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The granddaughter of a refugee from Ukraine who was forced to leave her home due to World War II, Sofia Parfomak knows all too well what millions of present-day Ukrainians are going through since the Russian invasion began in February.<\/p>\n
Parfomak, a dual enrollment student at Marymount University<\/a> and Bishop O\u2019Connell High School<\/a>, has taken the crisis to heart. Her grandmother lived in a small Ukrainian village and was just six years old when the Second World War broke out. She says the family had to flee in the middle of the night and escape the country in a cattle car, only to end up in a work camp.<\/p>\n \u201cLife was hard for her there \u2013 you know, they didn\u2019t have a lot to eat. The current situation in eastern Europe feels so similar to what my grandmother had to go through,\u201d Parfomak explained. \u201cShe gets very upset talking about it, and I want to help children who are in that same situation because I don\u2019t want them to go through the same things that she did.\u201d<\/p>\n