“War is not good, I saw it on the news, so have courage and let it pass.” This is how the poem by Maxim (10), who attends a 5th grade of elementary school, begins.
He wrote it down at school. Handwritten in blue ink. All alone, without help. “I usually never write poetry,” he says.
“And when our teacher asked who wanted to write a poem about war, I was the only one.”
The subject of war is omnipresent in his elementary school, both in class and in the schoolyard. And the students absorb everything on the subject. Show the partly unpixelated cruel pictures and films on YouTube. As a result, many sleep poorly.
“At first I was afraid that the war would come to us too, but my parents calmed me down,” says Maxim.
In class, the students talked about the historical background. A map showed them how far Ukraine is from Berlin. It’s only two hours by plane.
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“I heard that 14,000 soldiers have already died on the Russian side,” says Maxim thoughtfully. To distract himself, the straight-A student prefers to play football.
“I want to be a pro,” he says. “But also study architecture if that doesn’t work out with football.”