In 1941, mother took me back to
Moscow. There I saw our enemies for the first
time. If I remember right, nearly twenty thousand German prisoner of war
were to be taken in a single column through the streets of Moscow.
There
were lots of people on the streets, looking on from behind a line of Russian
soldiers and policemen. There were mostly women – Russian women, hands hardened
by work, thin shoulders bent under the load of the war. Everyone of them must
have had a father or a husband, a brother or a son killed by the Germans.
They
looked with hate-filled eyes in the direction from which the Germans were to
appear.
At
last we saw them.
The
general walked in front, cold, tall, proud – they looked as if they had won the
war, not lost it. They looked as if they believed themselves to be much better
people than the Russians or anybody else in the world.
Looking
at them, the women slowly grew angrier.
Then
they saw the German soldiers – thin, unshaven wearing dirty, blood-stained
bandages, hobbing on crutches or with their hands on the shoulders of their
friends. The soldiers walked with their heads down. It was a pitiable sight.
The
street became very quiet – the only sound was that made by the soldiers’ shoes,
and the thump-thump of their crutches.
Then
I saw an old woman push herself forward touch a policeman’s shoulder, saying,
“Let me through.” There must have been something about her that made him step
aside.
She
went to the line of soldiers and took out from here coat something tied up in a
coloured cloth. It was a piece of bread. She pushed it into the pocket of a
soldier who was so tired that he was almost falling as he walked. And now,
suddenly from everyside, women were running towards the soldiers, pushing into
their hands bread, cigarettes, whatever they had.
The
soldiers were no longer enemies.
They
were people.
***
GATHERED FROM MY OLD TEXT BOOK
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