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.
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.
It
is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a
baby
arrives
and the woman smiles again. Once again war
returns
and
Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which
a
young
woman’s face appears.
She
quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled
and
sad,
before the image turns into a monument to an
Unknown
Soldier..
This
outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if
the
viewer
is looking out on the monument from within a
house.
In
the final scene, a mother and child appear inside
and
a
man standing 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
11
million deaths out of a population of 42
million.