Father Barry’s words from On the Waterfront

Re: “Today’s evil Angel of Death” (Herald letters, April 16)

Joe Schwarz writes: “The crucifixion of an innocent Ukraine nation and complete obliteration of the Ukraine family unit.”

Film buffs will know the 1954 crime drama, “On the Waterfront.” There’s a famous scene known as the “sermon on the docks,” where Father Barry (Karl Malden) tells the longshoremen: “Some people think the crucifixion only took place on Calvary. They better wise up! Taking Joey Doyle’s life to stop him from testifying is a crucifixion... And every time the mob puts the pressure on a good man, tries to stop him from doing his duty as a citizen, it's a crucifixion.”

On April 15, more than 900 civilian bodies were discovered in the region surrounding Kyiv, following the withdrawal of Russian forces. According to police, most of the civilians were fatally shot, an indication people were “simply executed.”

The body of Karina Yershova, a 23-year-old Ukrainian woman, was among those discovered in a mass grave. She was raped, tortured and shot in the head, according to her grieving loved ones.

So I would add to Father Barry’s words: “And every time a Russian soldier shoots a Ukrainian civilian, or open fires on a bus killing civilians, or fires off a bomb on a school, hospital, apartment building or railway station, it's a crucifixion.”

U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters April 12: “Yes, I call it genocide because it’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being Ukrainian, and the evidence is mounting.”

Two days later, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters it was “quite right” for Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to use the word genocide to describe events in Ukraine, since thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been brutalized and killed. Freeland pointed to a “chilling document” on an official Russian news website “that effectively laid out a plan for genocide in Ukraine, that called for the suffering, the punishment of people who chose, in the view of this document, wrongly and mistakenly to describe themselves as Ukrainian. That called for the word Ukraine to be erased.”

Schwarz: “That this seems to be climaxing during the Easter season, is there a glimmer, a message of hope here? And yet a possibility for the perpetrators to be forgiven?”

Go to YouTube and watch the official video for the 1995 song “Liquid” by the rock group Jars of Clay. The lyrics include: “Blood stained brow He wasn’t broken for nothing Arm nailed down He didn't die for nothing He didn't die for nothing” David Buckna

Kelowna