Victory Day
May. 7th, 2010 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
svollgaAs I will be offline until onday, I'm writing this post today.
May 9 is the Victory Day, Den' Pobedy, the day of Victory over Nazi Germany. It's the day I celebrate personally because though I was born long after the Great Patriotic War (Second World War for those outside of the former USSR), and no one among the relatives I know personally was a soldier then, I still feel personal connection to that war and that day.
Mostly, I feel it because I know exactly that if the USSR lost in that war, I won't be born, ever. My father is Jewish. He was a child than, safe in evaquation - he would be dead. My mother's parents come from Belarus and Ukraine. She was born after the war - she wouldn't be born.
Also, I've read enough of books like The Diary of Anna Frank to imagine quite vivdly what would happen to me if I lived through that war, if I happened to be in ghetto or in concentration camp.
And to end on a more positive note, I've watched so many films and read so many books about that war while growing up that I can't but feel proud for the people who fought, and suffered, and won. Won this war not for the goverment, but for themselves, for their children, for their future. In spite of all the ugly and cruel things the Soviet goverment did to them during and after the war, they still won, and that's what I am celebrating.
Some songs about the Great Patriotic War that fill me with emotion:
Довоенный вальс - Valtz Before the War, a song about the last days of peace.
Священная война - Sacred War, it was written in the beginning of the war, in 1941, and was practically a hymn, filled with rage and determination.
Смуглянка - Smuglyanka, about the partisan movement (and love), a lovely, jolly song despite the grim circumstances.
Нам нужна одна победа (also performed by it's author, Bulat Okudzhava) - We Need One Victory, a song in a melancholy yet decisive mood.
День Победы - Victory Day, the ultimate end-of-the-war song.
May 9 is the Victory Day, Den' Pobedy, the day of Victory over Nazi Germany. It's the day I celebrate personally because though I was born long after the Great Patriotic War (Second World War for those outside of the former USSR), and no one among the relatives I know personally was a soldier then, I still feel personal connection to that war and that day.
Mostly, I feel it because I know exactly that if the USSR lost in that war, I won't be born, ever. My father is Jewish. He was a child than, safe in evaquation - he would be dead. My mother's parents come from Belarus and Ukraine. She was born after the war - she wouldn't be born.
Also, I've read enough of books like The Diary of Anna Frank to imagine quite vivdly what would happen to me if I lived through that war, if I happened to be in ghetto or in concentration camp.
And to end on a more positive note, I've watched so many films and read so many books about that war while growing up that I can't but feel proud for the people who fought, and suffered, and won. Won this war not for the goverment, but for themselves, for their children, for their future. In spite of all the ugly and cruel things the Soviet goverment did to them during and after the war, they still won, and that's what I am celebrating.
Some songs about the Great Patriotic War that fill me with emotion:
Довоенный вальс - Valtz Before the War, a song about the last days of peace.
Священная война - Sacred War, it was written in the beginning of the war, in 1941, and was practically a hymn, filled with rage and determination.
Смуглянка - Smuglyanka, about the partisan movement (and love), a lovely, jolly song despite the grim circumstances.
Нам нужна одна победа (also performed by it's author, Bulat Okudzhava) - We Need One Victory, a song in a melancholy yet decisive mood.
День Победы - Victory Day, the ultimate end-of-the-war song.