It was Sunday morning, 1941, the 22nd of June,

The day of the growing Moon.

The country peacefully slept

While Hitler a horrible idea had kept.

Without announcing the war

He had given an order

To bomb the Soviet Republics border.

By unexpected military actions

The fascist wanted to capture all nations,

To turn the peoples into the slaves,

To fill the country with graves.

When the voice of Levitan

Reported about the war

Everyone who could hold a gun swore

To defend our Motherland,

Stand up to the end, hand in hand.

Hitler didn’t know or didn’t understand

The mentality of Russians, Ukrainians,

Georgians and Armenians, …

And more than 100 other nationalities

Which were always free personalities.

Hitler had to know the native’s soul

Which would never live on someone’s dole.

That horrible war lasted almost 4 years,

The Great Patriotic War with grief and tears.

 

Now and then a war takes away lives,

With neo fascism the world today strives.

Many questions today still remain:

How to change the cruel brain?

How the peaceful mind to gain?

Why not to create the world of love and peace?

Why do some people only think how to seize?

Why don’t they give?

Why don’t they share?

Why is the truth so rare?

Give me the answers, please!

Give me the keys!

Let me feel at my ease!

 

We didn’t forget that war,

We became even stronger than before.

Therefore we’ll never let fascism grow,

We’ll show it where to go.

 

Larisa Rzhepishevska (Odessa, Ukraine)

The 22nd of June, 2014