Russian Veterans of World War II

In April 2008, the Russian Studies Program and the Slavic Community Center of Saint Paul hosted a special reception for four Russian veterans of World War II at Russian House in culmination of a semester-long independent project.

In this project, eight Macalester students (Charles Ballard, Siarhei Biareishyk, Sarah Dicks, Luke Franklin, David Godow, Marisa Raether, Shannon Thorson, and Rhiannon Tippery) studied WWII from the point of view of the Soviet soldiers and officers who fought on several fronts and others who endured life in ghettos and concentration camps.

The students then translated a collection of WWII memoirs from Russian into English: The War Didn't Break Them: Recollections of Minnesota WWII Veterans (ed. Gedaly Meerovich, Minneapolis, Slavic Community Center, 2006). The students first translated sections in pairs, and then edited each others' translations, creating an online dictionary of difficult words (on Moodle) in the process. The Slavic Community Center plans to publish the translation to bring the veterans' stories to a wider audience.