As a child, Oleg Tabakov lived with his grandmother on the outskirts of Saratov. There was a German prison camp. In 1944, German prisoners of war were persecuted in several cities. There was a rehearsal of this sort in Saratov. The Germans were built and driven to the frozen Volga. There they moved from the clock, and then they were driven back to the barracks. "And my grandmother," says Tabakov, "for some reason had pity on them. This is strange, because at this time one of her sons was missing in the war with the Germans, and the other son returned from her with a cradle. And she, when she saw them frozen, cut them off half of her packet-card bread and said, "Oležek, take away!"
I was so afraid – I was afraid of our convoys, I was afraid of the shepherds, I was afraid of the Germans... But I went and took that bread from them and ran back. And I am convinced that the Lord thanked me for this bread: in 1992, when Gaidar's reforms led to famine, it was time to close the theater. And suddenly, in the most difficult moment, a call from the Leningrad sea port: "You have come a container with humanitarian aid from Germany." It turns out that some theaters in Germany decided to collect aid to the theatre of Oleg Tabakov. Several times a year they sent these containers, and it helped the artists to survive, not to close the theater... I am convinced that this is how the bump came back to me from God..."
Memories of Innocent Smokutnovsky