At the moment we think a lot about war.

In our conversations, we find that we feel addressed by different headlines.

It is expressed something like this: “Look, Germany is helping the Ukraine with Strelas!” “What are Strelas please?” “These are ancient anti-aircraft missiles that I know from military service.

These Soviet missiles were already obsolete when I was in the military.

You can't catch fighter jets with them, but they're pretty effective against helicopters." "Did you shoot down a helicopter?" "No, but in an exercise I hit a tree with the Strela." We're both equally appalled at the war, however, the perspectives are different.

It depends on the socialization.

“My kibbutz was surrounded on all sides by a military training zone.

During our walks on the barren hills, we collected old ammunition that we repurposed as decoration or flower pots.

We also used the gas masks that we received during the Gulf War to protect us against Skat missiles from Iraq as respiratory protection when painting bedsteads or for costumes on Purim.”

When war lost its abstraction

“When I was eleven years old, the Kosovo War broke out.

It was the first war I can remember.

Even though it was in Europe, war for me remained something that happened far away.

It wasn't until some time later that two new girls from Kosovo came to my school class and told me about what had happened to them and their families that the war lost its abstraction.

When I think about their stories, I'm still upset to this day."

The pictures and news of the last few weeks from Ukraine are gradually becoming a sad everyday occurrence - making it all the more difficult for us to get used to them.

Bombed houses, attacks on clinics and families fleeing.

We too have asked ourselves what we can do.

sign petitions?

Clear.

Demonstrate on the streets?

Of course.

But isn't that too little?

Donations certainly make sense.

But shouldn't we do more?

Driving to the Polish-Ukrainian border to bring people to safety?

Or host a family in our apartment?

That's a good idea!

Although our apartment is manageable, there would be enough space after the long overdue cleaning out.

In the citizen hotline, we were referred to websites to offer our living space.

"I'm currently thinking a lot about what my parents told me, who repeatedly offered refugees shelter in their three-room apartment in Frankfurt during their first years in Germany in the 1980s.

Almost every month it was acquaintances of acquaintances who had made a crazy escape from Pakistan.

To this day, my mother remembers how difficult it was for her with three young children to take care of so many mostly unknown men while my father was working.

Privacy was a foreign word, especially in an apartment with a Frankfurt bathroom where the shower is in the kitchen.”