Two of the Twenty Million

“I saw them on the day of the thirtieth anniversary of Victory— the defenders and prisoners of the Adzhimushkay catacombs.
They sat on the mutilated Adzhimushkay land, keeping the memory of their fallen comrades,
Out of many, many thousands, only twenty-four people survived—by miracle.
Every year on the seventh and eighth of May they come to Kerch and spend a few days together.
Relatives of the dead also arrive here—in those terrible one hundred and seventy days and nights of 1942— to the local stone quarries.
Today, one of the entrances to the quarries leads into the underground Museum of Glory, to the mass grave of the heroes.
All year round people come here; countless excursions arrive from all corners of the country, and the slabs over the mass grave are constantly piled high with mountains of flowers.
And on the ninth of May—every year on the ninth—those twenty-four descend to the underground mass grave. They turn off the miners’ lamps and stand in the dark, silently remembering the dead.”