MONROE — With bombs falling near the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, and Russian troops crossing into the country, one Monroe High School teacher was watching and hoping that her father might flee their homeland to Poland, where she could travel to rescue him from the increasingly dangerous conflict zone.

But Alla Schwartz’ father, a Wheat farmer, didn’t want to go. Like thousands of Ukrainian men, he wanted to stay and fight for his country, even as Russian tanks rolled over the border into Ukraine. 

“He should be harvesting his crops, that’s what he would normally be doing but for the past 10 days now he has been patrolling the town with a rifle,” Alla said of her father, Anatolii, who lives in the Cherkasy region in Ukraine, a couple hours south of the embattled capital of Kyiv. “My uncles, my other family and my friends are all still in Ukraine.”

Instead of fleeing with more than a million other war refugees, Anatolii joined what is known as a Teroborona group of citizen soldiers, she said, noting that she still has periodic contact with him and that, thankfully, the fierce fighting seen in other parts of the country has so far spared the Cherkasy region. 

Still, that’s small comfort to Schwartz, who moved to the United States as a child and now calls Brodhead — and Monroe High School — home. Her heart will always be in Ukraine with her father and family, she said, and she cries for the country she last visited in 2021.

After ominously building up forces on the borders for months, Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, in a massive escalation of a simmering Russo-Ukrainian war that began in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea. The current invasion, experts say, is the largest conventional military attack on a sovereign state in Europe since World War II. 

Anatolii, Alla said, fills his days patrolling and digging trenches and rehearsing with the other group members how they may fight the Russians when they come, though they know they are vastly outnumbered and out-gunned.  

Because he is 62, Alla said, her dad isn’t required to remain in the country like the other younger men. Still, he personally feels it’s his duty to fight, and he is committed to it.

“When I talk to him sometimes it’s all I can do to keep from crying, but he always calms me down and says it will be OK,” she said, of her talks with her father, who also is a mechanic by trade. “He wants to stay and fight for his country, and it’s a beautiful country.”

The Teroborona group in Ukraine even found an old Soviet-era military vehicle that they have fixed up to use in the patrols, she said. Able-bodied Ukrainians the world over, she said, are trying to go back to Ukraine to join in the fight — a fight she says no one wanted and many thought would never come across the border. 

The German language teacher has been telling her story to students and social studies classes at Monroe High School since the start of the war. The story she tells makes the faraway images of war much more relatable to the students.

“I look over there and see teachers working to help students in subway tunnels and bunkers and I think, ‘that could be me over there right now,’” she said. “It’s hitting everyone hard and it’s finally very, very real to everyone…even the children who I am not currently teaching come up to me in the hallways asking about the ways they can help Ukraine.”

When war first began in late February, Alla said she called her dad to tell him and he was actually surprised it was finally happening. With all of the propaganda around the war and the military moves a perceived bluff from an unpredictable Vladimir Putin, he’d planned to stay home to harvest the wheat, as he has every year.

“In 30 years of an independent Ukraine, we have never had any conflict with other nations, never,” she said, adding it was the Russians who brought the horror of war to Georgia, another country formerly annexed by the Soviet Union; and to Chechnya; and later to the embattled Crimea region that was “annexed” by Putin in 2014.

Schwartz now has family in both places. With her husband Tyler, she said, they have a son, Denys, who needs his grandfather in his life.

For now, though, the Schwartz’ pray and wait — hoping a miracle will stop Putin and save the lives of her father and his neighbors, who simply want to remain free as Ukrainians. The support from her fellow teachers and residents of Monroe has been special, she said, and the experience has taught her how fragile life — and the world order — are at this time in history.

“I see Americans supporting Ukrainians right now and it’s so wonderful to see,” she said. “Ukrainians are so thankful for the love and support from everyone. It’s nice to have so much of the world on our side in this.”

‘Someone’ is the speech Alla Schwartz gave at a Madison rally recently in support of Ukraine.

‘Someone’

Dear World,

Let me introduce myself.

I am someone who was born and went to school in the Soviet Union.

Someone who’s great grandpa was a partisan and fought for his Motherland in the WWII.

Someone whose grandma told horror stories about Holodomor and starvation

Someone who grew up in Independent Ukraine and experienced Orange Revolution and Maidan.

Someone who tells her son stories about cossacks and chumaks before bed.

Someone whose friends and family live in Ukraine, Russia, Germany, America, Canada, Poland, Dubai, Denmark, Japan, etc.

Someone who has an American husband.

Someone whose native language is Ukrainian, but she teaches German in American schools speaking English and Spanish.

Someone who woke up this morning to check on her father, who has been fighting cancer for the last three years but is fighting against occupation of Ukraine the last three days, who refused to flee to Poland and has been patrolling his town, his birthplace last night.

Someone whose goddaughter spent the night in the bomb shelter with her one year old baby.

Someone whose friend’s daughter was trying to leave Kyiv listening to the sounds of the missiles when Russia attacked.

Someone who teaches compassion and empathy to her students on the example of Holocaust and can’t believe that the history lesson is not learned.

Someone who is thankful that her almost 18 year old son is now sleeping peacefully in neighbor room but not signing up for the Ukrainian military.

Someone who refuses to believe the world’s words that “there is nothing we can do” — you can’t do anything ONLY if you are dead, until you are alive and your heart is beating there is always a way to help, maybe not an easy one, but there is.

Someone whose heart and thoughts are in Ukraine but who is living in Wisconsin.

Someone who hopes that the world will come together and finally realizes that we are all humans and we all want the same things: love and peace for our family, friends and home.

Someone who can’t change the situation and stop the war but can ask you not to look away, don’t pretend nothing is happening, don’t let aggression, power and hate destroy the world, speak up, talk to your children about horrors of war, teach them kindness, show them love, support Ukrainian people.

Sincerely,

just one more Someone