is regularly emerging and previously unknown documents are being revealed. He continues to inspire writers from different countries. I discover here a thriller, written by the screenwriter of “Game Of Thrones”, which describes the adventures in Leningrad surrounded by the Germans. Next to it is a 1957 book called The Best Short Stories Of World War II: An American Anthology.

I am sure that the stories of the war that my homeland is going through will still be told decades later, both by those directly affected and by those who have not yet been born. Thousands, millions of stories – not only books, there will also be films, series, plays and musicals. Today, people follow them in every imaginable format – from news in the newspapers and on TV to TikToks and Instagram stories that are 15 seconds or less and only available for 24 hours.

For the past few weeks, Kiev has been attacked almost every night. When I wake up, I look at the stories from the capital residents among my Insta friends – they show who and where didn’t sleep today. Some took the subway to wait out the bombing, others stayed in their apartments but lugged the mattress over to the hallway, where it’s said to be safer. An artist shows her sketches that she drew in the basement in the middle of the night during the attack. A young rapper posts a selfie from the bathtub where he slept today and “heard nothing and felt safe”.

In Serhij Zhadan’s latest story, his followers can see him next to a new car. Such pictures appear on his profile as reports on his expenses, because at every reading, at every concert, donations are collected to support the Ukrainian armed forces. In the past few months, it is the 187th car bought by Zhadan and his helpers and just sent to the front.

In a friend’s stories, I see a video in which three young Ukrainian soldiers explain why their unit urgently needs an anti-drone gun. They call for donations at the end. The next story is a screenshot of a Telegram message: “Thank you for sharing, please do it again if you can, unfortunately not enough money has flowed. Two of the three boys in the video are no longer alive.”