I am recording from the words of my 90-year-old grandmother Alexandra Samoylenko. We are sitting in the kitchen in her apartment in the city of Lvov, drinking tea and talking about life. We say that a person should maintain his dignity not only for himself, but also for the sake of his children and all their descendants, so that later they can remember their ancestors, if not with pride, but at least not with shame. In addition, the grandmother believes that descendants have to pay for the sins of their ancestors to one degree or another.
My grandmother graduated from the Great Patriotic War as part of the 4th Ukrainian Front with the rank of senior sergeant. During the war, she met and married my grandfather, a colonel in the recruiting and combat service department.
Grandfather was an important person, in the liberated cities of Europe he was provided with rooms in good houses and "decent" families. My grandmother said that not all Poles and Czechs gladly received Soviet soldiers. Although the bulk of the population was very friendly and open, there were those who were afraid of the Russians, behaved "wildly", hid valuables and hid themselves. But these measures, according to my grandmother, were in vain, since none of the Soviet servicemen dared to "lay a hand" on someone else's property. Such actions were punishable by firing squad in the Soviet army. And it was impossible for a Soviet soldier returning from Europe to hide the stolen property. Therefore, no one took anything. Even in abandoned or bombed out apartments.
Grandmother recalls how she saw a Singer sewing machine in a broken, half-burned Polish apartment. For her, it was like seeing a miracle, which she had once heard about, but did not even dream of seeing. She very much asked her grandfather to take this car with him, but the grandfather did not allow. He said: “We are not thieves, the owners can return. And if not the owners, then the neighbors can see how we take someone else's. It is unacceptable!"
The quartering of the servicemen was carried out by a special unit, which identified "safe" places to live. The servicemen settled in these houses and apartments not once, but constantly. It so happened that after the end of the war, grandparents returning by the same route were quartered in the apartment of an old polka, at whom they were already standing during the offensive. Grandmother noticed that in this apartment all things remained in their places: the expensive service, tablecloths and paintings, and even a staple robe continued to hang in the bathroom.
Soviet soldiers left Europe with a much more valuable burden - the joy of Victory. And even though most of them had nothing left on their native soil after the German defeats, no one had a thought to compensate for these losses with someone else's property.
The Soviet people, the liberators of Europe, were inspired by the feeling of incredible delight and responsibility for everything that happened around. The concept of honor was raised to the highest degree and rang like a stretched string. When my grandmother tells me about this, it seems to me that they were all then under the influence of a strong dose of adrenaline and, perhaps, they were partly overtaken by the complex of God, as people who saved the world from death.
Well, so be it. I think it was not even a complex. They really were Gods - great, strong and just. And for us they are now like Gods - unattainable, and more and more are turning into a legend.
