From the Descendants of the Defeated to the Winners

There is nothing stranger than memory. 53 years passed since the end of World War II. The veterans of that war dwindle, but everyone recalls it.

Last Thursday, the nominal German head of state, President Roman Herzog, together with his entourage, laid a ribbon-tied black-yellow-red color wreath to the Grave of the Unknown Soldier. That soldier who in 1945 forced Germany to capitulate. On the one hand the deep silence that followed demonstrated Germany's wish to yet again assuage its guilt before Ukraine, but, on the other, it called forth countless questions.

Children don't chose their fathers. Nor their fatherland. German Repentance, demonstrated to the whole world and humility before Ukraine witness that the children and nephews of the defeated voluntarily took upon themselves the cross of damnation and have no desire to revise the past. How heavy it must be for them...

We ourselves feel victimized, although we remember this less and less often. Today nobody cares that if the bewhiskered German Fuhrer had not committed aggression against the Soviet Union, the mustachioed F(hrer of the land of the Soviets have attacked him. "Yes, but they attacked first...," many will answer. "Yes, but he had to," others might rejoin. "Yes, but what do our people and millions of dead have to do with it?" will contradict many more. And to no end.

Hitler and Stalin attained the world domination they strived for using different means. Hitler killed off foreigners, while Stalin eliminated his own people. And what difference does it make under which slogan it was carried out?

Germans remember the past. And laying wreaths on the graves of their own vanquished is a tradition less established for them, than mourning the dead, the missing, and those burnt alive in the concentration camps. We wonder, if the wheel of the history had turned the other way, would we have laid flowers to the grave of the Unknown Soldier of Germany? I think not...

Roman Herzog kept silent at the Square of Glory. Words would have been superfluous here...

Photo by Victor Marushchenko, The Day