Contribution short abstract:

The base is an interview with a woman from Mariupol, recorded in Helsinki, 2023. The narrator's husband was detained during filtration and killed in a Donetsk prison. She describes her experience in a form of a list of dates and events, avoiding emotions, stories of other people, direct accusations.

Contribution long abstract:

The report is based on an interview with a woman from Mariupol, which was recorded in Helsinki in 2023. In May 2022, N. buried her husband who was killed in a Donetsk prison. Before that, he was detained during the filtration and a month later N. was told to come and pick up the body. In the summer, N., together with her mother and sister's family, came to Finland. She agreed to an interview six months after my request for a conversation. The woman worked with a psychotherapist for a long time. Before the conversation, she prepared an extract from those dates and facts that she considered necessary to tell. The narrator describes her experience in the form of a list of dates and events, avoiding emotions, stories about other people, direct accusations. It can be assumed that the woman believes that it is precisely this strictly reportural presentation of events that gives the story truthfulness. In a private conversation, in response to another refugee's remark that there was no point in talking about all this, N. said: "Well, we need to talk about Mariupol." That is, the narrator's story about surviving in Mariupol at the beginning of the Great War and about losing her husband aims to convey and preserve the truth about this terrible time.