As the world commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz this month, I am painfully reminded that my father was incarcerated there. Auschwitz is the reason why I’m a Canadian; so is the ethnic cleansing perpetrated on us and others living around the new border between Poland and the Ukrainian SSR; so is the entire bloody war and its aftermath. It brought the end to one despot but allowed another to create hell and to hold it until 1991. And still at it.

Like other patriots, my father wanted sovereignty for Ukraine. The German Reich did not. After the war neither did Russia. Both occupational forces wanted the second largest country in Europe for themselves.