On April 30, 1945, during street fighting during the storming of Berlin, Senior Sergeant Nikolai Masalov saved a three-year-old German girl by carrying her out of the firing zone.

Hearing a child crying, Masalov ran to the bridge. He soon disappeared from the sight of our forward patrols. The Germans, noticing the sergeant, began shooting. Nikolai’s comrades, without speaking, prepared to throw, as they could not leave their colleague in trouble. And then the Hero’s voice came from the other side of the channel, asking them to cover him with fire. Nikolai Masalov, a guardsman, was running towards our positions through a whirlwind of bullets and shrapnel, clutching a little girl to his chest.

On May 8, 1949, a monument known to everyone was unveiled in Berlin’s Treptow Park, at the burial site of several thousand Soviet soldiers. In his invariable tunic and raincoat, a Soviet soldier gently hugs a German girl to his chest. Nikolai Masalov, unknowingly, became the prototype of one of the most famous memorials dedicated to the Great Patriotic War.

@rf_history