A diplomatic row over a wartime nationalist force exposes centuries of contested memory between Poland and Ukraine. Memorials to the victims of Volhynia remain central to Polish historical memory. “How can I live in this country / Where the foot knocks against / The unburied bones of kin?” Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz asked in his 1945 poem In Warsaw. Writing amid the ruins of a continent devastated by war, Miłosz captured a transcendental truth about Eastern Europe, where t

A child fills a metal container from a deceptively clean water source. But the water carries heavy metals leached from shattered piping and chemical residues from a bombardment that occurred months ago. The war that caused this contamination may have already moved its frontlines elsewhere, or even signed a ceasefire. Yet its effects remain, entering bodies and shaping the genetic future of a generation. We are conditioned to measure war in immediate, visible metrics: casualti