_________ Jessica Aldrich Strassman, MSW, LCSW, DSW Student, University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Policy & Practice, Philadelphia, PA. Sara L. Schwartz, PhD, MSW, Clinical Associate Professor, University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, Los Angeles, CA. Eugenia L. Weiss, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Nevada, Reno School of Social Work, Reno, NV. Ann Petrila, MSW, MPA, Professor of Practice, University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work, Denver, CO. Copyright © 2022 Authors, Vol. 22 No. 1 (Spring 2022), v-x, DOI: 10.18060/26263 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Everyone’s War Becomes My War: The Far-Reaching Impact of the Invasion of Ukraine Jessica Aldrich Strassman Sara L. Schwartz Eugenia L. Weiss Ann Petrila The invasion of Ukraine has been difficult to watch for individuals around the world. Feelings of disbelief and helplessness arise as violent images of murdered children, bombed apartment buildings and shelters, and fleeing families waiting in freezing temperatures at border crossings flash across our screens. This is especially challenging for survivors of World War II (WWII) and their descendants, particularly Holocaust survivors of Eastern European and Ukrainian descent. The impact, however, is not limited to this population and has been felt by survivors of war crimes committed in Bosnia, Syria, and elsewhere. World War II Re-Traumatization For WWII survivors and their families, the constant barrage of media about the attack on Ukraine has been excruciating, particularly for Ukrainian Holocaust survivors. At the start of WWII, Ukraine housed the largest Jewish population in Europe but 1.5 million were killed during the war (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [USHMM], 2021). Twenty percent of the population resided in Kyiv at the time of the war where over 33,000 Jews were murdered over two-days at Babyn Yar, a ravine located outside the city (USHMM, 2021). The memorial for these Ukrainians was recently damaged by a Russian missile (Bloomfield, 2022). Watching the war rage in the Ukraine brings up painful memories for survivors and reminds them of their own trauma, with some speaking about their experiences for the first time (Cohen, 2022). Kira Brodskaya, 90-year-old Queens, New York resident and Ukrainian Holocaust survivor, cries every day as she watches the news unfold remembering when Hitler bombed her neighborhood in Kharkiv when she was nine (Cohen, 2022). Gdalina Novitsky, age three and living in Kyiv when the Nazis invaded, was forced to flee with her mother and leave behind her disabled grandmother who was murdered, along with her great grandparents, at Babyn Yar (Bahrampour, 2022). Erica B., founder of the American Kriegsenkel website, whose father was forced to flee WWII Poland at age 13 shares: What I am watching, and reading is literally my family story, repeated and played out again some 80 years later. The split-second decisions whether to flee or to stay. The looks of the traumatized women and children as they go into the unknown….that sound (the air raid siren she heard in a news report)...that