This week's selection of letters is devoted to one of the most tragic events of the middle of the last century - the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. I have taken the title from a front-line diary. First, the fact that diary lines have survived at all is unique: soldiers and officers were forbidden to keep such notes. Second, farewells became the central event of that time for every family. The letters in this "Mail Car" selection are striking for their generosity: sorrow and bitterness, and even the rescue of an enemy, are described without a suffocating sense of hatred or revenge.

Arkady Shkuran, Minsk: "We committed an act of sabotage, but nobody ever found out"

My childhood had been happy and carefree. In 1941 I completed the first year of our village school. Then, suddenly, war came and changed everything at once. The first day threw our village, Poroslishche, into turmoil. The men were concentrated and serious, secretly wiping away restrained tears; the women lamented without stopping and made no attempt to hide their feelings. Only much later did I understand their true anxiety. They sensed that they were parting forever from sons, husbands and loved ones. Only women's intuition seemed to recognise the cruelty of the war from its very beginning. Of fifty men from Poroslishche, only two disabled men returned from the war.

My father was left behind to work underground in enemy territory. After a denunciation by one of the villagers, the Gestapo arrested him in August 1942 together with six other people who had helped the partisans. After long and bloody interrogations, all were shot. I too was arrested with my father, but the commandant ordered me thrown out of the commandant's office, saying I was still too young to be a partisan.

German soldiers sometimes made us children do various jobs - clearing snow, walking horses and other work - in return for a piece of bread. One day they ordered us to clear rubbish from the school. That was when, without planning it, we committed an act of sabotage that nobody ever discovered.

A German soldier had left an open packet of cigarettes on a classroom window sill. Ivan Senko, the oldest of us, suggested trying one. He had a striker, flint and a piece of birch tinder. As Ivan tried to light the cigarette, he was frightened by a German soldier who suddenly appeared. He shoved the burning cigarette into some oily tow and passed it to me, thinking the German would pay no attention because I was the smallest. In terror I pushed the whole thing through a hole in the floor, into the rubbish beneath, hoping it would go out. The German noticed nothing, gave us another job and ordered us into the school yard.

When we had finished, we all went home and forgot about our attempt to smoke. About an hour later a fire broke out inside the school. It destroyed both the school and a German Tiger tank standing nearby, filled with ammunition and fuel. The explosion tore it apart so violently that its turret was thrown about ten metres. The wrecked tank remained there for another seven years after the war. Afraid of responsibility, I told the other boys that I had thrown the tow outside. So nobody ever discovered why the school burned or why the explosion happened. I think it was the result of my "carelessness." We hardly even discussed it among ourselves because we were terrified that someone might learn about our sabotage. The only pity is that our partisans never heard about the destroyed tank; they would have counted it among their exploits.

Svetlana Minasova, Berlin: "A miracle: we all survived!"

To be Jewish, and also the wife of a serviceman as my mother was, meant that in an occupied city during the war you were likely to become one of the first victims of the Nazis. When the Nazi army was already entering Odessa, my mother tried to board the last refugee train with her three children - me, two years old, and my two older sisters. Every attempt failed because so many people wanted to leave. In despair Mother began to sob and we joined her. Our "chorus" attracted several people who helped push us into a carriage.

After travelling only a short distance the train stopped for an inspection by a special team of military railway personnel. Anyone without a ticket or valuables with which to pay was put off. We were among them. Our mother, then twenty-seven, had left Odessa thinking only of getting her children away from danger. We had neither money nor valuables at home.

From then on we travelled however we could. People in the villages and towns through which we passed on our way toward Asia helped us as much as possible. Sometimes we moved with units of the retreating Soviet army; once they ferried us across a river on pontoons. Three times we were caught in air raids, and Mother covered us with her body without thinking about what would happen to us if she herself were killed.

During that exhausting journey I became ill and have lived with an intestinal illness ever since. On the road we ate whatever we could find: grass, unknown berries, raw potatoes. Sometimes Mother had to work in someone's household in exchange for a little food. We travelled the last part of the journey in a coal wagon and finally reached Ashgabat. Mother found work in a hospital. We helped by entertaining the wounded, singing, dancing and reciting poems - things we had been taught from early childhood.

All this time our father, at the front, never stopped searching for us. Only when a letter Mother had sent almost blindly reached him, together with our family photograph, did we re-establish contact. But the whole family did not meet again until 1946. It was a miracle: we all survived.

Elena Proskura: "War is not a topic for friendly conversation"

By an unwritten family tradition, veterans did not often share their memories of the war. They tried to move away from the horrors they had lived through and to devote themselves to rebuilding peaceful life. Even people from Leningrad speak sparingly about their childhood under the blockade.

I, for example, a child of the blockade, have never told anyone that I spent the war sitting under a table in the home of kind and courageous people who hid me. I grew up under that table. By the time it was safe to come out, my parents were already gone. War is not a subject for friendly conversation, especially at our respectable age, when human contact is not merely the greatest value but a basic necessity, like the care of relatives or medicine.

Two years ago I met a woman of my own age who lives in the same building. Her name is Bella Gelfand: highly cultured, touchingly caring and attentive. I met her sons and grandchildren as well. One day they entrusted me with something intimate and precious: the diary of the head of the family, Vladimir Gelfand.

He wrote on loose sheets and in notebooks throughout the most difficult circumstances of the war. The diary begins on 26 April 1941 and the final entry is dated 10 December 1946. In the late 1990s Bella Gelfand, her sons and two grandchildren moved to Germany, having buried her husband in Dnepropetrovsk back in 1983. We all know the trouble and difficulties of moving and adapting to a new country. But Bella and her sons had one overriding concern: preserving the wartime diary. Their most important possession was a suitcase filled with hundreds of age-yellowed sheets and notebooks containing his wartime notes.

It is important to remember that keeping diaries at the front was strictly forbidden. Knowing this, Vladimir Gelfand nevertheless recorded what he saw and experienced, at his own risk. Everything he wrote during the war and everything the family preserved in peacetime therefore represents an exceptionally rare case in wartime history. When I hold these pages, I want to bow deeply before Bella Gelfand's entire family for preserving the memory of a husband, father and grandfather. With the family's agreement I selected only a few diary fragments for readers of Russkaja Germanija/Russkiy Berlin - as a tribute to what can matter most within a family: love, care and memory of one another.

Vladimir Gelfand: "War Diary"

22 June. Germany declared war on us. It was terrible and unexpected. All the young people were already assembled. Komsomol members and non-members were taping windows, digging pits, rushing about and making noise, all in an unusual state. Then everyone began gathering around the loudspeakers, and I went over too. Molotov was speaking on the radio.

15.10.41. Today marks four months of war. But on the radio there is not a word about this, nor about any new results of the war during this period.

30.10.1941, 6 a.m. Today's Sovinformburo report that Kharkov had been surrendered to the enemy struck me like a bomb explosion.

31.10.1941. Today is both a great joyful day and a sad one. Joyful because for the first time in two months I saw Mother. Sad because I had to part from her again. I do not know how to cry. It seems no grief and no sorrow can make me shed a tear. That makes it all the harder to see the dearest person in the world cry. I pressed my poor mother to my heart and comforted her for a long time, until she stopped crying.

06.05.1942. A decisive event took place in my life - I was drafted into the army, as a regular Red Army soldier. I was completely unprepared. They called me up suddenly at nine in the morning: report to the military enlistment office with my things by ten.

22.06.1942. Today marks one year of war between our country and the German-fascist vermin. I am writing in a dugout; the raids continue. Khaustov, one of my soldiers, has completely lost his composure and has even become ill from fear. He is vomiting, his hands tremble and his face is distorted. At first he tried to hide his fear, but now he openly admits that he can no longer stand it - his nerves and heart cannot take it.

02.12.1043. During the night I was called to the division to collect my Party membership card. I received it at two o'clock in the morning...

21.12.1943. The outcome of the offensive is miserable. We are almost back at our old positions. Two exchanges of artillery fire brought us nothing good, yet we have to attack.

24.12.1943. Last night the Germans attacked again and pushed us back a little, but in the morning our artillery drove them out and forced them back to their old positions. They lost about 300 men. Even today many dead and wounded were lying in no-man's-land; the Germans could not remove them. We captured eight Germans. They cursed Hitler. Only now are they beginning to understand!

28.04.1945. The streets of Berlin are noisy and crowded. The Germans, every one of them, are wearing white armbands. They are no longer afraid of us and are walking freely through the streets. General Berzarin, my army commander, has been appointed commandant of Berlin and has already issued an appeal to the local population demanding the restoration of peaceful life and work.

01.05.1945. The Germans did not agree to capitulate. Artillery preparation begins at 21:15. We will speak the language of weapons.

10.05.1945. Yesterday morning an unforgettable event occurred. The Germans agreed to complete and unconditional surrender. The newspapers reported it sparingly, but solemnly.

Eduard Gorbut, Hamburg: "Found in cabbage... sauerkraut"

When the war ended I was a little over seven years old. Mother and I returned from evacuation to Vitebsk and rented a corner in a private wooden house on the outskirts that had miraculously survived. Mother took a job at a plywood factory from six in the morning until midnight. She walked to and from work carrying a long stick to protect herself from wolves, which were numerous in the area and sometimes came right up to our windows. I was therefore forbidden to go outside alone.

But I did not want to stay home alone and, against her orders, I used to run to meet her at the factory gate. One day, while waiting, I heard a faint human voice coming from somewhere underground. I ran into the guards' room and told them. Carrying kerosene lamps, they immediately ran toward the vegetable storehouse near the gate, and I followed.

Inside the storehouse were three enormous vats dug into the ground, filled with brine from sauerkraut, one of the foods on which we largely lived then. In one of the vats we saw a German soldier floating. A guard lowered a ladder and helped him out. He was shaking from cold and fear; the pockets of his huge camouflage smock were filled with carrots.

This soldier, whom we found in cabbage - sauerkraut - was one of the German prisoners used with others to restore the factory. We were told that after some time they were released and sent home. He probably told his relatives the painful story of his rescue, not knowing that years later the person who saved him would be living in his country.

Prepared for publication by Vera Maerzke. No. 26, 2015; publication date 26 June 2015. Copyright Russkaja Germanija.

Diaries are the truest documents of memory
Wartime diaries are especially valuable and rare documents. They are treasures of memory.
Elena Proskura

For more than ten years I have read Russkiy Berlin / Russkaja Germanija. At first the newspaper's name troubled me: it seemed as if we were too confidently making ourselves the masters of Germany, of Berlin, and even allowing ourselves such a title for a newspaper. In time I became accustomed to it and my attitude softened. As a reader I came to know journalists whom I trust deeply and whose work I look forward to in every issue. I also learned something about the history of the title: Russian publications with such names first appeared in the 1920s, after revolution and civil war in Russia sent streams of emigrants abroad. Many were members of the intelligentsia - poets, writers, artists, scholars and musicians, the elite of society. Germany accepted them, and in the uncertainty of their new circumstances they joined together, preserved their roots, created ways to communicate and maintain themselves and their culture. Newspapers and even publishing houses emerged from that need.

A century has passed. History is always difficult. Its periods of calm, even relative peace, are short, and periods of prosperity shorter still. Then the Second World War broke into history and drew in all Europe and the world. The two countries that, in the author's view, suffered most tragically were Germany and the great Soviet Union. Victory was won at an unbelievably heavy and tragic price. The documents show that victory was the common work of a world coalition, but the author also regards the Soviet Army's role as decisive and its losses as enormous. Vast areas of the Soviet Union were devastated. Victory came, but its joy was accompanied by bitter tears: the horrors of war, lost relatives and loved ones, millions of orphans and disabled people. Against that background came Victory, deliverance, hope, expectation and a heroic readiness to rebuild peaceful life despite immense losses.

For decades Victory Day was perceived in every family as the chief and most significant holiday, a just reward from above - or perhaps, as the author adds, from wise leadership. The victorious veterans are now passing into eternal rest. Memory remains in state documents, themselves subject to a complicated fate, while new generations grow up.

Veterans, by an unwritten family tradition, did not readily share wartime memories. They tried to leave the horrors behind and devote themselves to rebuilding peace. Victory Day nevertheless became their special day: they put their decorations on whatever tunics they had and gathered with friends. New generations learned about the war from textbooks, and textbooks, like countries, passed through different historical periods and interpreted history differently.

The author writes that she and her contemporaries have had the good fortune to mark the seventieth anniversary of victory over fascism. Many now mark the holiday in Germany together with the German people, in conditions of peace, cooperation and mutual understanding. That, she says, is how history develops and how individual biographies unfold.

There are probably veterans among the newspaper's readers, and many others remember the war through the difficult experience of childhood. During friendly meetings people discuss literature, cinema, theatre, children and grandchildren, but speak about war only in the most general terms. Even survivors of the Leningrad blockade are sparing with memories of their childhood, and Ukrainians rarely speak aloud about those terrible years. Proskura repeats her own story: she spent the war hidden under a table by brave and kind people, grew up there, and when it became safe to come out, her parents were gone.

Then came an unexpected gift of fate. Two years earlier she had met Bella Gelfand, a woman of her own age living in the same building: cultured, caring, attentive and ready to help. Evening walks and easy conversations gradually produced trust. Proskura met Bella's family, was invited for Ukrainian borscht and homemade pizza, and came to know her sons and grandchildren. Then the family shared their most intimate treasure.

Bella's family had lived in Germany for more than twenty years after coming from Dnepropetrovsk. Mother and sons brought with them, as their most valuable possession, a suitcase containing hundreds of carefully ordered sheets and notebooks yellowed with age: the diary Vladimir Gelfand had kept in his youth.

Vladimir Gelfand was born on 1 March 1923 in Kirovograd Region. The family later moved to Dnepropetrovsk. He was the only son in a modest Jewish household. His father was a foreman at a metallurgical plant and his mother a kindergarten teacher. Vladimir did well at school and was active in school public life. By graduation he had developed serious interests in literature and theatre; Dnepropetrovsk was then a major cultural city. He dreamed of becoming a poet and began keeping a diary, part of his preparation for creative work.

Then war arrived unexpectedly. His plans collapsed: first evacuation, then the draft, preparation for the front and direct participation in the army throughout the uncertainties, anxieties and hardships of war. Yet the diary had already begun. Vladimir kept writing in notebooks and on loose sheets through the most difficult circumstances. It begins on 26 April 1941; the last entry is dated 10 December 1946. Proskura calls this an exceptionally rare case in the history of diaries, especially wartime diaries.

Quoting Alexander Herzen's description of diaries and letters as "fixed and imperishable," she says that this is what Vladimir Gelfand gave his family, his country and the world: a document of rare value, fixed in writing and meant to remain imperishable.

It is difficult to imagine how, amid tragic events and losses, a young soldier found the ability to continue writing. Sometimes he shared his notes with nearby soldiers, despite the fact that such records were prohibited and could arouse suspicion. Gelfand belonged to a new Soviet generation, educated in the Soviet school system and raised in a loyal family. He trusted the political, civic and social ideas associated with building a new country. He was a Komsomol member and joined the Communist Party during the war. Proskura believes this shaped his conscious and patriotic sense of what could and could not safely be written at the front.

At the same time, the diary shows an ability to observe closely and to select important events. Some entries are written with piercing sincerity and even frightening frankness, particularly those concerning what the author, by then a senior lieutenant, saw and experienced in Berlin during service after Germany's capitulation. He also recorded bitter truths after demobilisation, during the first period back in Dnepropetrovsk: ruin, poverty and grief.

The diary, a kind of confession by the young Red Army soldier Vladimir Gelfand, covers what he experienced and observed from the summer of 1941 through the end of the war and demobilisation in 1946. Some entries occupy half a page, others more than a page, depending on circumstances. Proskura selected only a few short fragments in which an event or the author's state of mind is captured.

The postwar period had its own difficulties, also visible in the diary. Yet Vladimir achieved major life goals: he entered and graduated from university, obtained the profession he wanted, worked in it, formed a family, raised children and continued writing. Not everything went smoothly, and some obstacles could not be overcome, but Proskura describes him as a strong, handsome, talented and determined person who fulfilled himself as an individual.

Vladimir Gelfand died in Dnepropetrovsk in 1983. In the late 1990s his wife, sons and two grandchildren moved to Germany. His older son lives in Israel. Vitaly was thirty-one, Gennady thirty-four, grandson Vova seven and Roma one; granddaughter Sonya was later born in Berlin.

Amid all the difficulties of adapting to a new country, Bella and her sons treated the manuscript left by Vladimir as their most important responsibility. Understanding its significance, they sought a way to publish it. Vitaly assumed responsibility for the task. It required enormous effort but eventually succeeded.

In 2002 Battert Verlag Baden-Baden published a Russian-language book with a German title: Gelfand Wladimir. Tagebuch 1941-1946. It was a large-format volume of 330 pages in very small, dense type. Proskura says she had been reading and repeatedly returning to it for half a year and wanted more readers to know about it. It had been published in Germany but in Russian - therefore, she writes, it was "for us," and perhaps available in libraries.

Fragments from Vladimir Gelfand's diary

02.05.1941. Today. Today at last! So, about the Sunday literary gathering? Well then, listen, my diary; absorb it all, my only friend, friend of my soul. Looking through the new issue of Dneprovskaya Pravda, I found the long-awaited and, I think, very belated announcement of the Sunday gathering. There had not been one for an unusually long time, so the programme promised to be interesting. Hoping for that, I went to Lena Malkina, with whom I had arranged to attend. We came by tram at about one in the afternoon. I did not hear what the man with beautiful, apparently black eyes, a low forehead and a self-satisfied face was saying. Lena told me it was the Utkin she had once heard at an institute and had told me about. Only then did I begin listening. He spoke at length and beautifully, insistently emphasising his popularity in Moscow with every phrase.

02.06.1941. The war changed all my plans for the holidays. I have passed all the exams; only mathematics remains. On the 22nd of last month, with Olya and her friends, I went to the Maly Theatre, which was touring here. Ostrovsky's comedy Truth Is Good, but Happiness Is Better was being performed by famous and People's Artists of the Union and the republics and was very successful despite the weakness of the plot characteristic of early Ostrovsky. At Olya's we learned that Germany had declared war on us. It was terrible and unexpected. Olya was summoned to school and, because Mother was not home, I went with her. All the students were already assembled. Komsomol members and non-members taped windows, dug pits, rushed about and made noise; everyone was in an unusual state. Then all began gathering around the loudspeakers. Comrade Molotov spoke on the radio. War had begun; we had to accept the accomplished fact. The next day I went to the workers' faculty.

09.10.1941. In the morning, military-training classes again in Essentuki, in evacuation. My movements in formation are hesitant and attract attention.

11.10.1941. Yesterday Uncle Isaac was drafted into the army. It was unforeseen and sudden.

13.10.1941. Yesterday I had new clashes with the students in military training. During drill I performed movements incorrectly, which delighted some hooligans who could show themselves in all their spiritual beauty because they had a weak-willed commander. Stones began flying at me during the lesson.

22.10.1941. Today marks four months of war. But on the radio there is not a word about this or about any new results of the war during that period.

29.10.1941. The lesson passed relatively calmly. A couple of times somebody threw a stone and hit me on the head, but I restrained myself and did not answer. One scoundrel called me "Abram." I ignored that too - or rather pretended not to notice.

30.10.1941. Six in the morning. Today's Sovinformburo report that Kharkov had been surrendered to the enemy struck me like a bomb exploding.

31.10.1941. Today is a great, joyful and sad day. Joyful because for the first time in two months I saw Mother; sad because I had to part from her again. I do not know how to cry. It seems no grief and no sorrow can make me shed a tear. That makes it all the harder to see the dearest person in the world cry. I pressed my poor mother to my heart and comforted her for a long time, until she stopped crying.

06.05.1942. A decisive event happened in my life: I was drafted into the army as a regular Red Army soldier. I was completely unprepared and was called up suddenly at nine in the morning, ordered to report with my things at ten.

22.06.1942. Today marks a year of war between our country and the German-fascist vermin. The date coincided with the first fierce raid on this area. I am writing in a dugout and the raids continue. Khaustov, one of my soldiers, has completely lost his composure and has even fallen ill from fear. He is vomiting, his hands shake and his face is distorted. At first he tried to hide his fear of bombing, but now he openly admits he cannot endure any more; his nerves and heart cannot take it.

28.11.1943. The bastards are bombing us. A nearby gully, no more than a hundred metres away, was bombed by twenty-six enemy aircraft. Another twenty are circling above us. Now eighteen more are flying in. It is getting dark. I sent a letter to Aunt Anya.

02.12.1043. At night I was called to the division for my Party membership card. It is located, I think - if I was summoned to divisional headquarters - in Novo-Petrovka. I received the card at two in the morning.

21.12.1943. The offensive ended miserably. We are almost at our old positions. Two artillery exchanges brought nothing good, yet we must attack.

24.12.1943. Last night the Germans attacked again and pushed us back somewhat, but in the morning our artillery drove them out and forced them to their previous positions. They lost about 300 men. Many dead and wounded were still lying in no-man's-land today because the Germans could not remove them. We captured eight Germans. On the first day of the offensive I saw a wounded German, a "tongue" - a prisoner for interrogation. He cursed Hitler. Only now are they beginning to understand! He was bandaged and walked to the rear accompanied by one of our wounded.

14.01.1944. It is night. We have been ordered to prepare ourselves and the platoon, to bring everything to full combat readiness. So I packed my things and the diary, which, incidentally, is coming to an end. I will write my poems in it.

03.02.1944. Party meeting. Captain Pichugin reads us a secret order for the offensive.

27.08.1944. Events truly outrun imagination. Yesterday Romania left the war. Today it is already fighting its former "ally," Germany, and has even sent a delegation to Moscow promising us use of its territory and transport and the transfer of all prisoners. In short, a complete political turn of 180 degrees.

02.01.1945. The frost is severe. There is nobody among us who has not caught at least a little cold. I too have joined the general wave of illness: my throat is noticeably hoarse and painful and I am coughing like everyone else. Ehrenburg is an inexhaustible source of intelligence. He has risen above the war as nobody among us has risen in the last twenty years, perhaps with the exception of Gorky. The front is very close, beyond the Vistula, about two kilometres from here. We will not remain on the defensive for long; we are going to break through.

28.04.1945. Berlin's streets are noisy and crowded. The Germans, every one of them, wear white armbands. They are no longer afraid of us and walk openly through the streets. So many events are taking place, so powerful and striking, that they are difficult to express in words. General Barzarin, my army commander, has been appointed commandant of Berlin and has issued an appeal to the local population ordering the restoration of peaceful life and work. The Allies have linked up with our troops and split the enemy forces in two. The three heads of government have issued a special appeal to their troops, calling on everyone to direct their efforts toward the final blow against the enemy.

01.05.1945. The Germans did not agree to capitulate. Artillery preparation begins at 21:15. We will speak the language of weapons.

10.05.1945. Yesterday morning an unforgettable event occurred. The Germans agreed to complete and unconditional surrender. The newspapers reported it sparingly, but solemnly.

21.05.1945. So what if I drank quite a lot... two in the morning... let it be. I cannot write poetry. I am drunk now and my head is heavy, but sober thoughts refuse to leave my mind.

28.05.1945. For some reason my relationship with the diary is strained. Lately I share things with it only rarely, although my life is extraordinarily full of events. Today I woke at eleven. A day off - the second since peace began: music, volleyball, football. We had a film today, Treasure Island.

23.06.1945. Dear Mother! I received your letter and want to answer, but I lose myself in thought; there is so much to tell. Soon perhaps I will come home for a visit, but apparently I will not be able to leave the army until I have lost my youth. To tell you the truth, I dislike military life very much; everything here oppresses and torments me. I have published poems in front-line newspapers but have not sent them anywhere else because I still write badly and am ashamed of my inexperience. Do not object - I have learned how to judge myself. Many people here have already been sent home on demobilisation. How I envy them.

Proskura calls the diary an intimate, trusting conversation between a young man and a devoted friend during the most important and difficult period in the formation of a personality, a period that in this case coincided with the historical era of the most brutal war.

With the support of his family, Vitaly Gelfand fulfilled what she calls the sacred duty of a son: he preserved his father's priceless work for the family's memory. She believes the Diary-Book should interest readers in the author's native country - now, in fact, in more than one native country - and should attract veterans, publishers, researchers, historians and writers.

After victory, Vladimir was demobilised in September 1946 with the rank of senior lieutenant and returned to his mother in Dnepropetrovsk. From 1947 he studied in the history and philology faculty of Dnepropetrovsk University. In 1949, because of family circumstances - marriage and the birth of a son - he transferred to Perm University and graduated successfully in 1952. His thesis concerned Ilya Ehrenburg's novel The Storm; in 1951 he met Ehrenburg in Moscow.

From 1952 Vladimir taught history, Russian language and literature at a railway technical school in the city then called Molotov. His first marriage ended. In 1957 he met Bella Shulman, a graduate of the Pedagogical Institute in Makhachkala, and they formed a family. Two sons were born: Gennady in 1959 and Vitaly in 1963. The family later moved to Dnepropetrovsk. From 1977 Vladimir Gelfand worked as a teacher at a vocational school there.

Vladimir Natanovich Gelfand was a good teacher and an active Party member. He continued to dream of creative work, writing articles for the local and wider press about education and also writing his war memoirs, in both Ukrainian and Russian. His central dream was the publication of the diary. He repeatedly appealed to the Writers' Union but received no attentive or supportive interest from either the Ukrainian or all-Union organisation. Bella recalled that the condition put to him was: "When you have published one hundred articles, then come back."

This went on for years. When he finally accumulated one hundred articles - indeed more - he returned to the Writers' Union. The result was the same.

The veteran's family faced serious everyday difficulties, and in time Vladimir developed major health problems. His mother died in 1982; he survived her by only one year.

Proskura concludes that it is important and noble that the family - wife and sons - made preservation of the father's memory and of the most important work of his life into a sacred duty. She appeals to families with war veterans: during commemorative days, months and years, create opportunities to talk with grandparents and great-grandparents, and let children and grandchildren record their words, songs, poems and photographs. The culture of memory begins in family culture and forms the foundation of a people's culture.

She offers a deep bow and gratitude to Bella Gelfand's family for preserving the memory of husband, father and grandfather, and wishes health, good fortune and a bright future to parents, children and grandchildren.

Ukrainian-language version: Days of Memory. Wartime diaries are rare documents. They are treasures of memory.
Olena Proskura
Letter to the newspaper Russkiy Berlin / Russkaja Germanija, May 2015

The Ukrainian version repeats and expands the essay above. Proskura again writes that she has read Russkiy Berlin for more than ten years. At first the name seemed presumptuous, as if Russian-speaking immigrants were declaring themselves masters of Berlin or Germany. With time, as she came to trust the newspaper's journalists, she accepted the title and learned that similar Russian publications had existed in Germany since the 1920s, when revolution and civil war sent many poets, writers, artists, scholars and musicians into emigration. In Germany they joined together, preserved their roots and created publications and publishing houses to sustain their language and culture.

A century later, she reflects again on the difficulty of history and on the Second World War, which engulfed Europe and the world. She describes Germany and the Soviet Union as the two countries subjected to the heaviest tragedy. Victory, though achieved by a worldwide coalition, was in her view decisively shaped by the Soviet Army and paid for with catastrophic losses and devastation. The joy of victory stood beside grief for the dead, millions of orphans and disabled people, and the immense task of rebuilding life.

Victory Day became a central holiday for decades. Veterans, however, formed an unwritten tradition of not speaking much about what they had experienced. They wished to move away from wartime horrors and rebuild life. On Victory Day they would put on their decorations and gather with friends, creating their own ritual in which little needed to be explained. Younger generations learned about the war from textbooks, while textbooks and states interpreted history differently over time.

Seventy years later, Proskura says, many former Soviet citizens mark the victory in Germany together with Germans, under conditions of peace, cooperation and mutual understanding. Many newspaper readers may still be veterans; many others remember the war through the hardships of childhood. Friendly conversations today turn to books, films, theatre, children and grandchildren, while the war itself is rarely discussed. She repeats that she spent the war hidden under a table by brave people and emerged only after her parents were gone.

Her meeting with Bella Gelfand again appears as an unexpected gift of fate. Through walks and conversations they built trust; Proskura met Bella's sons and grandchildren and was welcomed into the family. Bella's family had lived in Germany for more than twenty years after moving from Dnepropetrovsk. They brought a suitcase filled with carefully ordered, yellowed papers and notebooks containing Vladimir Gelfand's diary.

Young Vladimir Gelfand, born 1 March 1923, was seriously interested in literature and theatre before finishing school and dreamed of becoming a poet. He began the diary as part of his developing creative life. Then war abruptly destroyed all plans: evacuation, conscription, preparation for the front and direct participation in military life. Yet he continued to write through the most difficult circumstances. The diary began on 26 April 1941 and ended on 10 December 1946. Proskura again cites Herzen's phrase "fixed and imperishable" to describe the value of diaries and letters.

She notes that a year and a day each have their own duration, and so do diary entries: sometimes half a page, sometimes more than a page, as circumstances allowed. Her published selection contains only brief fragments. The diary also records the difficulties after the war. Despite them, Vladimir graduated from university, obtained a profession, worked, formed a family, raised children and continued writing. He died in Dnepropetrovsk in 1983.

In the late 1990s his wife, sons and two grandchildren moved to Germany. Vitaly was thirty-one, Gennady thirty-four, grandson Volodya seven and Roma one; granddaughter Sonya was born later in Berlin. Vladimir's older son lives in Israel. Amid the uncertainties of adaptation, Bella and her sons regarded care of the manuscripts as their most important task. Vitaly took responsibility for seeking publication, and after enormous effort the family succeeded.

In 2002 Battert Verlag Baden-Baden published the diary in Russian under the German title Gelfand Wladimir. Tagebuch 1941-1946, a large 330-page volume printed in dense type. Proskura says she had been reading and returning to the book for more than half a year and wanted as many readers as possible to know it. Because it was published in Russian in Germany, she felt it was directly accessible to the newspaper's readership.

The Ukrainian version then reproduces the diary excerpts translated above, including entries about the literary gathering of 2 May 1941; the outbreak of war; military training and antisemitic abuse during evacuation; the fall of Kharkov; the farewell to his mother; conscription; bombing in 1942 and 1943; receiving his Party card; the unsuccessful offensive of December 1943; preparations and orders for later offensives; Romania's change of sides; the severe winter near the Vistula; Berlin in April and May 1945; Germany's surrender; his postwar drunken reflections, day off and cinema; and his June 1945 letter to his mother expressing dislike of army life and envy of those being demobilised.

It preserves several date forms exactly as printed in the Ukrainian source, including 28.05.1954 for the diary entry that describes his second day off in peacetime. The English translation does not silently correct that source date.

The Ukrainian text ends by describing the diary as a sincere conversation between a young man and a faithful friend during an extraordinarily difficult stage of personal development that coincided with the most brutal historical period of war. Vitaly Gelfand, with family support, fulfilled a son's sacred duty by preserving his father's priceless work.

Proskura expresses the hope that the Diary-Book will interest readers in the author's native country - or, more precisely, native countries - and attract the gratitude of veterans and the attention of publishers, researchers, historians and writers. She appeals again to families with veterans to record their stories, songs, poems and photographs, using the technical means now available to younger generations. "The culture of memory is the culture of the family, the culture of the people."

She closes with gratitude to Bella Gelfand's family for preserving the memory of husband, father and grandfather, and wishes health, good fortune and a bright future to parents, children and grandchildren.

Elena Proskura, Berlin - for Russkaja Germanija.