“I’m even more thankful for freedom than I used to be,” mentioned Pavenko, 38. “I’ve seen that freedom and democracy are not self-sustaining. You have to fight for them. You have to defend them.”
Freedom is a “personal thing,” he added. It issues in individuals’s lives greater than some can admire — except, like his personal ancestors, they’ve suffered for it, misplaced it and received it again, he mentioned.
Pavenko’s household backstory features a exceptional — but tragically frequent — monitor document of imprisonment throughout Europe throughout occasions of bother. On his paternal facet, each his great-grandfather and his grandfather had been prisoners of conflict, the previous in Hungary throughout World Battle I, the latter in Germany throughout World Battle II.
Later, within the Soviet period, each had been imprisoned once more due to their Christian religion, Pavenko mentioned. His maternal grandfather additionally was imprisoned for 10 years for criticizing the Soviet regime and chief Josef Stalin, he mentioned. In all, these three males spent a mixed 35 years of their lives in “prison camps, gulags and labor camps,” he mentioned.
