Ukraine's Got Talent

This video is amazing... check it out:



The email message that Ryan received with the link to this video said the following (keep in mind I was unable to verify all of the facts, but it's a moving story nonetheless):

This video shows the winner of "Ukraine's Got Talent" Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about 75,000 Euros.

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man stands outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to eleven million deaths out of a population of 42 million. The total death estimates between 50 to 60 million people - approximately 1/3 of the world's population at the time. (WikiAnswers stated that around 72 million or 3.70% of the world's population died during the war as the total population was around 2 billion before the war began.)

This is why we should study and know history - to prevent an unimaginably bloody future.

Kseniya Simonova says, " I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there is surely no bigger compliment."