[ Evgeny Mishechkin ] I was overjoyed to hear the Germans had been defeated near Moscow.
[ Evgeny Mishechkin ] It means the war will soon be over.
[ Evgeny Mishechkin ] Darling, we'll fight the enemy till our last drop of blood.
[ Evgeny Mishechkin ] I'm in hospital now, but it's not serious.
[ Evgeny Mishechkin ] The Nazis paid a high price to wound me.
[ Evgeny Mishechkin ] I killed six Germans
and captured the same number.
[ Evgeny Mishechkin ] I'll soon rejoin my comrades and take revenge on our hated enemy,
for our homeland,
for our families,
for you.
[ Evgeny Mishechkin ] I hope to see you soon.
[ Evgeny Mishechkin ] I'll always love you...
Extract from a Red Army’s soldier’s letter to his beloved Read by actor Evgeny Mishechkin
Died in hospital in December 1941
[ VO ] Letters from the front. Half-decomposed and in almost illegible
handwriting, but quite invaluable. [ VO ] They offer the most truthful
records of World War II. [ VO ] Thanks to letters like this,
relatives can still find each other. [ VO ] Here are just some of their stories.
[ LIFE ] [ VO ] Ivan Pavlovich, whose letter is this?
[ Ivan Pavlovich ] - It's to me. [ VO ] - Right!
[ VO ] It's your...
[ Ivan Pavlovich ] - From my mistress. [ VO ] - What?
[ Ivan Pavlovich ] My sweetheart!
[ VO ] Oh, your lover wrote this!
[ VO ] From Romania?
[ VO ] Near the end of the war?
[ VO ] Ivan Lotyshev is 96 and lived through the whole war.
[ VO ] His personal archive consists mostly of letters from young ladies.
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] There is a letter and picture.
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] She writes, 'I want to correspond with you...
to learn about your acts of bravery.'
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] The picture is beautiful.
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] She also served in Novorossiysk.
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] We served in the same city,
but I never actually met her.
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] Then later...
at university I got to meet...
other girls.
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] It was wrong of me,
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] I shouldn’t have stopped writing to her.
[ VO ] She writes you offended her.
[ VO ] There was another letter from her, full of tenderness.
[ VO ] Here it’s, 'Vanusha, I write this letter to say you amaze me. I never…
[ VO ] It caused such pain…'
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] A girl, a pretty woman...
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] What can I say?
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] She just revived my spirits.
[ Lotyshev Ivan ] I wrote to lots of women!
[ VO ] I heard the command, 'all clear'
and, get moving.
[ VO ] It was such a happy moment
to get such a letter from you.
[ VO ] I don’t know when I can reply. Krasnodar
[ VO ] Tatyana Vasilevskaya is a publisher. [ VO ] A few years ago, she had an idea -
to collect all soldiers’ letters from the front into one book.
[ Tatyana Vasilevskaya publisher ] When we began searching, it was easy to find letters in libraries.
[ Tatyana Vasilevskaya ] Local historians said they knew families who has such letters
[ Tatyana Vasilevskaya ] People knew about them, read them, and spoke proudly of them.
[ Tatyana Vasilevskaya ] Neighbours and friends all knew about the letters,
that knowledge helped us.
[ VO ] Now the book has grown to two huge volumes of letters, memoires and diaries. 00:04:34:00 00:04:38:00 [ VO ] Its geographical coverage is extensive: Tatyana’s publishing house receives
war stories from many different countries.
[ Tatyana Vasilevskaya ] The letters reveal deep truths about war.
[ Tatyana Vasilevskaya ] They touch everybody’s soul, strengthen our faith.
[ Tatyana Vasilevskaya ] This is love too. Love for the Motherland.
Haapsalu, Estonia
[ VO ] Khristina Kosach was a prisoner in for 2 years. [ VO ]She shared her memories of that time with her granddaughter,
[ VO ]Larissa, who wrote the stories down to preserve them.
An Auschwitz prisoner memories Read by actress Tatyana Redko
[ Tatyana Redko ] In Auschwitz they kept us in cattle sheds.
[ Tatyana Redko ] There were plank-beds piled up
three on top of each other, with dirty straw mattresses.
[ Tatyana Redko ] Each mattress accommodated three or four women.
[ Tatyana Redko ] In the worn-out matresses the straw had turned to dust.
[ Tatyana Redko ] The women lay on rough planks with knots of wood sticking into their bodies.
[ Tatyana Redko ] It was the humiliation that was the worst.
[ Tatyana Redko ] Once the SS made a group of people work naked in the hard frost.
[ Tatyana Redko ] In two hours they were frostbitten.
[ Tatyana Redko ] Work stopped.
[ Tatyana Redko ] The SS beat the prisoners.
[ Tatyana Redko ] Any who couldn’t take it and fell to the ground...
were sent to the gas chamber.
[ Tatyana Redko ] While alive, my mother understood the same fate awaited her.
[ Tatyana Redko ] She tried to calm me and said she'd lived her days.
[ Tatyana Redko ] She was sorry for me,
for how much I was going to go through.
[ Tatyana Redko ] The next evening...
[ Tatyana Redko ] I saw flames and smoke coming from the crematorium.
[ Tatyana Redko ] Many innocent people were burned there.
[ Tatyana Redko ] Among them...
was also my...
mother.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] I asked my gran about the war. [ Larissa Valjajeva ] She said: 'What to say? War is terrible.'
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] She showed me a tattooed number on her hand.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] Look, she said, all I have left from the concentration camp.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] Gran’s sister and mother-in-law were sent to the concentration camp.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] It was sheer horror.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] Everybody lined up in front of the crematorium.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] They counted along the line: burn 5, leave the 6th alive...
... burn 5, leave the 6th alive.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] Mother-in-law was first in line, her sister was second, they were both burned.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] It all happened right before her eyes.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] It was such psychological... pressure,
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] Grandma said she could hardly bear it.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] Each time she stood in front of the crematorium...
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] She thought, that was it, she'd never see her kids again,
better that they'd burned her at once.
[ LIFE ] Hello, my dearest…
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] Granny was very kind hearted.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] She brought us all up. She brought up my children, my sister's kids.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] We could always leave children with her,
knowing they'd be fed and cared for.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] She could not accept it when we shouted at our children.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] She always told us: 'My God, I survived such horror
and never shouted at my kids, why are you shouting at yours?'
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] It was always something unacceptable to her.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] One evening I was on the web and wrote this story.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] Tanya contacted me the very next day.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] I was amazed and pleasantly surprised.
[ LIFE ] Just to say in a few words...
[ LIFE ] I can relate to the horrors your grandmother suffered.
[ Boltayevskaya Тatyana ] She wrote an amazing...
story of her grandmother.
[ Boltayevskaya Тatyana ] A woman, whose family died before her eyes, in a crematorium.
[ Boltayevskaya Тatyana ] Honestly, I just cried when I read that story.
[ Boltayevskaya Тatyana ] I began to read about Auschwitz.
[ Boltayevskaya Тatyana ] It was a catastrophe for everybody. [ Boltayevskaya Тatyana ] I wouldn’t want to experience it.
[ Энгельс Александр, директор музея истории еврейского наследия и холокоста. ] Auschwitz was the most terrible of all the death camps.
[ Aleksandr Engels ] Of course, people suffered the most inhuman tragedies.
[ Aleksandr Engels ] Besides hard work
they were subjected to tests, trials, torture...
[ Aleksandr Engels ] You can't win wars that way.
[ Aleksandr Engels ] It was just brutality on an unprecedented scale.
[ Aleksandr Engels ] The most terrible aspect of human beings.
[ Aleksandr Engels ] Both fascism and war evoke these bad qualities in people.
[ Boltayevskaya Тatyana ] This story cut me to the heart.
[ Boltayevskaya Тatyana ] I decided to take part...
in the Immortal Regiment with her grandmother’s photo.
Moscow
[ VO ] The Immortal Regiment event has now taken place in Russia for a few years.
[ VO ]On the 9th of May, people take to the streets in cities and villages carrying portraits of relatives who fought in the war.
[ VO ]There are processions like this in more than 50 countries.
[ VO ]Larissa lives in Estonia. [ VO ]She wanted her grandmother’s portrait
to be carried through the streets of Moscow. [ VO ] Tatyana responded to her request.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] Such a river of portraits of people, of relatives...
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] All of them so happy to honour their relatives.
[ Larissa Valjajeva ] I hope no one and nothing is forgotten
and that future generations never forget.
[ VO ] Olga Barmina’s father died in the war. [ VO ] She has treasured his letters from the front for more than 70 years.
[ VO ] She learnt from the letters that her father had sisters and brothers, who had all been separated by war.
[ VO ] But a few years ago, a niece found her, t hat was Tatyana Boltayevskaya herself.
[ Tatyana and Olga, life ] It’s a good letter.
[ Tatyana and Olga, life ] You were talking about a letter, in which he writes of reaching Kerch.
[ Tatyana and Olga, life ] Yes, he wrote a letter to mother saying,
[ Tatyana and Olga, life ] 'My dear Nina, if I manage to survive...
we will definitely...
move to the Crimea.'
Excerpt from a a Staff Sergeant’s letter to his wife and daughter Read by actor Roman Kurtsyn
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] Hello Nina, my love, and baby Olga.
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] Nothing in this war is harder to bear,
than being separated from you, my dear and our daughter.
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] I regret not seeing our daughter grow,
missing her first steps and words.
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] I'm in the Crimea.
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] This land is blessed.
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] Poppies cover it like a red carpet.
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] I can't believe the enemy is here,
killing every living thing.
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] When we defeat the Nazis,
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] I'll bring you and little Olga here to live happily ever after.
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] We'll walk in the poppy fields...
and listen to the silence.
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] Lots of kisses, my love.
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] Take care of yourself and our baby.
[ Roman Kurtsyn ] I'll be back soon.
[ LIFE ] Attention, this is Moscow calling!
[ LIFE ] German armed forces
have attacked
the borders of the Soviet Union.
[ Olga Barmina ] When the start of war was announced,
[ Olga Barmina ] Dad immediately enlisted.
[ Olga Barmina ] He was a platoon commander, a staff sergeant.
[ Olga Barmina ] He was killed right away by shrapnel.
[ Olga Barmina ] Friends wrote to Mum that he died immediately, without suffering.
[ Olga Barmina ] We've looked hard but don't know where he's buried.
[ VO ] Because of failing health, [ VO ] Olga Barmina can’t visit her father’s grave.
[ VO ] She asked Tatyana to find out where he was buried.
[ Tatyana Boltayevskaya ] I managed to find information on the internet:
he was killed near a village called Baksy and buried there.
[ LIFE ] The thing is, all these surnames aren’t listed in alphabetic order.
[ LIFE ] They’re all mixed up.
[ LIFE ] I've found it.
[ LIFE ] Here it is!
[ LIFE ] Mishenin,
[ LIFE ] Vasily Vasiliyevich - Staff Sergeant.
[ LIFE ] There’s his surname.
[ LIFE ] Wonderful! Tatyana, well done. [ LIFE ] You did a great job.
[ LIFE ] Really great!
[ Olga ] He wrote to Nina when he was on the Taman peninsula,
saying what a beautiful place it is.
[ Olga ] If I survive, you and little Olga will live in the Crimea.
[ Olga ] So I came to the Crimea on March 5, 1971,
and Mum arrived in 1985.
[ Olga ] And Mum was buried here. [ Olga ] So they both lie in the same Crimean soil.
Polyarnye Zori
[ VO ] Ekaterina Ignasheva was born and raised in the Arctic circle where it’s winter almost all year round.
[ VO ]Ekaterina’s father came here from Leningrad to work. [ VO ]He reluctantly talked to his daughter about his childhood.
[ VO ]When he was seven, he and his mother were under siege in Leningrad. [ VO ]Growing up, he found it easier to write letters about that time.
From the memoires of a 7-year-old in besieged Leningrad Read by actor Dmitry Bagin
[ Dmitry Bagin ] All I remember
is the constant hunger.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] I could think of nothing else.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] It was cold in winter, too.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] We burned all the floorboards, ate all the wallpaper.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] My mother and sister starved to death,
my father died in an air raid.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] I am alone.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] I am just seven,
with nothing to eat.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] I lay on the bed, covered myself in an old blanket...
and waited to die.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] In my delirium, I dreamt of a juicy, red apple.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] I could even smell it.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] I held out my hand towards the apple...
but couldn't reach it.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] It was right there!
[ Dmitry Bagin ] So close, I could almost taste it.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] The neighbours' cries woke me.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] Uncle Ivan's daughter had died.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] We went to school together.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] If only it would happen to me...
[ Dmitry Bagin ] If I died...
the hunger would go.
[ Dmitry Bagin ] I wouldn't want anything anymore.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva, Polyarnye Zori’s Immortal Regiment movement coordinator ] I don’t remember much but when I was a child
father often talked a lot about the war.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] About the siege of Leningrad. [ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] I know it was hard for him to recall it.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] During the hardest winter of the siege he wasn’t evacuated with his family.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] My father, the only child, his parents and granny.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] Maybe they thought it wouldn’t last long.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] It was very hard for my father.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] He had to sleep with his dead mother for 3 days,
in a bed in a frozen apartment,
wrapped in a blanket, cold and weak,
he couldn’t even stand.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] A caretaker lady saved him.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] He didn’t find an orphanage in Leningrad.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] So he went to his aunt in the Voronezh region.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] And they took him in as if one of their own.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] My father understood everything and felt like a parasite.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] He said he used to collect berries
and take them to the trains.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] He sold them in little bags
to give his aunt a little money,
to repay her.
[ VO ] Polyarnye Zori town is on the Kola peninsula, within the Polar circle. [ VO ] Ekaterina wanted the townsfolk
to be able to carry their own relatives’ portraits along the Main Street on the 9th of May.
[ VO ] That’s why she became Polyarnye Zori’s Immortal Regiment movement coordinator.
[ LIFE ] We won't drastically change or remove the St George’s ribbon, right?
[ LIFE ] We’d better leave it as it divides the image and looks alright.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva, Immortal Regiment movement coordinator in Polyarnye Zori town ] I learned about the Immortal Regiment by chance.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] I was so happy.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] And I immediately wanted
to become a coordinator.
[ LIFE ] Liza, this is the Immortal Regiment.
[ LIFE ] What are you waving about? [ LIFE ] Don’t do that!
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] We must commemorate this war.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] We must remember our relatives,
who achieved victory in the harshest of conditions.
[ Ekaterina Ignasheva ] It’s an examination of conscience, something like that.
[ Vadim Minin ] It was mostly Ekaterina who inspired us to do it.
[ Vadim Minin ] She established the entire movement
in the town.
[ Vadim Minin ] She suggested I participate, too.
[ Vadim Minin ] We agreed, found the photos and had the signs made.
[ VO ] Vadim Minin’s grandfather Pavel died in the war. [ VO ] The family has only one photograph of him remaining.
[ Vadim Minin ] It was almost May 9.
[ Vadim Minin ] My sister called, saying she'd found the Immortal Regiment webpage
and our photo was there.
[ Vadim Minin ] The small one of granddad, but there it was enlarged.
[ Vadim Minin ] That was the Immortal Regiment's webpage in Kaluga.
[ Vadim Minin ] It was signed Tatyana Semyonova, his granddaughter.
[ Vadim Minin ] So we thought maybe before the war he had a family there we didn’t know about.
{The city of} Kaluga
[ VO ] Vadim and his sister started looking for Tatyana Semyonova.
[ LIFE ] Who else do you know? [ LIFE ] Who else is there?
[ LIFE ] Tatyana? Right?
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] Someone rang me, saying it was the Immortal Regiment.
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] They told me Pavel Ryabtsev had a son, and they’d found him.
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] I asked them to stop and repeat what they'd said.
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] So I had his phone number. [ Tatyana Semyonova ] As I was dialing I had doubts.
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] What was I going to say? And how?
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] So I just dialed and said,
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] Hi, I'm Tatyana from Kaluga,
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] I'm your sister.
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] That’s it. I think we just cried for the first five minutes.
[ VO ] Vadim’s grandfather Pavel and Tatyana’s grandfather Kirill are brothers.
[ VO ] They both went to war but Pavel died and Kirill came home.
[ VO ] Vadim told Tatyana the stories of his grandfather’s love and death.
[ Vadim Minin ] Grandfather met grandmother in Polyarnoe, Rybachy.
[ Vadim Minin ] He put to sea, and died serving on a destroyer.
[ Vadim Minin ] We didn’t even know the name of the ship.
[ Vadim Minin ] Later I read that only one destroyer,
was sunk in the Northern Fleet, the 'Deyatelny'
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] When we had tea together, [ Tatyana Semyonova ] I said it all worked out, right?
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] They must be looking down now, saying, [ Tatyana Semyonova ] 'Well done, they found each other.'
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] Maybe it even calmed them down.
[ Tatyana Semyonova ] Our granddads are saying, 'Finally they’re all together, just as we wanted.'
[ LIFE ] The weather worsened by the hour.
[ LIFE ] Snow flurries came, bringing zero visibility.
From a letter of a captain to his wife Actor Maksim Demchenko reading
[ Maksim Demchenko ] It's our second day out of harbour.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] Yesterday, we sank yet another submarine.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] These waters are teeming with German subs.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] The weather...
deteriorated badly.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] There was a storm.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] I yearn for you with all my heart.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] I miss you most when it’s snowing.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] It’s like...
[ Maksim Demchenko ] It's like a white fence separating us.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] In a week, we’ll dock in our city.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] I’ll get three days leave.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] A whole three days for us.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] It’ll be our first New Year together.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] After the war, we’ll have many more celebrations together.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] I know that next year will be special.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] But for now there’s a white wall of snow.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] Don’t be sad, my love.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] I’ll return.
[ Maksim Demchenko ] And the snow...
will soon be gone.