In Moscow in 1941, the day came when the twenty thousand German army prisoners were to be marched through the streets in front of a population who had born the burden of their cruelty. The pavements were crowded that day, mainly with women and children, those who had borne the brunt of the terrible suffering. Most of their men folk were dead. Almost everyone had lost a husband, a son; and many had lost mothers, sisters, daughters because of this army, these people who were going to march down this street. You can imagine something of the atmosphere that day. At last they were going to see their hated enemy. There were angry mutterings and shouts of hate as the first of that defeated army, the Generals, prisoners yet still arrogant, strutted at the fore. People spat in the snow.
But then came the soldiers. And they were just boys really. Shuffling through the snow, their feet frostbitten, wrapped in newspapers. Many of them were on makeshift crutches, others being led blind by their mates. As silence fell, and all you could hear was the shuffling of feet and the thumping of crutches. The shuffling of a defeated army of broken young boys.
Then there was a sudden movement. A woman, an old babushka, pushed herself through the crowd to the Russian soldiers guarding the pavement and said, "Let me through." Then this bent old woman rushed across to one of the gaunt German prisoners, and everybody held their breath. What was she going to do? Slap him? Spit on him?
She reached into her shawl and took out a crust of black bread, which she then pushed awkwardly into the pocket of the soldier, so exhausted that he was tottering on his feet. And all of a sudden from every direction, women began to hand over perhaps a cigarette, perhaps some bread, perhaps a piece of fish; and somehow the hatred was gone, enemies had ceased to be enemies. Why? Because one person, such an ordinary person, intervened into that cycle of hate and revenge with a simple act of pardoning love. That's all."
- Peter Storey, With God in the Crucible, citing Yevgeny Yevtushenko, A Precious Autobiography, trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew (New York: Dutton, 1963).
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