The Hill: America helped save the lives of Ukrainians like me in World War II. We need help again. BY YURIY SCHERBAK
In March 1944, exactly 80 years ago, I returned to my native city, Kyiv, which had just been liberated from three years of German occupation. My city lay in ruins, with most of its inhabitants having disappeared in the darkness of war, and the victims of the crying out for revenge.
I was only 10 at that time, but I already knew that I had survived thanks to American food aid. There was a lively trade of American products at school, including chewing gum, biscuits, stew, Camel cigarettes and small plastic models of combat aircraft.
I didn’t know then that in the summer of 1944 real U.S. warplanes — B-17s, B-24 flying fortresses and Mustang fighters — regularly flew to and from a U.S. Airforce base in Poltava in central-eastern Ukraine as part of . After bombing German targets, more than 100 bombers and 70 U.S. fighters returned to Ukrainian soil to rest, refuel and repair their planes, and replenish their bomb stocks.
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