Posted on 05/09/2021 7:36:22 AM PDT by dynachrome
10 billion. That’s how many letters were sent and received by Soviet soldiers during WWII... Since June 1941, when Nazi Germany attacked Soviet borders, until May 1945 these letters became a thin thread, at times the only one, to connect families and friends torn from each other by a terrible war. These letters found their way from battlefields and hospitals, from evacuation zones and abandoned homes. Words of hope, love and worry addressing dear ones. How many of those words would become farewells...
(Excerpt) Read more at endlessletter.com ...
.
Have you read these letters? The web site is impossible for me to navigate.
The top letters are 1941, scrolling down gives the next years. Click on the floating paper/letters and that opens the individual letter. Hovering the cursor gives the name. No real contest except for the names and many say killed in action underneath.
I remember this poem from “The World At War”
Wait For Me - Konstantin Simonov
Wait for me and I’ll return, only wait very hard.
Wait when you are filled with sorrow as you watch the yellow rain.
Wait when the wind sweeps the snowdrifts.
Wait in the sweltering heat.
Wait when others have stopped waiting, forgetting their yesterdays.
Wait even when from afar no letters come for you.
Wait even when others are tired of waiting.
Wait for me and I’ll return, but wait patiently.
Wait even when you are told that you should forget.
Wait even when my mother and son think I am no more.
And when friends sit around the fire drinking to my memory
Wait and do not hurry to drink to my memory too.
Wait for me and I’ll return, defying every death.
And let those who do not wait say that I was lucky.
They will never understand that in the midst of death
You with your waiting saved me.
Only you and I will know how I survived:
It was because you waited as no one else did.
Thanks. It looks fascinating.
The entire website seems to be an svg animation or video. You have to wait a while before the animation starts.
Also the right sidebar shows the years.
Regards,
I know I’m probably backwards on this. But I don’t like soldier letters being exposed for the world. You sit in some hole, in a truck cab, or in some hard to find quiet corner and write during a bad time, thinking you might die soon. Your thoughts and emotions are all over the place and you think that letter is for just one person who you trust.
Women and Ken Burns love reading soldier’s letters, but it’s just too personal.
You might try here with google translate:
There is a send a letter function.
https://www.pismasfronta.com/prislat-pismo
contest = context
But as I said, I can translate the letters myself! (My wife can decipher the handwriting so as to produce "fair copy" in Russian, then we join forces to translate it into English.)
Regards,
I watched the Smithsonian channel last night. Martin Sheen narrated. Who was worse the Russians or the Nazis? Ukrainian JEWS fought for the Nazis after what Stalin was doing to them. It’s a good thing German people were scattered in different countries.
Rather, it's an "artsy-fartsy" attempt to evoke pathos.
I was expecting thousands of meticulously transcribed, full-length letters, with plenty of background info and annotations - something that could be used to reconstruct actual troop movements and the like.
This website offers nothing of the kind.
Regards,
If there are relics of the front in your family archive, we ask you to share them, hand them over to us for publication in the following volumes. Let’s do everything together to collect as much as possible the priceless documents that have survived over seven decades, telling about the terrible cost of Victory and the greatness of the feat.
Editorial office address:
350063, Russia, Krasnodar Territory, Krasnodar,
st. Red, 28.
Specify: Kniga Publishing House or T.A. Vasilevskaya
Tel. +7 861 268 5571
Might be something like that in a main war museum.
The reading of Captain Sullivan Ballou’s letter to his wife is not to be forgotten.
I try to separate the average Red Army soldier fighting for the Rodina, from the Politicians that ruled over them.
And the fact is, while the Nazis were invading Western Europe and bombing Britain, they were doing it with the help of supplies from the Soviet Union. They were in fact “allies” at that time. Stalin was perfectly happy with the Nazis doing what they did in the West.
I know the Brits did that with vets from WW1. Much of it was used for Peter Jackson’s film, They Shall Not Grow Old. If any Freepers have not seen it, I highly recommend it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.