This
icon of the “Kazan” Mother of God with the
words partially worn away in Latin letters, “Eta
ikona budet hranit was wsu schizn,” adorns the
Church of the Joy of All Who Sorrow in St. Petersburg.
One of the church’s parishioners told its amazing
story.
One day, an old woman came into the church and waved her
arms when she saw the Kazan icon of the Mother of God.
“Where did that icon come from? I gave it to a
German soldier!” She exclaimed in amazement. I
recognize it by a characteristic dent in the frame.”
I explained that this icon was given to the church by the
German Consulate in our city. The woman broke into tears,
said that her name was Vera, and told the story of how her
Orthodox family icon ended up in Germany.
“I fled my native village, which ended up in the
center of the battles. I wanted to leave with my sister
and three children earlier, but mama fell seriously ill,
and wouldn’t have survived the journey. ‘I
will come later,’ I promised my sister, sending her
with the children to a place near Ryazan, where our aunt
lived in a collective farm village. Mama died a month
later, but before her death was able to bless me with the
family icon of the “Kazan” Mother of God. My
reposed grandfather in his time had blessed my mother
before her wedding, and mama blessed Sasha and me with it
fifteen years ago, even though my husband was in the
Komsomol. Now the icon lay in my threadbare refugee bag. I
myself sat down under the awning of one of the station
freight houses, watching the crazy dance of whirling snow.
I couldn’t think about anything; I only tried to
shove my fingers into the narrow sleeves of a light
overcoat. Cold and hunger—that was all I could feel.
Now a train rumbled up to the station, the doors of the
cars opened, and the Fritzes stood in ranks handing long
boxes along to each other. ‘They’ve brought
weapons,’ the indifferent thought crossed my mind.
But then suddenly I felt a painful stab: “It’s
going to the front! Where my Sasha is fighting! They will
shoot at him with those rifles, and at other Russian
soldiers… Oh, the cursed ones!’
“It is strange, but the German patrols paid no
attention to me, a lonely woman, emaciated with hunger. I
don’t even remember when I had eaten last. I had
long ago traded my watch, wedding ring, and mama’s
earrings for food. I ran my hand over the brass frame
behind the frosty cloth of the bag. ‘O Intercessor,
Most Holy Mother of God!’ I whispered with my frozen
lips. ‘Save and guard my little ones, my sister
Nadya. Save and guard my husband, slave of God, soldier
Alexander.’
“’Vat? Somzing wrong?’ came the words
just above my ear. I raised my head. Next to the bench
stood a German soldier. I could feel sympathy in his
words, and answered, “It’s bad.” The
German sat down next to me. He set his bulging knapsack on
the ground, fished around in it for a bit, then held out
his hand. ‘Nimmt!’ There was a square piece of
bread on which a slice of lard lay all pink. I took the
gift and devoured it. The German pulled out a thermos,
poured some steaming tea into the lid, and said,
‘Heiss! Gut!’ Probably he was part of the
watch here at the station. He looked about twenty years
old, blue-eyed. His face was guileless. Probably his hair
was light colored, like my son’s, Andreika’s,
only you couldn’t see it under his cap.
“The German pointed to the train engine, then at me,
and comically furrowing his brow, apparently trying to
find the word, asked, ‘Far?’ “Far! Now I
won’t make it there!’ I immediately started
telling him that I had hoped to go to my aunt’s but
was now left without anything. Ending my story I said,
‘I have children there. Kinder. Understand? I traced
with my hands, from high to low. The lad nodded,
‘Oh, ja, Kinder!’ ‘But I won’t
reach them. I’ll just freeze.’ I wasn’t
even aware that I was crying. The German again reached
into his knapsack and pulled out a weighty package.
‘Here. Take.” He opened the package and
touched its contents, then licked his finger and said,
‘Gut!’ There was salt in the package.
Salt… which was then worth more than gold. For salt
you could get bread, milk, well, anything… There
was no less than three kilograms in the package. And here
he was just handing it over to me, a completely unknown
Russian woman. Seeing the shock on my face, the lad smiled
and said something I didn’t understand. Then he
rose, screwed the lid onto his thermos, put it back in the
knapsack, waved his hand, and left.
“’Stop!’ I ran after the soldier.
“Was ist es? ‘This icon will guard you all
your life,’ I said with firm assurance. He
didn’t understand. Again I said, ‘This icon
will guard you all your life!’ The lad pulled a
chemical pencil out of his pocket, wetted it with spittle,
and turning over the board asked me to say it again. As I
repeated it slowly, syllable by syllable, he wrote it down
on the back of the icon in Latin letters: ‘Eta ikona
budet hranit was wsu schizn’. We never met
again… But I was able to trade the salt for warm
clothes, felt boots, and bread, and I reached Ryazan. In
’45 my husband, Sasha, returned from the war.”
After listening attentively to the agitated woman, I
joyfully told her that what we had heard from the
representatives at the German consulate who had given the
Kazan icon to our church. That German soldier went through
the entire war. His comrades died before his eyes; once a
truck that he was riding in exploded, but he was able to
jump out of it only a moment before the explosion. The
rest perished. At the end of the war, a shell hit their
dugout, which he had abandoned just a twinkling before.
The unseen power of the Russian icon had surely saved him.
He now understood and reevaluated very much his life, and
his soul opened up to prayer. He returned home, married,
and raised his children. He placed the icon in a beautiful
glass case in a place of honor in his home, and prayed
before it all his life. When he grew old, he commanded his
oldest son to take the icon to the Russian consulate after
his death. “This icon lived in Russia and should
return there. Let them take it to Leningrad, the city that
withstood the blockade, dying from cold and hunger, but
not surrendering.”
That is how in the mid 1990’s, to one of the
newly-reopened churches of St. Petersburg, where the
rector at the time was Archpriest Alexander Chistyakov,
came the small icon of the “Kazan” Mother of
God with a strange inscription in Latin letters on the
back.
04 / 11 / 2014
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