Execution subject logo: DONBASWAR
2021-11-14
Posted by: S.Machinsky

Military Historical Center of the Northwestern Federal District 6 Nov 2021 at 9:55 am Often, in order to tell something from what we see, it is necessary to give time to what we see to fit into consciousness, to burn out. And sometimes you don't even want to tell. It is scary that this terrible, experienced and realized by you, will not be in the same way as you are realized and understood by others. It is scary, and then painful to understand that for someone these are just words or generally a passing topic.

Most of what I write is being blocked by systems whose creators consider it shock content. They take care of the psyche of people, especially young people. And nothing that the main content of these systems is filled with the vulgarity and abomination of everyday life, but the cruel truth about the war and those events should not get into the minds of readers. Should not make them think, empathize, suffer. It's probably easier to live this way. But will it be easier for those who come for us to live this way?

A mountain of corpses, just a mountain. People are piled up in a heap ten meters from the old, but still carriageway. Bodies mixed with scraps of empty machine-gun belts, spent cartridges and empty, crumpled ammo boxes.

They are not soldiers. The soldiers lie in the field further in the square mass graves. It's not even a mass grave, it's just a mountain of corpses. A mountain dumped into a bomb crater, and separate bodies along the edges. Those that did not fit or were shot later. Above all, the priest will be thrown off. A massive silver cross on a chain was thrown on his back from the blow, at his feet a broken censer, trampled into the ground by a soldier's boot.

Even the dents and scratches from the spikes on the shoe soles are visible. Head smashed by a bullet or butt. The priest is above, and the people below.

Children, women, no men, a couple of old men. Children - from a baby, from an unborn person in the belly of a murdered woman, up to a teenager.

Execution? The guilty are executed. Executed for what they have done deliberately or not, for what they have done in their thoughts they can also be executed. What could an unborn person have done, what could have done to be executed?

Nothing. This is not an execution, this is murder. Murder of the innocent, murder of the defenseless. A murder by the road of this village. How can you convey what you think and feel, standing over a pit full of murdered children?

What do you think picking out German shells and bullets from their bodies? Quality made in German cities, shiny cases with German letters and dates 37-39-40-41. What do you feel when you see a button torn from a Latvian greatcoat with meat between the bodies of a woman and a child? Who snatched it out?

A woman, throwing herself at the executioner, covering her child, or a child in a powerless attempt to save his mother? Is it time to forget about the war? Is there really nothing to be proud of? And why are they there, in their Latvia and Estonia, in the Ukraine, are they proud of what we have done here?

Why are the executioners honored and rewarded with the titles of national heroes? We will forget and forgive, and they will continue to present orders and flowers for the holidays to those who executed our future? Maybe in this parade of executioners, the dear old man shuffles, from whose greatcoat this very button was torn? Maybe he was the one who drew a line of woman and child from the belly?

Maybe he dumped an unborn Russian, Jewish, Gypsy great scientist or poet into this pit? The rain washes over the bodies. It rained for almost a month while they were being taken out of the pit. Nature mourned them for us.

There was no one to mourn for them. Almost all the villagers are in this pit. The executioners who executed criminals are silent, execution is a ritual. And these were laughing. They shot and mocked the screams and curses of the victims. And they went on. And they lived on, if they succeeded, but many managed to escape from retaliation.

They lived, but they themselves did not expect that at the end of their lives, they would stop shaking with fear at every knock on the door. They did not expect to become "heroes" and be glorified.

Did they win? Evil has won? Or do we ourselves want it to win, demanding forgiveness for the executioners and oblivion for the victims?

Fearfully. It is scary to stand over a pile of corpses and realize that like this, an executioner can come to your house. The one who was brought up on the "exploits" of the previous murderers. Knock out the door with a boot or a soldier's boot.

Will hit you in the face with the butt. Throw away with a healthy peasant hand a son or daughter who rushed to protect you and shoot at close range, turning what you love into a corpse. You will writhe in pain, and he, in passing, will interrupt your loved ones. You are not ready, you have forgiven and forgotten, you left in front of enlightenment and new achievements, and he remembered. He remembered and waited when he could again trample what was dear to us.

A total of 209 people in and around the pit. Children, children, children. This is our future buried in these pits. In these pits lie uncompleted discoveries and unwritten works of genius. What we should be proud of now, what we are now being called upon to be proud of, forgetting about the war.

These are the pits of geniuses. Unborn geniuses, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren.

Broken arms, fractured skulls and chest. A mother with her hands covering her belly from a bullet with an unborn child inside her. I cannot forget it. I probably would like to, but I can't.

We, like everyone else, would like to live without it. We would like to think about a bright future and forget about the bloody past, which we return to over and over again. We are tired over and over again, month after month, to bury the dead 80 years ago. And we are afraid that at these funerals there are fewer and fewer of us alive. It hurts us that this is not interesting to anyone.

To give up and live forgetting - it would be dishonest. It's just dangerous because the killers are proud! Because the killers do not toss and turn, sweating in nightmares, but cheerfully walk across the squares smiling. Because their great-grandchildren, having grown their fangs, want, like their grandfathers, to stain them with the blood of our children. Because they are haunted by the stories of the old murderers about how cleverly they have thrown our future into the pits.

To know and remember is to be ready. It means to be ready or not to admit, or to stop the murderers on our soil. Hatred - it not only burns out a person, it gives strength to be ready. We must not only remember, we must speak, write, shout about these pits.

We ourselves, even if we have experienced this more than once in our thoughts, must tell everyone. Tell how fire hits in the face from the barrel of a rifle, and a bullet tears apart a defenseless child's body in a white T-shirt in the cold. As chilly, wrapping himself in an overcoat, breaks the child's breast with the butt and shoves the still living body with his boot into the pit of the punisher. As the machine-gun fire crosses out the black figure of the priest, trying to appeal to the philanthropy of the murderers. As he, waving his arms, falls like a black, broken bird on the bloody bodies of the victims.

How the living are still swarming in the mountain of corpses, and the machine gun, spitting out smoking cartridges, aims them in a bloody heap and finishes them off.

Village Vditsko, 1941, more than 120 yards, an old village on the old road to Shlisselburg, a school and a club. More than 500 residents, 209 of them in pits.

Now there is a mass grave and a cemetery, a field and a forest! Stop talking about the war? There is no need to celebrate Victory Day? All our land should have been and would have become a cemetery, if not for the Victory Day! If not for the Soviet soldier. It was they, our soldiers, who made the killers wake up in cold sweat for 60 years, and we allowed them to live and not be afraid of retribution. S. Machinsky

If you have something to add, Fire Away!

Number of Comments so far: 0

Click here for a list of stories in the The 2014 War in Ukraina category