War – Glorialana Magazine

Red Fortress

Published on June 22, 2014June 22, 2014 by Glorialana6 Comments

Hello God!

Thank You for this morning. I am so happy to celebrate my first today’s hours with bird’s singing and happy writing.

This morning was going to be happy for inhabitants of Brest Fortress 73 years ago… Ordinary people, cooks, musicians, soldiers, doctors, civilians become suddenly, on this fateful morning, heroes, they want it or not, they like it or not.

On 22 June 1941, soon after 3am, the first German shells smashed into the Soviet frontier fortress of Brest – Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa had begun. Today is the first day of the Second World War on the territory of my country.

Persistent rumors that the Germans were cranking up preparations for a breakthrough on the border were considered as sabotage and eventually suppressed. The initial artillery fire took the absolutely unprepared fortress by surprise.

“- This fortress, fortress here, we keep the defense, – This fortress, fortress here, we keep the defense…”

The Germans had allowed twelve hours to secure the area, but it took them nine days! The Brest Fortress became the place where the invaders lost 5% of their East Front deadcount within the first week of war.

One of the dramatic pages of defence of the Brest fortress was an acute water shortage. The approaches to the water were fired – a lot of fighters and commanders died trying to obtain precious drops.

The walls of the red citadel keeps the last good bye from unnamed hero: “We’ll die but we’ll not leave the fortress”. “I’m dying but I won’t surrender. Farewell, Motherland. 20.VII.41.

The heroic defence of Brest is the legend of the Second World War on the Eastern Front. The film “Brestskaya Krepost” (“Fortress of War”) tells much more. Strongly recommended.

Thank You for this possibility to share with you something really important. We live and we have to remember the price for our today’s happy and peaceful morning.

The Memory Bells

Published on May 9, 2014May 9, 2014 by Glorialana11 Comments

Hello God!

Thank You for today! The 9th of May is the Victory Day!

What if I was a child of war…

I live in the village Khatyn

You will not find on the Google maps

As Neverland, but we were real

We were alive. We are alive!

Bells toll every thirty seconds

To remind about us.

This is our house, where

Every morning I meet

My mother’s smiling eyes,

My father’s loving hands.

I have one brother and three sisters,

Five bellflowers of mother’s Love:

Slavik is the youngest, he is 6 month,

Manya is 15 y.o, Anya is 10 y.o., Yuzya is 5 y.o.

I am the oldest, I am 12 y.o.!

My father Ivan

He is a forester.

He brings a warmness,

We eat a bread tonight,

Because of his loving hands.

Telling in advance

I met my death on his loving hands…

One spring morning of 1943

I remember in details.

I have not met a mother’s smile,

Her pale face and trembling voice:

“We have to go! We have to go to barn!”

I knew about war and Hitler

But in the grey uniforms they were people,

No Hitler by himself:

A man, a husband and a dad.

There was a horrid silence,

Even little brother did not cry,

We were dying in the barn

A man in the grey uniform set fire.

(149 people, including 75 children, died.)

Why? What for?

My mother’s destiny was

To pray for easy death

For us?!

They were a men in the grey uniforms.

No Hitler by himself…

The Khatyn memorial desk says: “You all are our family, we bows our heads in a great sorrow, standing before you. You were not conquered by Nazi murderers. In the dark days you took the death but the flame of your love to our Motherland never extinguishes. The memory of you is immortal as eternal Earth and eternal bright Sun above us.”

Thank You for sharing with this moment of the memory bells have reminded and Your Precious Being in my life.

Angel Samantha

Published on August 20, 2013 by Glorialana12 Comments

Hello God!

Thank You for today. I am happy to share with you a story about my first American friend. Remembering my Soviet school years is impossible about this story.

As you know my school years (1981 – 1991) were the years of the Cold war between USA and USSR.

If we wish to create a lasting peace, if we want to fight a war against war, we must begin with the children. Mahatma Gandhi’s words mirrors the ambivalent situation Soviet children were in. From the one side we knew about USA as the worst enemy, from the other side we all had had an American friend we adored by whole heart. We loved Samantha Smith.

When Yuri Andropov succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union in November 1982, the mainstream Western newspapers and magazines ran numerous front-page photographs and negative articles about him. When Samantha Smith viewed the edition of Time magazine, she asked her mother, “If people are so afraid of him, why doesn’t someone write a letter asking whether he wants to have a war or not?”. Her mother replied, “Why don’t you?”

Dear Mr. Andropov,
My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren’t please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.
Sincerely,
Samantha Smith

On July 7, 1983, she flew to Moscow with her parents, and spent two weeks as Andropov’s guest. From today’s my point of view I think her visit were unimaginably influential for every Soviet child because she was from a different planet. You see on the cartoon that it seems the Soviet Union was even from different biological spice.

She is Angel. She had changed our Destiny forever. Because of her the doubts were born. “Why are USA our worst enemy? Samantha in from USA and she is a friend” we were thinking learning English intensively. “Why intensively?” you can ask. The Soviet Ministry of Education created a special linguistic school where foreign language was compulsory from the first grade (6-7 y.o.) after Samantha’s visit.

We were grateful for her gift to open our eyes. America was not our enemy.

She died on August 25, 1985. Could you imagine the mourning day devoted to Samantha at the 1st September, 1985, in every Soviet school, in the official Knowledge Day?! We were crying and writing a letter of condolence to Samantha’s mother by whole class. I remember that moment, even now I am writing with tears in my eyes.

In 1985 the Soviet Post issued a commemorative stamp with her likeness. In 1986, when Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh discovered asteroid 3147, she named it 3147 Samantha. It was the precedent.

The wind of Her angel’s wings has begun creating a new melody of our ways… We all are connected, the butterfly effect works.

Thank you for your being in my life. We are influencing on each other and from this very point we are going to be happier and kinder than we were a moment ago. I am grateful for you change my Way.

Two Ladies

Published on July 9, 2013 by Glorialana10 Comments

Hello God!

Thank You for my happy Destiny. My way is beautiful. I was born in USSR but educated in Western tradition. This rich composition allows me analyzing two different world, I suppose.

On the photo below we see two women which are on the one stage together. The stage is the formal dinner in Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna, where Khrushchev and Kennedy appeared together for the only time and in the company of their wives Nina Khrushchev and Jackie Kennedy.

For Kennedy, who had become President in the same 1961 year, it was his first meeting with his great opposite number one from the Soviet Union.

“I never met a man like this,” Kennedy told Hugh Sidey, Time magazine’s White House correspondent. “[I] talked about how a nuclear exchange would kill 70 million people in 10 minutes, and he just looked at me as if to say, ‘So what?’”

At their final meeting, Kennedy sought to improve the chilled atmosphere over Berlin. “It is up to the U.S. to decide whether there will be war or peace,” Khrushchev said. “Then, Mr. Chairman,” Kennedy responded, “there will be war. It will be a cold winter.”

At the first glimpse we see the clear contrast between the looks of the First Ladies. Jackie is fashionable and sophisticated and Nina is provincial and shapeless. But mindful view understands that the visible differences in appearance of two ladies are just the tip of the iceberg.

Jackie is 32 y.o and Nina is 61 y.o. here. Jackie’s father, John, was a wealthy stockbroker on Wall Street whose family had come from France. Nina’s father was a poor peasant from the village in Ukraine. At the age of 22 y.o. Jackie enjoyed her youth in the George Washington University. Nina in her 22 y.o. was suffering by typhoid fever and lived in the village house even without floor just ground.

Jackie and Nina were a very strong women. They both were bitterly crying when their children were lost. Jackie’s third child Patrick died after two days from the birth. Nina had buried her daughter Elena.

They both loved their husbands and they both became a widows. Kennedy was killed and Jackie became a widow at age 34. Khrushchev died of a heart attack in a hospital near his home in Moscow on 1971. Nina was a little lucky because she was 71 y.o.

Jackie died of a form of cancer of the lymphatic system. She was 64 years old. Nina died at 84 y.o.

What the complicated Destinies we have just touched!

At the first glimpse we all are different. But see attentively: for every mother her child is value, every girls dream about Prince’s love, every boys dream to become an astronaut. Our tears are the same about loss and pain. Our joys are the same about happiness in our families and peace in our countries.

Thank you for sharing with me this peaceful moment.

What If

Published on June 25, 2013June 25, 2013 by Glorialana3 Comments

Hello God!

Thank You for the questions we are not able to find an answer at this very moment of our personal development. My question is “What If something had never happened?” Today I am thinking about “What If the World War II had never happened?”

I am from Belarus. My country was suffered by World War II badly. It is hard to imagine but “in total, Belarus lost a quarter of its population in World War II including practically all its intellectual elite. About 9 200 villages and 1.2 million houses were destroyed”. Every Belorussian family has a member – participant of this war.

The portrait of Hitler in my educational background was definite and unequivocal as monster tyrant and embodiment of all possible evil. I am stumbled and dumbfounded by Hitler’s paintings I did not know about.

Before he waged war on the world, Adolf Hitler was an upcoming and unsuccessful artist. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907-1908), because of his “unfitness for painting”.

After the rejections from the Academy of Fine Arts, he was recommended to study architecture. Following this recommendation, he intended to pursue architectural studies, yet he lacked the academic credentials required for architecture school.

Hitler wrote in his diary: “In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy’s architectural school without having attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfillment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible.”

Hitler’s personality is complicated. Everybody knows that he was a military tyrant and a murderer, not that he actually had great potential.

Hitler did not create all horror of the war by his own. Unfathomable myriad of factors, like the circumstances of the time, people thoughts, fears and hopes created the reality where Hitler was possible.

We are creating the reality where we are possible as individuals realizing unique potential to knit our every next moment. We have to be responsible for every thoughts and decision and always remember about Butterfly effect.

Could the professor of the Academy of Fine Art imagine the consequences of his decision to reject Hitler on the exam?

It seems I have found the answer on my question I was thinking about today. What If the World War II had never happened? If Adolf Hitler had been attended to the Academy, if the World War II had never happened, my life was not possible, I had never had a chance to write this words and meet you.

I am grateful for this possibility to live and your being with me now. Thank you!

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