The World Must Know... About Memory, Dehumanization and Compassion

... “I deleted all my social media profiles. Because I can’t relive this horror every day. Every time I relive the moment of his death. This is torture that you wouldn’t wish on an enemy.”

The sister of one of the soldiers whose video went viral has been treated in a psychiatric hospital for almost a year. She and her brother were very close. In fact, there was no one in her life who was dearer to her. It was her phone number that was the “contact” to be informed in case of injury, captivity or death. But a few days before she received the most dreadful call: a video of Russians shooting at point-blank range a group of soldiers who were surrounded and trying to surrender went viral.

I don’t know by what signs she recognized or guessed it was her brother. And I will never dare to ask. I only know that she called all the numbers she knew to confirm or deny what she saw in the Telegram channels. I know that she received vague answers: “There is no confirmed information,” “We have to wait for an official response,” and “You will be contacted.” Until it was officially confirmed: yes, it was him.

His body was never recovered. So for a long time he was considered missing. And she kept coming across videos of the shooting. Here he is alive. Here he is not. Here he is alive again. And then he’s not. “The world needs to see!!!” screamed the pages with three followers and dubious publics with a bunch of AI-generated pictures. None of their real-life friends dared to repost these images. For them, it was not abstract evidence of convention violations, but real personal hell. A terrible groundhog day.

The first wave of “The World Must Know” was immediately followed by the second, “It was better to die with arms in my hands. As a fighter, not as a coward.” For some time, she tried to respond. To tell them that in a hopeless situation, the main thing is to save lives. That a dead warrior can no longer help his country. And there is a chance to return from captivity. That it’s not about fear. It’s about strength. A remarkable strength, given what he knew about captivity. But unknown commentators knew better than he did what he should have done and what he should not have done. Even when he was dead, he still owed everyone around him: he had to become a symbol, a call to action an illustration of the horrors of war.

But it was not this that finally broke her. It was the story of another soldier whose head was cut off alive. And even worse than the fact itself was a post by a well-known blogger saying that it was better to die in silence than to shout in Russian: “Don’t do it, it hurts.” It was this post that became the last straw, after which she deleted all social media from her life. In order to preserve the remnants of her sanity and humanity towards those for whom her brother died. To those people who know exactly how the one who went to defend them should die. To those who want to “keep the memory of the hero alive” by savoring the details of his death.

... “The world must see!” —  social networks were bursting with photos of the bloody face of a man who lost his entire family after a strike on one of the rear cities. In the first minutes after the tragedy. In a race against time. With photos of a happy family for contrast. Because the world must see.

And the point is not even that the world has seen and heard enough to finally make some important decisions. The point is that every time this man logs on to social media, he will be forced to relive those first moments of personal hell over and over again. Did anyone give him a choice? No. Did anyone mention that there are other relatives who will see videos of a happy family with the caption “Russia killed them” over and over again? I don’t think so. Because the desire to be the first to comment with broken hearts or with a yellow-blue eye with a tear is much stronger than the thought of those whose whole world collapsed in an instant. It collapsed forever, not until the next big story that will eclipse this one on the web. Now they no longer belong to themselves or their loved ones. They belong to those who know better than their families how to grieve and what details to discuss online. They are no longer individuals. They are an event. A digital imprint of real life and real tragedy.

... “I experienced the death of my husband for the second time today,” writes a woman who lost her beloved one only three months ago. She was invited to a presentation of a project he was involved in. A project that aimed to preserve the memory of those who fought for the Victory. A huge part of the work was his own. But somehow it happened that his name did not appear in the project. Not a single mention in the finished product. You can talk about a mistake, about preoccupation, about anything, but it’s impossible to change it. In the project about memory, there is no memory of the deceased project co-author. Of course, the wife did not accept any apologies and categorically forbade the use of any of her husband’s materials in this project.

In a civilized society, one could put an end to this and go about remaking the project with another co-author. Or close it out of respect for a woman who has just lost the meaning of life and cannot forgive such a fatal mistake. Unfortunately, we are still far from a civilized society. The conflict went public, and immediately there were those who knew exactly what should have been done and what the wife of the fallen soldier should do. In some places, the claims reached the point of absurdity. “You have now multiplied your husband’s heroic deeds by zero,” “This project is more important than your personal ambitions,” “The dogs are barking, but the caravan goes on. The project must live on with or without your consent,” “The memory of one is not as important as the memory of dozens of others,” “The world needs to know about our Heroes, and you will not prevent it.”

I don’t know how she is holding up. And whether there was anyone who told her: “Memory is not about numbers, but about everyone. Your husband is no less important than others. You have every right to be angry”? I don’t know this either. I can only hope that she is not going through all this on her own.

...I have a video saved on my phone from Russian social media pages. It shows an unsuccessful assault in which one of our companies participated. It is a good quality video. With comments and joyful shouts of the enemy. It took me more than six months to watch it. I started several times and couldn’t bring myself to watch it anymore. Because I knew that almost no one returned from that assault. That the group taken in the kill zone was shot as if in a shooting range. And that I recognize most of the people in this video. And I will experience the death of each of them again.

I have never published this video, although it went viral even without me. I’m afraid to imagine that one of the boys’ relatives will come across it by accident when scrolling the feed. I know that some of them have seen it. But they saw it because they wanted to see it and prepared for what they would see. It was their conscious choice. It was not a random algorithm of “cats — death of a son — cultural news.”

We need to learn to maneuver between carefully preserving events and names and picking at the open wounds of relatives with red-hot iron. Between documenting crimes and savoring someone else’s grief. Because, of course, the world must know. Of course, we must know. But definitely not at the expense of those who have already given us and the world the most precious thing they had. Because their fallen children, wives, husbands, parents, brothers and sisters owe us nothing more. They are not symbols, news headlines, street names, monuments or memes. They are people first and foremost. And they deserve not only to be remembered but also to be respected. As do those who remained in the eternal hell of loss.

The world must know. And the next generations must know. This is not about information isolation, not about “let’s pretend it doesn't exist.” It is about humanity, tact and respect. It is about the ability to restrain oneself in time and put one’s valuable opinion in the same place as the May 2022 barbecue and 2023 coffee in Crimea. One day we will have May barbecues, coffees in Crimea and a museum of occupation in Donetsk. But it would be good not only to live to see that time but also to remain human. Human beings. People who keep the memory of heroes alive and not try to “stand by” them at all costs through loud statements or occasional conflicts on the Internet.

 

Read this article in Ukrainian and russian.