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Grandfather and his Grandson
One day in the early 1990s, I heard his interview on Ukrainian radio. This unusual and sincere story has been engraved in my memory for many years. He was born in 1934 in Volyn, in western Ukraine. At that time the territory belonged to the Polish Republic. Volyn remained a part of Poland until 1939, and all his family members had Polish citizenship. While not affluent, the family still lived a happy life until the outbreak of World War II. His father served in the Polish cavalry. One of the brightest and happiest memories of his childhood was the bicycle that dad once brought as a gift from Warsaw. But the most important person in the family was, of course, his grandfather. The virtues of his character combined great life experience, closeness to folk roots and folk wisdom, a sensitive understanding of nature and deep religiosity. Grandfather was the wisest and most intelligent man in the world. He had only two books in his house: the Holy Bible and a book by the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.
Hearing about these details, I involuntarily thought: one would have been enough. If you have a Bible, then you have all the poetry written in the past and probably will still be written in the future.
“My grandfather was a religious man. He used to go out every Sunday in the summer, there was a bench by the house, and he would sit down and read the Bible. Then his eyes became…