Post #2552

#FacesOfVictory 🌟#Victory80: During the battle of Berlin on April 30, 1945, Red Army soldier Nikolay Masalov rescued a German little girl — by risking his life, Masalov took the kid to safety from the zone that was under heavy Nazi fire. This brave and honourable deed by Nikolay Masalov was immortalised in the worldwide famous 'Liberator Soldier' monument in Berlin. It was unveiled back in 1949 in Treptower Park, where over 7,000 Red Army soldiers, who perished in the Battle of Berlin, are entombed. The centrepiece of that famous memorial complex, the figure of a Soviet soldier holding a German girl, has become a symbol of the noble mission of the Red Army, which saved Europe from the 'Nazi plague', and of the Great Victory of the Soviet people over Nazi Germany. *** In the morning of April 30, 1945, before the Red Army attack on a Nazi defence outpost, the Tempelhof Airport, Nikolay Masalov heard a child crying. Marshall Vassily Chuikov recalled in his memoirs: “The kid’s voice sounded as if it came from under the ground, calling out again and again a word that is understandable to everyone, ‘Mutter, Mutter’.” Nikolay Masalov hurried to rescue the kid. Risking his life, the soldier crawled across a bridge over the Landwehr Canal, which was under enemy fire, and saved a three-year-old girl. He found her near the body of her mother, who had been killed by the Nazis during the shelling. Masalov took the girl and moved back to the Soviet positions, which the enemy kept under heavy machine-gun fire. In return, the Soviet forces had to opened artillery fire on the Nazi positions. “Thousands of artillery guns and mortars opened fire at the enemy. Thousands of shells and mines covered the return of the Soviet soldier rescuing a three-year-old German girl from the death zone,” — this is how Marshall Chuikov wrote later in his memoirs about Masalov’s heroic feat. People all around the world knew about Nikolay Masalov, a humble Soviet soldier and a legendary #WWII veteran. But he never considered his heroism as something extraordinary. He did not like speaking about it, and when he did, he did not talk much: 💬 “I am a Russian soldier. Anyone would do the same in my place.” #WeAreProud