West Village resident Valentina Bajada, 56, returned to her native Ukraine three years ago to tie up her late mother’s affairs. She remained in Kyiv because of the COVID-19 pandemic and an ongoing legal nightmare involving a squatter who refuses to leave the home she shares with her partner. Bajada, who fled the former Soviet Union in 1989 with her infant son for a better life in the US, is stuck in a country under siege. Now I’ve experienced what my mother experienced.My grandmother and my mother survived the Gestapo in 1943. My mother was caught by Gestapo and taken to be shot because they broke the curfew. They used to go pick up potatoes, come home at night and cook it and feed the hungry. She fed them. She was caught.
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