In Ukraine, the war orphans play a game in which one of them lies on a bench with eyes closed and hands clasped. Another acts as a priest, reading funerary rites, while the others gather around praying and chanting.
“I’ve never seen anything like it — it was shocking,” said Melania Schturyn, a volunteer who returned from working with these children in Ukraine last month. “Kids usually play ‘house.’ But here, they’ve been around so much death and trauma, they play what they call ‘funeral.’”