CHAPTER 6.The 1946-th
In July, 1946 on the threshold of MARIA’s home her husband Nickolay showed up.
Listen to the popular song of the war time “My Beloved” :
“Where have you been, Kolya? All the year 1946-th? The war had been over last year?!” asked MARIA in surprise.
He did not answer not a word.Kept silence as if a fish against ice.
And it was always like this as MARIA tried to approach him with this question.
Once , only once, his mother NATALIA IVANOVNA, explained something about his war time years when I visted her in Rostov-on-Don.
That is what she told me:
“When the war sterted, Nickolay came to the village Orlovka of Orlovsky County where he was born and I still lived there. I was hiding him in the cellar from the front. Fed him and took care of him. I thought that nobody knows about him. But somebody saw him and reported to the authorities. At that time the partizans were in power. They rounded them up, those who were hiding , and sent them to the front”.
“So, Nickolay appeared to be on the Eastern front, didn’t he?” I asked my grandmother Natalia then.
“Yes”, she answered.
“And then what happened to him in 1946?” I asked her in curiosity.
“Then he ended up in one of the mental institutions in Leningrad.” explained Grandma.
Now I understood why he never mentioned this period of time till his last day on this earth. The damned war destroyed people’s lives physically, mentally, emotionally.
Poor my Dad Nickolay suffered a lot in his life. But by nature he was a calm, peaceful person, deeply loyal to his wife whom he called “Musyenka”, to the family.
How many families have been suffered during and after the war,they say every fourth family in Russia has had a war loss in one way or the other.In Ukraine Holodomor, along the Volga rive hunger, among the jewish population Holocaust and many other nationalities suffered a lot at the war times. From the Fascism. We need to do everything possible against this dreadful war mongers.
Watch a Russian documentary:
https://youtu.be/7GqvZPpDxSc
Author
valpat21@hotmail.ca