« During the Second World War, a Russian soldier returned home from the battle lines for a short break. As he approached the apartment where he lived with his wife, he saw a pile of bodies piled up in the street that men were loading onto a truck for burial. When he got close, he saw a woman’s leg wearing a shoe that he recognised belonged to his wife. Taking her in his arms, he realised that she was still alive. In the apartment, he took care of her and she survived. Eight years later, in 1952, their son was born: Vladimir Putin » (Hillary Clinton, Hard Choices).
I receive this story as an invitation to look consciously at the often unconscious and muted chain of violence, which begins in the concrete reality of our personal dramas traumatised by war…
« Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed » (preamble to the Constitution of UNESCO, 1945).
