Suffering in Ukraine and Gaza “doesn’t feel far away” to a 90-year-old survivor of the Blitz.
Jill Reeves was seven years old when she sheltered under the stairs, cowering from the German bombs that burnt Coventry Cathedral to the ground on the 14th of November 1940.
Now, she struggles to follow the latest updates in Ukraine and Gaza because of the traumatic memories it brings back – particularly of her friend Dorothy she used to walk to school with.
Jill said: “I went round to pick Dorothy up and the whole house was gone. They’d had a direct hit on their house and air raid shelter.
“I remember thinking: ‘Well I shan’t see Dorothy again.’”
Jill remembers the scenes she saw from the window of the van in which she was evacuated on the 15th of November.
“It was a dreadful sight, the sky wasn’t pink, it was red,” she said.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the bodies of fellow Britons who had been blown from their hiding places into the rafters of their crumbling homes.
Coventry hospital was bombed during the war, with patients and doctors killed by German bombs on the 8th and 9th of April 1941.
When Jill told me about this, I mentioned the bombing of hospitals in both Gaza and Ukraine.
A children’s hospital was hit in a direct strike in Kyiv on Monday by a Russian missile, whilst the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza lies in ruins.
“That’s wicked, that is wicked,” she said, visibly uncomfortable with the thought.
The children’s hospital in Kyiv, Ohmatdyt, treated children with cancer.
Images circulated on social media of children escaping in terror, hairless because of the cancer treatment they were receiving.
“The first time a photograph came on the news showing Ukraine I thought it was just like the Blitz,” Jill told us.
Her home on Widdrington Road, Coventry, shook throughout the night on multiple occasions, so much so that her parents put an extra bed in a cupboard under the stairs in an attempt to keep her safe during the continuous bombing.
After emerging from the rubble on the morning of the 15th of November, Jill’s father made the neighbours tea – they had lost their roof.
Jill added: “There were all these half buildings with, well, we see it now in Ukraine, the furniture hanging from the windows.”
Jill was evacuated, sent to live with her grandfather, and her parents became refugees for nine months.
Nearly two million people are now internally displaced in Gaza, according to the United Nations.
“It wasn’t an experience I would like any child to go through but unfortunately they are going through that now, in fact, even worse than me,” Jill said.
“I have every sympathy with the Palestinians. I can feel for them, I really can.”
Jill may be one of the few Britons who can remember what it is like to be bombed, but her sympathy for the people of Ukraine and Gaza is matched by many across the country.
Five independent MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, who ran with the promise of bringing the issue of Gaza to the forefront in parliament, took seats from Labour in the recent general election.
Featured Image Credit: Ben Mulley
