From the Pinacoteca di Brera a message of support for the children of Ukraine

The Brera Art Gallery launches a message of support for the war-affected children of Ukraine. “In every war,” reads a note just released by the institute, “children are always the ones who suffer the most. As their fathers, brothers and uncles risk their lives; families are destroyed; mothers seek shelter with their children in air raid shelters to try to protect themselves, avoiding the worst.” In the coming weeks and perhaps even months, hundreds of thousands of children will be at great risk. This is why the Milan museum is on the side of children: “We stand for their rights, enshrined in the United Nations Charter: the right to live in peace, to be free from fear, to grow and learn peacefully. Here at the Braidense Library and Brera Art Gallery, we believe in the enormous power of remembering and learning from our past, remembering other devastating wars; from Napoleon’s wars to World War I, to the vicious bombings of World War II that reduced Brera to rubble. Let us not forget: when bombs fall there is only death and destruction.”

The museum also reports the testimony of a ten-year-old German boy trapped in Dresden in 1945: “After a few minutes we heard a horrible noise: the bombers. There were continuous explosions. The basement filled with smoke and fire and was damaged; the lights blew out, the wounded were uttering atrocious cries. Scared to death, we rushed out of the basement [...] Our street was unrecognizable. Everywhere fire, nothing but fire. On the street there were burning vehicles and wagons full of refugees, people, horses, and everyone was screaming in fear of dying. I saw wounded women, children and elderly people breaking through the rubble and fire. [...] It cannot be described! One explosion after another. It was an incredible scene, the worst of nightmares. All those people horribly burned and injured. Breathing was getting harder and harder. It was getting dark and we were all trying to leave the basement in an inconceivable panic. People were trampling the dead and dying, abandoning their bags or having them snatched out of their hands by rescuers. We saw the burning street, the devastated buildings and that terrible fire. My mother put wet blankets and coats on us taken from a tub of water. We saw horrible things: adults shrunken by the flames, pieces of legs and arms, corpses, whole families charred, human flashlights running here and there, burned civilian refugee buses, dead rescuers and soldiers, people calling and looking for children and relatives, and everywhere fire, just fire, and all the time the hot wind from the fire was pushing people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from. I cannot forget these atrocious details. In all that tragedy I had completely forgotten about my tenth birthday. But the next day my mother gave me a surprise, a piece of sausage begged by the Red Cross. It was my birthday present.”

“We are called to do all we can to support those living the nightmare of war, with our resistance, our donations, our actions,” the museum continues. “That is why, as a cultural institution, we are making our collection of children’s books in Ukrainian available online, in the hope that they can be read to frightened little ones who are refugees at home or underground. The human voice and knowledge can help and give comfort.”

Pinacoteca Director James Bradburne says, “I can only say that for the first time in a long time we have a war on European soil-a war is one of the most terrible things in the world. And not only because it creates hardship and damage, economic problems: because people suffer, because people die, because fathers, sons and uncles go to the front, and those who suffer most are the children. Today I would like to declare the support of our cultural institutes for the children of Ukraine, who are now in the subways together with their families, scared, fearful, anxious. We must stand with them, insist on respect for children’s rights, we must help them, we must support them in their suffering. We must stand with them and shout never again war.”

Image: Brera Art Gallery. Photo by James O’Mara

From the Pinacoteca di Brera a message of support for the children of Ukraine

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