When 27 Jan 2014 95-year-old Leningrad Daniil Granin spoke with has already become a historic speech in the German Bundestag, he spoke for almost an hour not as a writer, as a soldier.
Not sitting down.
he had a special right to this speech. From the first person. He fought on the Leningrad front, and a third of a century after the war, together with Ales Adamovich wrote “Blockade book” a unique documentary diary.
a Quiet voice he spoke about how dying city, littered with corpses, is purified from anger, envy, indifference. Hell. Pain. Shock. The entire political elite of Germany were listening to him. Dead silence in the hall. And the hero of those days, according to Granin, was the man who staggered from hunger and weakness, lifted the other.
there Was a feeling that Lieutenant Granin second time hoisting the victory banner over the Reichstag. This speech was broadcast by many German TV channels.
We at the same time put it Daniel Alexandrovich in number “Russian newspaper”.
Painfully sought the most accurate title for the article. He helped us that night. “Forgive and remember” – so willed soldier Granin, who saw in sight, the real enemy, whose descendants are quite really listened to him.
And here the word to REMEMBER becomes key.
Memory is different: pain, tribute, duty.
Ritual and gene, Holy and bright, alarm and duty… And in my opinion, either it is or it is not present. Unconsciousness, like radiation, cannot be seen. But the virus of unconsciousness can die.
Who would have thought that certainly the Great Victory of ‘ 45 will have to protect. First, in an era of scarce Gorbachev’s perestroika from like jokes (“what are you, grandfather, so accurately aimed, would now drinking Bavarian beer”), then on the external front, when the revanchists to change terminals history from plus to minus and fight in Europe with the monuments to the Soviet soldier-winner, and history itself to be rewritten anew. Now against the falsified results of the Second world war proved to be an important – and necessary – anti-fascist front.
It is, in my opinion, was powerfully revealed this winter at the opening in Jerusalem of the monument “Candle of memory” in honor of the brave defenders and residents of besieged Leningrad. Tragic rhyme of the siege of Leningrad and the Holocaust ascended to 8.5-meter high stele in the centre of the Holy city, the cradle of three religions. Why?
For the answer to this question, I was flying to a visa-free Israel.
Our “Soviet Victory Day” has moved in the 90-ies in Israel with 22 thousands of immigrant veterans, and immediately became a national holiday. And in 2017 became a state when the Parliament almost unanimously adopted the law on the celebration of Victory Day over Nazi Germany on may 9.
When at the ceremony the choir of veterans of Israel together with the soloist of the Mariinsky theatre Vasily Gerello ISPwas anal luhmanovsky “Victory Day”, many were the lump in my throat. The presidents and the Ministers of the two countries, not to mention the veterans who fought tears.
– How did you manage to make the whole audience cry? – this question I asked Ran Zahara, the Director of action which is live watched the whole of Russia.
– I don’t know the answer to this question. It’s my profession to do all in a respectful and accurate.
– Why you chose “Blue scarf”?
– Because we have this song you know well, sing in Hebrew. I had to find the song-characters to near tragedy of the Holocaust was the tragedy of the siege of Leningrad, which in Israel, many have never heard.
the Calling singer Marina Maximilian:
After the ceremony, everyone told each other of Putin’s “thank you” with a lump in your throat and in some of them. Hebrew consonants with the gun, he sounded a victorious force. And in the language of the world soft – in Russian, if you put her arm around the shoulders of each, in listening to you.
– Everything in life is connected. Not the song I chose. But my family history gives the spirit so to sing it. I have one grandma comes from Poland, where the camp has lost a part of our family. The second – from Dnepropetrovsk. Doctor. We came to Israel when I was three years old. The fact that I speak Russian, because of her. And that I make arrangements of Russian folk songs (look at the case “In a field the birch stood”), too.
in the Winter, we dream with Marina Maximilian, on the eve of Victory Day, she will sing “Blue scarf” in Moscow. The pandemic severely changed many of the plans on a universal scale. But hope and memory remain with us!
…”Blue scarf”, light waltz, one of the legends is written before the war in the Minsk hotel “Belarus” Polish Jerzy Petersburski. In 1942 there was already a military version of the song with the line “scribbling machine gunner for the blue handkerchief.” New words belonged to 22-year-old Lieutenant Michael Maximov. In the siege of Leningrad Klavdiya Shulzhenko sang it more than 500 times. From hunger of her group died three musicians.
However, the story of the song is a separate story, a separate song, but its relevance in Jerusalem, at the opening of the memorial, suddenly became a self-sufficient power.
– is the “Candle of memory”? – this question I asked the mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe lion.
– Believe me, not one I came up with the idea that we should open a monument dedicated to the defenders and the courageous people of world war II. To understand what they actually did and to thank them from Jerusalem. There would be no Victory in 1945, there would be no state of Israel in 1948.
– Raise in three years this monument, to find him nearly two million dollars… Who helped you? God?
– All the names of benefactors on the plates at the foot of the candlestick.
during the ceremony, you said that the hall is your father. When people say, stats are great tragedAI turns into a clear mountain…
My father was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 1935 he was one year old when his parents moved to Israel. The rest of his family – aunts, uncles – remained there. When the war started, they were all taken by the Nazis and died in Auschwitz. For me, as mayor of Jerusalem, so the story is closed.
– For the President of Russia it is also personal. His three year old brother died in the siege and is buried at Piskarevskoye cemetery.
I wasn’t expecting that for all of Putin so seriously… the Capsule with the ground of Piskarevka laid at the foot of the monument. Part of the monument was made in St. Petersburg, a strong team in the city government were doing.
– I read that Israel has been protesting.
– For the opposition, often the reason is not important – the main thing to war. I am confident that this monument will remain forever. “Candle of memory” installed in the Park Gan Saker, a very respected place of Jerusalem. We will do our best to explain to everyone who is going to come here, why our country lit “candles of memory”.
the authors of the “Candle of memory”
the Russian side, the architects Anatoly Chernov and Lada Chernova, sculptor Vladislav Monchinski;
on the Israeli side of the architect the UDI Kassif, sculptor Adam Steele.
Steel stele with a height of 8.5 meters, covered with patina. The bronze horseman and the Peter and Paul fortress silhouette in sight of enemy guns. Star of David with menorah, barbed wire.
And swallow the hope on life…
Stella cut bronze like a candle, in the flame of the which silhouettes. “Leningrad was under siege in the crosshairs of the enemy 900 days and nights. The city has survived. Killed about two million civilians and defenders of Leningrad” is engraved on the plate.
the metronome Sounds at the approach of each to the monument.
– For many people, especially young Israelis was a revelation genocide of Leningrad. This, like the Holocaust, one of the world’s greatest crimes of the Nazis. But the people survived, survived. Saved himself and the Jews. We see the strength of the Russian people. Not sure of any other nation capable of such a feat.
