Dedicated to M. L.

The Monk Yaviga

An immigrant told me about her mother. With her consent, I bring this story as if from the first person – her mother. My harsh language of the poster.

Almost at the end of the Great Patriotic War, I graduated from the medical institute and in the new form of a lieutenant of the medical service arrived at the appointment in a division hospital. The hospital was located in a female Catholic monastery in a newly liberated Polish town.

The commander of the hospital, the colonel of the medical service, he is also the chief surgeon, established a good and trusting relationship with the abbey of the monastery. By agreement with her, part of the main hall for worship and the side sides of the church were separated by a wooden fence for the hospital. True, not to the high corner of the church, but to a height of only two and a half meters. The wounded had the opportunity to listen to the organ play, Mass and singing of the choir, but the believers could sweeten the hearing with the stones and matyugs of the neighbors.

The monks became freelancers and nurses. The hospital temporarily accepted them in the state and put them to satisfaction. If needed, they were given medical care and given medicines. And - importantly - with their presence, the Soviet military guarded the monastery from the maroders and bandits, these chacals of the war - the territory was only liberated from the Germans, the front went kilometers to 60-80. The recovering soldiers also helped in monastic farming, performed all kinds of male work. Unfortunately, except for the main thing: with this our Colonel was strict. The female staff of the hospital was placed in cellars, when allocated, and when jointly with the nuns.

And in general, our colonel was a man closed, rough, with red eyes from lack of sleep - he stood at the surgical table in two shifts, and if there were many wounded, then all three. Yes, unlike the rest of the command, he did not have a PPJ - a field marriage wife, although the man was not old at all, visible from himself, and at the same time we all have a father, a god and a military chief. Many doctors and sisters laid their eyes on him, scratched their lips and openly washed him, but he laid on it and became an unattainable tide for everyone.

It was said that his family was missing - his mother and wife with two children. In the lists of those destroyed in the concentration camps compiled with German pedantry, they have not yet been found. He still had hope, in one of the revelations of the lady who stumbled on him he spoke - he believes in the sign, if no one contacted, the family will be found.

In fact, the people around me considered me a beauty, when I appeared in the young men began to shine their eyes, and they began to jump around with goats. Older people pulled up their stomachs and became softer, kinder and somewhere even more romantic. When I stood before the red eyes of my chief, in the new form of a lieutenant of the medical service for its passage, the colonel only looked at my direction, drizzly wished success.

I was even slightly overwhelmed by this approach, and while I was curious, my boss, without any sentiment there, brought me to a doctor-therapist, experienced - as a professional, but a young by age, sympathetic captain of the medical service. Our task was preliminary sorting of wounded and post-operative care. I began to fulfill my medical duties with diligence, a dream fulfilled for all the years of accelerated training at the Moscow Medical Institute evacuated in the Ural.

And to live I was settled in a cell with a young nun Yadwiga, who worked as a nurse under my direction. A few days later, I noticed strange things in her behavior: she checked if I had fallen asleep, put food in the catch and ran away. She also asked if I had any foods left to give her. Within a few days we had a relationship of trust.

After all, we were peers, worked together and had a certain sympathy for each other. If I was a Komsomol, an athlete, a beauty, then Yadwiga, for sport and Komsomol I do not know, but the beauty was sure. Yes, she went to the monastery, as it turned out, not to get closer to God, but further away from the Gestapo, who suspected her of ties with insurgents.

The Gestapo suspected her not in vain - she was a link between urban subterranean and rural partisans. She managed to escape from the very nose of the Gestapo search managers and disappear from this world. Yadwiga took my oath at the crucifixion, even though she knew I was a Jew, and shared her secret: she hid a Jewish family in an empty cave at the tomb of the church.

The family managed to escape when the partisans were released to the square, which took live fuel for gas furnaces to the concentration camp. They were picked up by good people and brought together with underdogs. Mother and children were hidden in the basements and lofts for some time, until they were entrusted to Yadwiga, who settled in the monastery. And for almost two years, she and other monks dedicated to the mystery have been hiding and supporting this unhappy family.

I immediately had the question - and why Yadzia did not immediately notify of its guardians, our liberators. She admitted - out of fear, suddenly the Germans will return, the war is a matter - today they win, tomorrow - others. Well, she did not believe in the increased power of the already victorious Soviet army, but on this topic, especially as a nun, God is her judge.

And then I had some illumination-prejudice—wasn’t the family of our colonel being sought all over the front? I asked Yadwiga to take me with me - and, oh, a miracle: they were like them, although the name was different, but nothing more was found out, the mother, the supposed wife of the colonel, lost speech and hearing due to a severe injury in the crash of the square, and the boy of six and about three years old girl, shaken by the appearance of a woman in shape, could not clearly answer, the appearance of the appearance of the colonel in the darkness of the cave I did not see. In addition, the family he was looking for included his mother, and this did not fit in composition - another setup.

And yet I persuaded Yadvig to meet with the Colonel. In any case, the prisoners in the cave would be free, he would help them return to their homeland. Yadhya frighteningly agreed, but asked to keep everything in complete secret, if little. In the morning, I struggled to please or disappoint the Colonel, I made everything come to him: and suddenly it was not them?

Yes, and who I am so disturbing the bosses, to apply to the team by team, according to the charter, but the request was very personal. In short, I still decided and, as it was sung in the famous song of the then famous Claudia Shulzenko, "worried and pale," dared:
Comrade Colonel, allow me to address a personal question.
You got married, you quickly snugged up with Nicholas? (The headquarters knows everything about everyone - for the duty of service, the knock in the hospital, as in an exemplary Soviet institution, was perfectly arranged.) And he continued:
Will it last a few months before the end of the war? Okay, what’s there, let’s get short!
- No, Comrade Colonel, I didn't have a snuggle about it - and I explained to him the essence of the matter, and I sent Yadwiga's request for a conspiracy.

He immediately fell out of place:
Do it!! However, the request to comply with all precautions was respected - with the dams and gardens, obeying the masquerade, he headed to the cave. But here the whole of our conspiracy almost flew into the tartaras: the family turned out to be his, and the shouts of joy, the whispers of hysteria, which were carried out from the cave, cannot be transmitted in words. And tears - the fate of the colonel's mother remained unknown, but, most likely, she died - when the square was destroyed or already in a concentration camp.

Then they picked up a sanitary van, hid the family with the colonel in it and, having made a hook to depict the arrival from the station, arrived at the hospital, allegedly the colonel's relatives were found by official channels.

Whatever to say, how happy the commander was, amused, shining of joy, the surrounding piple was not even surprised by the metamorphosis. True, I and Yadwiga he first rushed - why didn't they open up right away? But I forgave and repayed the story: a few months later, he brought me into the extraordinary starleys of the medical service and ordered me to marry Nicholas.

I gladly obeyed the order, I fell in love with Nicholas at first sight, it happened to him too, and his child had grown in me. Thanks to the commander, what had to happen sooner or later happened.

We were united in a church by a beautiful and solemn Catholic rite – Nicholas was an Orthodox atheist, I was the same Jew. The rite was cool, and we had a potify who sanctified our marriage. In the end, God is one, just different religions represent him in their favourable formats. And the marriage certificate of the commander on the court form of the hospital and the subsequent approximately Komsomol wedding released us from the religious sin before atheism.

Nine months later, after the Victory, I gave birth to a boy. Unfortunately, the fruit was large - in the high Nicholas. In order not to risk, they decided to do a caesarean section. Essentially, the operation was carried out by the head of the hospital himself, no one else trusted me. Yes, already in a good German clinic, where our hospital was located before being sent home and dissolved.

What is the fate of our heroes? Yadwiga married the sergeant-driver of the same sanitary van, the Polish Zbyšek, he seemed to be devoted to her mystery, as if with this mystery they had started. I worked as a doctor for more than half a century, grew up to the chief physician of a large Kiev clinic. My Nikolai Ivanovich became a doctor of medical sciences, a professor. We have two children, a senior candidate of medical sciences, a docent, graduated from the doctoral school, works in Kiev Ohmatdet, where the father headed the department. In medicine, this kind of relationship is welcome.

For Yadwiga we achieved the title of the righteous of the peoples of the world, her name, however, a maiden, in the lists of the famous Holocaust Museum Yad-Vashem, she received the certificate of righteousness and a pension from Israel. She has a beautiful family with Zbyšek, three children, grandchildren. The wife of the colonel after many years of persistent treatment, speech and hearing almost recovered. The rescued children also grew up, established their families and became excellent surgeons.

Our youngest daughter in a student exchange program graduated from the Medical School of the University of San Francisco. She married a fellow student, an American Catholic, but for her sake he adopted Judaism. The wedding ceremony was held in the synagogue - to some extent a small religious revenge took place. Although, of course, our American son-in-law never became an Orthodox Jew, he only filled the ranks of paradoxical Jews.

And we all immigrated to our daughter in Auckland, the satellite city of San Francisco. Here she and her husband have a small private clinic, occupying the lower floor of their large home. My husband and I are already retired - in our very old age to pass on the license of an American doctor is unrealistic, and it has long been time to rest, how much we have left!

Several times we visited the monastery that became our native in Poland, without lulling for donations... Unfortunately, despite the place of the main events in our lives - the monastery, no one of us believed in God, but believed in the justice of coincidence, which brought so many good people and fully endowed them with happiness.