When they go to their deaths, they sing,

and before that, you can cry…

On March 5, 1922, the Soviet poet was born, whose work is not studied in schools, but his poems are known and appreciated by those for whom the Great Patriotic War is not an empty phrase, but a Memory. Semyon Gudzenko.

A few weeks after the start of the war, a nineteen-year-old IFLI student, Gudzenko, volunteered for the OMSBON, a separate motorized rifle brigade of special purpose, which was formed for reconnaissance and sabotage operations. It was a completely new elite unit for our army.

Already in November 1941, riot police were thrown into the occupied territory in small detachments. After being seriously wounded, Semyon served in the editorial office of the newspaper Pobeda za Nami, and then Suvorov Onslaught, starting in June 1942. He passed through the Carpathians and Hungary. He met the victory in Budapest.

Now, more than ever, the lines from the poet’s poem are relevant:

“A great country will not kneel.

You can never make slaves out of Russians…”