MORE than 60 years might have slipped past, but Russian born Stanley Falinski said not a lot has changed in war zones.
Mr Falinski was just 15 years old when he fled Europe after World War Two with his mother Maria and younger brother George.
Stanley’s mother survived the siege of Leningrad (now St Petersburg) in January 1941 – thanks to a wintertime frozen lake, where the Red Army could build a railway across the ice, around the back of the German mines, to evacuate women and children from the city.
“Just as they’re trying to do in Ukraine today,” he said.
After Germany and Russia invaded Poland in 1939, Stanley’s father Leon was moved to regions around Tokmak [in Kyrgyzstan] because of his engineering experience to help with building factories for the new russian armaments.
“They went to the Russian side because they weren’t killing Jews,” Jason said.
Read the article by Nadine Morton in the Northern Beaches Review.