Yesterday was May 9. I know this date probably doesn’t mean much to you, but for anyone growing up in Russia that’s Victory Day, the celebration of victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
As always, Russians celebrated with a military parade (this year’s was the largest ever with over 10,000 soldiers and representatives of veterans from other Allied armies).
The Israeli media covered the local angle by interviewing Red Army veterans living here. As I listened to their recollections, I remember another veteran, who is no longer with us, my grandfather.
Grandfather continued carrying silent reminders of his wartime experiences until his last day. Besides a limp and a hearing impediment, valiantly “earned” while liberating Poland, like many veterans, he always wore several military decorations on the lapel of his jacket. Despite our family’s deep scorn for expressions of Soviet patriotism, these decorations were such an integral part of who he was, that after his death my mother risked smuggling the medals out of the country.
If I would have to pick one trait that was special to my grandfather, it was his desire to make people feel good. Whenever he saw someone dejected, he’d pull a bill out of the pocket and tell the person to go buy something for himself. “Don’t eat alone; you’ll choke,” was one of his favorite expressions. ”Be a mentsch,” was the other.
When our son was born, the only boy born in the family in more than a decade since grandfather’s passing, the choice of name was obvious. It wasn’t until several weeks later that we noticed that the child’s birthday coincided with grandfather’s yertzeit. What a fitting way for grandfather to smile at us from above.