The energy of good and the hammer of evil

Those who were 16-18 years old in the spring of 1956 remember how the stream of evidence of the atrocities of Soviet power fell upon our young heads. Particularly tormented by the imagination irrefutable, captured in desperate letters to Stalin, evidence of terrible tortures - one of the defendants wrote, for example, in a letter announced in the report of Khrushchev that he had a fracture of the spine and it was at the place of the turning point that he wrote, forcing, as he wrote, to "slander himself and other people." And those who wrote such letters were shot along with those who did not write.

Gradually, a year after year, biographies of the dead guardian party leaders, marshals and commander were restored, and a considerable list of their atrocities turned out to be each - that, at that time and current eyes, it does not justify the torture committed over them: that people cannot be tortured should be indisputable for everyone, including the deaths of the death penalty. For some, however, the previous participation of Soviet power tortured in the atrocities - especially during its years by its approval by fire and sword throughout the space of a huge country, as well as in the following years of direct destruction of the peasantry and intelligentsia - served as some kind of justification, then a philosophical explanation of what happened to these people in the future: something like historical retribution, albeit committed by hands of the same as them, and the same as them. killers. It seems to Naum Korzhavin as formulated in those fabulous years: "Some bastards killed other bastards, and many honest people suffered."

But in the first months of that 1956, it arose before us - not from the report of Khrushchev, but from the messages transmitted from the mouth to the mouth - the name that stood out from the row and gradually gave the villains of the Soviet regime some truly devilish shade, - Raul Wallenberg.

What was the particularity of obviously committed over him, but still not clarified at that time?

Firstly, he was not our subject and, accordingly, did not bear the slightest load of responsibility for our past.

Secondly, the slightest domestic reasons (which then, even today, are managed to explain, for example, “dispossession”), it was impossible to justify his arrest and imprisonment.

Thirdly, the time of his arrest was by no means the 30s, which received the official designation "period of mass violations of the rule of law", but the days of the victories of the Soviet army over Hitler, its entry into Hungary - January 1945. The black shadow fell for us, children of front -line soldiers, on a bright memory of these days.

Fourthly, the seal of that silence of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, which was more or less sane young people, obvious to the then policy of Soviet power, was increasingly clear, neither verbally, nor printed, about the mass destruction by the Nazis of Jews, and only exclusively “Soviet people”; This also applied to the woman’s tier.

This seal appeared - and acquired ominous tones: after all, the Swede Wallenberg, as it became known at the same time, was solely and actively saved and saved the unthinkable, for the efforts of one person, the number of Jews doomed to death. And “our” planted such a person in jail, for more than ten years they were silent about this - and continue to be silent after so many revelations about other matters.

Before us, a state crime in a pure, as they say, form, stood up. And it was it - like nothing else - that turned during that important in our biographies of the year, as well as into the subsequent sight of Soviet history into something like “bloody bones in the wheel” (although Mandelstam, most of us, philologists of Moscow University, then did not know).

I remembered that this name was in the air of the era precisely after the Khrushchev report that I was discussing this with my classmate Alexander Chudakov, who soon became my husband, and he shared my emotions. All this could have been known to us only from someone’s retelling of Western radio programs: the receivers were far from at that time, and in general the “culture of listening” (“there is a custom in Rus'-listen to the BBC at night”) has not yet developed.

I recalled all this when I was preparing for a seminar for school teachers to talk about the Holocaust: modern methods and tasks of the teacher. Russian and Swedish experience ”, organized by the Embassy of Sweden in Moscow, the Swedish Institute, the Holochest Foundation and the Sakharov Museum as part of the Raul Wallenberg exhibition: and one in the Warrior field.

When she began to ask peers and older ones that they remember the time of the appearance of this name in our conversations, she received the following answers: "No, much later - already in the 60s!" But a few days ago, confirmation of my memoirs was: the famous indologist Pavel Grinzer said that in the summer of 1956 he spent his vacation with Vladimir Nikolayevich Toporov in Lithuania, in the town of Kryokai - and their third comrade, Valentin Ostrovsky, listening to the radio in different languages, told them about Wallenberg. Then such messages quickly became "widely known in narrow circles."

Today, the story of how the young man from a very rich Swedish family received an excellent education in the United States in the spring of 1944, when the world finally realized that in Europe it was possible to imagine the normal mind, and that the Nazis encrypted the words “final decision” - the systematic destruction of people whose veins flows in, and not other blood, agreed (on their conditions!) Hungary is known to the whole world. She is taught in schools - along with the history of the Holocaust (this word was unknown to any of those who studied in a Soviet school).

The basis of the history of genocide, writes one of the biographers of Wallenberg Paul Levin, “lies shocking primitive, but inexplicable desire for thousands of the most ordinary and often educated European men (and many women) to destroy as much obedient Jews in their countries. Hitler did not give them such an opportunity, and they did not fail to use it. They diligently fulfilled their task, constantly, constantly They improved their methods and successfully succeeded, when Germany occupied Hungary, few doubted what fate awaits the large Jewish population of this country. Help of Jewish brothers.

The birthplace of Wallenberg behaved better than many European countries during these years. Sweden accepted about a thousand Jewish refugees from Norway at the end of 1942 and played a large role in the salvation of Danish Jews in October 1943.

The essence of Wallenberg’s actions was in their extraordinary intensity - and in his fearlessness. It is unlikely that he slept in 1944 for more than two to three hours a day. He made and distributed security Swedish passports to the Jews endlessly. He knew that if he did not have time, death awaits people, one of the options of which, purely “local”, was this: the Hungarian Nazis were crocked by three people, they placed a cliff over the river on the edge and shot at the middle ...

From the preserved numerous evidence of the image of the actions of Wallenberg. Upon learning that the composition with the Jews to Auschwitz was sent from the station, he appeared on the platform, and when the SS, who commanded the composition, ordered to leave it, passed, as if not noticing him, to the train. "He climbed onto the roof of the car and began to distribute passports through the doors that were not closed. Wallenberg ignored the orders of the Germans ... and continued to distribute passports in his hands stretching to him ... As soon as Wallenberg handed out all his passports, he ordered those who had the Swedish passports to leave the train to the nearby, painted in the nearby. National colors of the Swedish flag, cars. " And so on. And so on.

Soviet troops were approaching, and Eichman, who was directly in Hungary, was increasingly killing Jews. And Wallenberg was increasingly opposing him.

It was important to use a variety of possibilities here. He invited Eichmann for lunch, hoping, apparently, to make him think about his near end. The evidence of eyewitnesses of this conversation draw an impressive picture of the clash of two that do not know the obstacles opposite the will, two forces - evil and good. Eichmann asked Wallenberg - what, in fact, he, a Swedish diplomat, wants in Hungary? He replied that he wants to save as many people from death as it would be possible.

• Jews are not people, ”answered Eichmann.

• On this issue, our views diverge with you.

Eichmann explained that he has an order to destroy everyone to one Jews of Hungary - and he will fulfill it:

• I managed to destroy the Jews in all countries occupied by Germany. And here I will also succeed.

He indicated that he had in this matter full support from the numerous Hungarian fascists.

• But Germany has already lost the war, ”said Wallenberg.

Eichmann objected to this that Germany was waging two wars and the second - against the Jews - he, Eichmann, won. And he warned Wallenberg that he would do everything to remove him from his way: accidents even happen even with diplomats from neutral countries.

The next day, the German armored car crashed into the car, on which Wallenberg usually drove.

... An exhibition dedicated to the personality and short life of Wallenberg, interrupted in the circumstances of our land, is open to the Museum named after Sakharov at the Earth Val daily (except Monday) until October 21. There is no doubt that visiting it by all senior Moscow schoolchildren is an infinitely more important thing for the fate of the Fatherland than discussing the appointment of a new prime minister: this discussion does not lead anywhere, and the arrival of one at least a class to the exhibition at least a millimeter, but moves us to the best future. Because today, when on every corner a teenager is blowing in the ears: "On you, like on me, nothing depends in Russia!" “She tells him how infinitely depends on the energetic and selfless actions of one person.”

So far, from September 5, she was visited by students of one Moscow school - # 653. Teacher Elena Gabrielova, honor and praise, gave seven times - groups - students of the 8-10s of grades. And in very qualified, according to the reviews of the museum, she conducted a tour of the exhibition. This seven -fold action is difficult to overestimate.