The last family club meeting was held on the eve of the 65th anniversary of the great Victory and the topic was self explaining "The song helped us fighting…" Authors of many war songs are unknown because they were created by solders and military correspondents became co-authors. Solders made songs about heroism but most often about what they were missing - home, native places, mothers, and girl friends. What is interesting that most of well-known touching songs were written by our people - Jews.

Who does not know these songs: "In a front-line forest" and "Light" by Mikhail Isakovskiy; "My Moscow" by Mark Lisyanskiy, "Solders are coming" by Mikhail Lvovskiy; "Wait for me" by Konstantin Simonov, "On the unknown hill" by Mikhail Matusovskiy and music by Matvey Blantner, Veniamin Basner, and Isaak Dunayevskiy? The song "In a dugout" became one of the favorite songs of solders and those who were waiting them at home. Poet Alexey Surkov wrote to his wife a 16- line poem in a letter at the end of November in 1941 after a very hard day when he had to fight through the encirclement. These lines would have remained a part of a personal letter if it had not been for the composer Konstantin Listov who, in February of 1942, came to the military editorial house and asked for new materials to write a song. Surkov recollected his poem he had sent home in a letter, found it in his note book and gave to Listov. This is how our favorite song was born.

At a very difficult time, in the fall of 1941, Mark Lisyanskiy wrote in his note book "My dear capital, my golden Moscow!" The poem was published at a magazine in December of 1941. When Composer Isaak Dunayevskiy saw the poem he composed the music immediately and put it down on the margins of magazine. This is how the song was born which became a Moscow anthem a few years later. While when Lisyanskiy was creating the poem, fascists could see Moscow streets in their binoculars.

These songs are well known to us. Somebody would just sing the first line and immediately everybody else joined to sing together. We listen to the songs with tears in our eyes. The great Patriotic War affected everybody in our Family Club: all people have relatives killed at the war or who died because of war wounds after the war. We will always remember how difficult the Victory was, what price we have paid for it. We express our sincere gratitude from the bottom of our hearts to the veterans!

Ida Bukina