"I don't know if I could talk to you once more ever, so it is even good that you'll receive this letter, so you will cut in on all the truth if I'd return anyhow. My hands are messed up really bad, it happened in the beginning of december. There is no little finger on left arm, and - that is even worse - there are three frostbitten middle fingers on the right arm. I can take my cup only with a help of thumb and little finger. I am quite helpless, you understand the necessity of fingers even for simpliest things only when you lost them. It's the most simple to shoot for me with a help of a small finger. I can do nothing with hands, because I can't shoot the whole life. Maybe it would be possible for me to become a forester? But it's a gallows humour, and I write it only to get calm.
Kurt Hanke - it seems to me that you must remember him (by collegium in 1937) - he was playing "Appassionato" in the small street 8 days ago. Well, it's usual for everyday life to see the grand piano in the street. The house was blown up, but they, perhaps, took pity on the piano and drag it out of the house. Each passing by soldier thumped on the piano. Tell me where else one could see the grand piano right on the street?
It's easy to give kind pieces of advice. But it won't be as it is in your plans. The Liberation of Peoples! What a nonsense! Peoples will be the same, it's only government who will change, and outsiders will repeat again and again that people must be set free from it. It was possible to do something in 1932, and you know it pretty well. You now as good that the moment was gone. Ten years ago it might be solved with voting ballots, and we have to pay as "miserable stuff" for it as our lives...
Hannes persuaded me to write a letter to you yesterday when we were on the outlook post. I was hesitating for a week if I write you this letter or not because I thought that suspense might be painful but it leaves a small spark of hope. I thought the same about your fate. Everytime, falling asleep, I understood the whole desperateness of our relationship - between hope and death. But I tried not to think to the end. I might be died many times, but it could be unexpected, sudden. And it's different from this morning, I know what will happen to us, and I feel relief, that's why I want to make you free from the torments of suspense.
I can't deny there is my guilt too in that is happening now, even if it's proportion is 1 to 70 000 000, it's a miserable part, but it exists. I don't try to hide from responsibility, the only one thing excuse me: I can purge by death. But it's no place for trade when you deal with honour.
Augusta! you'll feel the moment when you will have to become strong. Please, don't suffer too much when I'll become a history... I'm not afraid, I just feel sorrow that I can show my courage only by death for this senseless,even flagitious, affair.
Do you remember, X. used to say: "To admit guilt means to wash guilt away".
Please, try not to forget me too fast."
Post was taken from Stalingrad trap by one of the last airplaines, but 7 sacks full of letters had never reached their target. They were confiscated by German command because letters from forefront were bound to lift the spirit od nation not to claim about latter end. These letters were published in "Znamya" ("Standard") magazine in 1990, and they were read from scene at first time by radiojournalist Sergey Arsenjtjev as a part of literary-musical composition "...And Volga burnt".
Post je objavljen 10.02.2013. u 21:39 sati.