Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Marina Akhmedova
[REGNUM] In the most desperate hours of August 2024, when Sudzha was being captured by the enemy army, many people showed themselves to be absolutely heroic, evacuating the townspeople and - under shelling and explosions - returning for more.
One of the first and most fearless rescuers was the rector of the Trinity Church, Fr. Evgeny (Shestopalov). At first, he hid the children in the church, then tirelessly took them to safe places. Some of Fr. Evgeny's parishioners are no longer alive.
Father Evgeny told the editor-in-chief of the Regnum news agency Marina Akhmedova about his experiences - and how he tried to explain everything that happened to himself. How did people behave during the occupation? Why is it easier for a believer to survive in extreme conditions? How can one rid the soul of hatred? And what is it like to serve in a church, in the basement of which are the remains of several hundred victims of a terrible war?
NOT FEAR, BUT BEWILDERMENT
— Friends, good afternoon. Today we are finally visiting the priest whom I have been wanting to visit since August of last summer. But it was impossible because he was in Sudzha during the Ukrainian Armed Forces offensive. This is Father Evgeny, the rector of the Trinity Church in Sudzha.
Father Evgeny, I have the simplest questions. How did the offensive begin for you?
— I’ll tell you the main things. At three o’clock in the morning, between five and six, a siren sounded. Although we had long been accustomed to the sounds of sirens, explosions, drones flying overhead, we immediately woke up with the feeling that something was wrong.
Four houses burned down in June — it was, apparently, a test run. And indeed, the attacks began right around the temple. At about six in the morning, we went out, the children with me. We looked at the destroyed houses near the sanitary and epidemiological station, talked to the neighbors.
And we decided to take a broom and sweep the street. Because everything was covered, it was impossible to drive a car: glass, nails, boards, stones.
And we had such a good intention: to sweep the street.
— To leave?
— No, just to restore order. No one was going to leave. I got in the car and drove around the city. We saw that the court was destroyed, the prosecutor's office was hit directly. The National Guard was burning. An apartment building on our square…
— What does a person feel who has lived his whole life in his city and has seen this?
— There was misunderstanding, honestly. There was no fear. There was bewilderment and a premonition of something very bad. And when we started taking children from the neighborhood, I realized that there were no options: we had to open a church. My church is old, from 1812. The walls are massive, the vaults are powerful.
- Why not run away?
— We thought it would all pass right now. Well, two or three hours, maybe a day or two. But we had a premonition that it was not without reason. There had never been such a massive shelling. Fourteen hours of non-stop artillery and mortar work. We heard the takeoff and then, two or three seconds later, the landing. We climbed the bell tower, tried to find a connection. There was no water, gas, electricity. I jumped out, drove to Soldatskoye, bought bread, water, came back, gave it to people. Then I realized that I had to leave. And on the seventh we began to evacuate people.
— Why didn’t you go yourself?
— The task was to save children, invalids, old people who were hiding in my church. Their houses were already burning there in Zaoleshenka.
— And did you record a video then?
— Yes, I recorded a video. I posted it later, in my group, when I climbed the hill and there was a connection, out of a desire to warn people, to tell them that everything is really scary, and that we have a place where they can save themselves. There were only 200 people in my group. These are my city parishioners. It so happened that the video spread and I was seen everywhere, all over Russia.
But that's not the point. Hiding in the temple was no longer safe. We spent the night, cooked on a fire. We fed everyone. I went to Soldatskoye several times, and that's where I sent it from. I just didn't know that the video wouldn't reach anyone, because there was no connection in all of Sudzha. And my group only included Sudzhans. And the people who saw this video were those who had already left Sudzha. Well, that's good. They should have known what was going on.
And as soon as I showed up at Bolshoy Soldatskoye, the calls started: Father, take those away, help these leave. Addresses started coming in, hundreds of addresses - who stayed where. Parents, grandfathers, grandmothers, some grandmothers with children. It was impossible to read, to perceive, to comprehend. I realized: the scale of the tragedy was such that the whole world would now know about Sudzha.
I was returning closer to evening, taking people away - everyone we could take out of the temple, we took out. The guys from the Patriot center helped us, the head of the city Vitaly Slashchev took the children out in his car. Many people had the opportunity and courage to go, they also picked up and took out. There were many people, well, and we were among them.
HEART ATTACK ON LEGS
— And when you received these hundreds of requests, you didn’t say to yourself: this is too much, I’m just a human being, I can’t handle this. I have to leave myself…
— It was a shame to refuse.
- And in front of whom?
- In front of people. They saw me as the only way to connect.
— And why did they see salvation in the priest?
— Probably because I was returning. And on the 7th, when I was driving from Bolshoe Soldatskoe around five o’clock, I came across an armored personnel carrier with ten Ukrainian servicemen with blue armbands on their sleeves. We just met eyes like that. And I realized that the enemy had already completely occupied the entire city. That was August 7th.
— How did you perceive these people?
— It was fine. They met us at the dam with machine guns, they jumped out of the bushes so rudely. I explain: I am a priest, although I am sitting in a T-shirt, imagine, it is hot. I am leading parishioners out of Sudzha. They swore, threatened that if they saw us again they would shoot us, all obscenities. But they let us go, they did nothing. That is, probably, some people still had something human.
- And when was there no longer anything human?
— We saw the consequences. Burnt cars, people shot on the road, soldiers killed in cars. Here, very young boys. Well, for example, here is a situation. It was a second, a split second: from the side of the road we saw just legs, children's, in tights. It was a girl. I can't say for sure, because in those moments and even now a lot of things are remembered as if in a fog.
— And you didn’t complain then?
- I grumbled. What are you talking about? I grumbled at the government, at the army, I swore at everyone.
— And what about God?
- No, I didn't complain about God. Somehow that didn't happen.
— And how did you explain to yourself these little children’s legs in tights?
— I was even afraid to think about it. Yes, I probably had a heart attack on my feet somewhere around those days. Apparently, adrenaline, a feeling of fear and the state you are in, it somehow played a role. I didn’t even notice that I had a heart attack.
- Look, we are sitting here, it seems to me that nothing could be more beautiful than this spring blossoming, the trees are just beginning to blossom. And in this world, on the side of the road, there are children's legs in tights. How can all this be brought together?
— In soul. I think we were all given this test. Everyone. We didn’t understand it right away. There were a lot of questions, especially from people, well, not close to the church. One, just one question: why? Why? Children, old people, women, who certainly didn’t fight with anyone, who may have relatives somewhere in Ukraine. They probably even have some connections, because we live in the border zone. Why? We couldn’t find answers then.
God thinks differently than we do.
— Do you think there will ever be an answer?
- Well, I probably found it. Apparently, because of our sins. So that we would understand differently where we live... One person from Sudzha said wonderful words: "We are the happiest people. We now have only what we are given. Because everything we had, the Lord took from us. And we must get used to it."
And he didn't just take away material things - he simply took out the soul. Because the Motherland is not a house, not a garden, not a farm that you are used to. You understand, it is much more. It is people, atmosphere, relationships.
I have never seen a better place than Sudzha, I simply have not seen one. I am not from Sudzha. I was born in the North Caucasus and grew up in the city of Kurchatov. From there I joined the army. Worked at a nuclear power plant. And from there I entered the university. And only then did I end up in Sudzha. But for me, this is my homeland.
Our great actor Yevgeny Leonov once said some wonderful, simple to the point of ugliness words about the homeland as the unity of the people. If very different people strive for unity, they are invincible. Maybe I am taking it out of context, but that is how I remember it.
And here it is indeed. We meet Sudzhans in Kursk, with whom in Sudzha, perhaps, we would not have greeted. And here we hug each other, cry.
- And Sudzha is dear to everyone.
— To the question "For what?" My first thought as a believer: for sins. We have sinned before God somewhere. That's one. And secondly, we have stopped appreciating what the Lord has given us. I speak for myself, I can't speak for everyone.
Deaths are in God's hands. We will never understand this. God thinks differently than we do. Maybe he protected our relatives and friends who died in Sudzha from some sins. Although good, wonderful people, believers, died. The same Slavik Kazak, the same Yura, a former Makhnovist, a villager, who came to my church. I can name many people. The same boys who lived next to us, Sasha, Vanya, Maxim.
— Why did they die?
- They were simply shot. Some for breaking curfew, some for something else.
ON EARTHLY AND DIVINE JUSTICE
— This is the moment of faith, which is quite difficult to understand… There is a parable about Job, from whom the Lord took everything, and then rewarded him with everything. But how? You can return the land, wealth, home. But children? To replace children with others, some people with others, I could never understand that.
— You know, God is unfair. He has no justice. Justice is purely human, invented by people. Let us recall the parable of the workers. People who endured the heat and toil and labor all day received as much as a man who came and worked for one hour. Yes, the Lord rewarded everyone equally. And then those people who worked all day were indignant and asked: “Lord, why is this so?” And God says: “I want it this way.”
Where is justice? It is God's will. He decided so. And with time we may understand something for ourselves, why he decided so. Why we, in particular, lived through all this, endured it. Maybe Sudzhi has some future purpose that we don't know yet.
And again, when I say that God is unfair, I know what I am talking about. God's will is not always accessible to human understanding. How God thinks, we really don't know. That's why faith is needed.
— And love?
— I love God. I know that everything, sooner or later, is for our good. We won’t understand it now.
- At that moment, of course, I didn’t understand it either. When you were hiding, when Slavik and Sashka were shot…
- No, we cried, worried, were angry, indignant. But no one complained about God. Not even my loved ones. We were offended by our army, which for some reason withdrew its troops from Sudzha. There was no one to protect us. There were boys on the border, against whom there were several brigades of well-armed enemies. They simply crushed all defenses, which in fact did not exist.
We understand that the Lord does not send us trials beyond our strength. But at the time, it didn't seem that way to us, to me for example. In some places it was scary, excuse me, to the point of shitting - from these sounds, from the whistle of shrapnel. From the sight of tanks we drove past, from enemies with blue armbands. I didn't see their faces, because everything was erased, everything was kind of blurred.
There was a situation when in the last days we were returning to Sudzha through Makhnovka. It was either August 11 or 12 already. Our helicopter tried to stop us - to warn us that we should not go there. It hovered above us and released heat charges above us. Do you know how scary it was! We even saw the pilots' faces... But we went anyway.
— But is there some kind of presence of God in this? It’s scary, you can’t go back there, and the body may not obey: the will is embedded inside.
— Well, who did we rely on when we were driving back every day? We were returning late at night, because we were trying to take the last people not just to the point where they were picked up, but to take them to Kursk, and, well, deliver them to their loved ones. We went to bed late. In the morning we woke up, drank coffee, got in, filled up the car, and drove back again.
- This cannot be explained rationally in any way. Only by this manifestation of God in man.
— Yes, you overcome yourself. You understand, you think, well, that's it. Family and friends are here. The worst thing that could happen has already happened. We already have everything: there is no city, there is nothing. But there are people we can help. So, we have to go. Well, that's it. You overcome yourself, and then the fear disappears.
When you are already in the city, some kind of unhealthy, I would even say, excitement appears. Probably adrenaline, the effect of this hormone.
NARROWING OF SPACE
— And how did the space feel? Here is the garden where we are now sitting quietly. The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming — a real blessing. But if we imagine that the enemy is approaching: the picture is completely different. We will perceive both the sun and the flowers differently. Does the space change?
— It changes a lot. It narrows in the literal sense. You don’t pay attention to anything: here is the target, you are flying towards it, a turn here, a turn there. God has no space, no time. And I’ll tell you straight: someone must have been leading us, leading us right there. We stopped exactly one and a half meters from the mines. We drove past the tanks. The military told us: don’t even think about driving, equipment just fired at us. And then the soldier looked at us like this: aren’t you a priest? Then drive. Pray, he said, and drive.
- Our little soldier?
- Ours. They say: we are leaving our positions, we were ordered to retreat. They were driving back, and we were driving there to jump out into the city. The guys from the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade forbade us to go. They said: guys, well, you won’t get through, they’ll just shoot you. We went along a different road, and there were tanks here. We drove past them, thank God.
And when Natalya Mikhailovna and I jumped out of Makhnovka, and a column of these enemies came towards us. So leisurely, they weren’t afraid of anything! They felt like they were at home. These machine guns were on top. There were probably six cars. And we were this little box, a black car in an open field. Now he’ll turn around, give a burst, there’ll be nothing left of us… Natalya Mikhailovna sits and says: yes, I’m ready. And her mother, who is 96 years old, said: “What’s wrong with you, Natasha, I want to live!”
That's it. And that's it. And they suddenly turned onto Konopelka, didn't see us. And we followed them out onto the Belgorodskaya highway and headed towards Belitsa. Also a miracle. For me, for example, it's a miracle that the Lord simply led us away. It's amazing. There are many such unusual moments.
The space narrows: as if there is some kind of narrow path.
- And what is this path of yours now?
— Now — just to return to the temple. With a prayer, so that prayer would sound in ours. After all, let's say, there were no eight months. I was there on Great Friday, sang the troparion before the Shroud.
— You now understand more about God than you did before this offensive?
— On the contrary. Less. Now I will tell you honestly: I know nothing. I stood at the altar for 33 years. I thought that I was just like that, a more or less understanding, somewhere a little educated priest, believing to the best of my ability. I have not stopped believing, but I know that I know nothing. I have not stopped loving God. I understand that He loves me. And we are people, we love as if under certain conditions. But divine love, it is unconditional. It is eternal.
- If it is unconditional, then these are the people who killed the little girl, shot Sashka and Slavka. It turns out that God will forgive them anyway, right?
- I can't say anything about forgiveness. It's His prerogative.
- But he probably loves them too?
- Of course he does. And he deprived them of their minds only because of his love. I think so. Because people who go and kill innocent civilians trying to save themselves from their own weapons, from their own invasion - they are deprived of their minds. Their God has already abandoned them. He did not stop loving them, he simply deprived them of their minds. This is pure madness. It is difficult to explain and understand. It must be taken for granted.
This is how He arranged our life for us. Both ours and the lives of those people who are now in heaven.
Apti Aronych ( Alaudinov. - Ed.) said: after so many years of war, I have become accustomed to death. That's what he said: "accustomed to death." I say: Apti Aronych, how can one become accustomed to death? How can one become accustomed when even a person who has logically come to the end, well, let's say, as a result of an incurable disease, dies - you still can't come to terms with it, everything in your soul is torn apart. He says, well, somehow I am calmed.
— And you?
- Oh, come on, I'm scared. I've committed so many sins that it's just scary to imagine how to pray for them all before God.
DIDN'T LOSE THE SENSE OF GOD AND SENSE OF HUMOR
- How is that? You've done so much, you've taken so many people away. Rarely would a person go there. Don't you feel that you've been cleansed of some sins?
- No, no, what are you saying, no. On the contrary, I realized that I was a more sinful person. I realized that I didn’t live like that, I didn’t pray like that. And now I don’t live like that, and now I don’t pray like that.
I talked to people who remained there, in Sudzha, under occupation. So I divided them into several categories.
First: people strictly, rigidly observed all the fasts, all the morning and evening rules. They prayed. They did not lose their sense of humor, did not lose their sense of God, their understanding of what was happening. Yes, they also saw death. But the Lord protected them because of these prayers. They did not even know that hundreds of corpses were lying all over Sudzha.
— Didn't leave the house?
— They went out. They looked for water, got it somewhere. They helped other people. But prayer! Prayer, supported by faith, it somehow protected them. And the Lord protected them. They are healthy, they have kept their minds.
There were other people. They hid from fear, got drunk and tried to somehow just save themselves. That's it. They were all shell-shocked. They were all on the verge of a mental breakdown.
There are people who, well, being atheists, also prayed, but in their own way. Maybe God accepted their prayers in his own way, because they did it from the heart. They survived because they worked. They cleaned their houses, looked after their neighbors, fed them, protected them. They did their daily work.
— So it was prayer through work?
- Yes, it is a form of salvation in the situation they found themselves in.
And there were also people who decided to do nothing. Just hide, just conceal themselves, survive, eat what was stored in the basement, like mice. These people were the ones who died most often. They were covered, they were pelted with grenades.
— Did they just come in and throw grenades?
— I know of such cases. Yes, simply. And there are some amazing things. They threw grenades into a basement, and there were soldiers there. And they survived. Of course, they were all deafened, wounded, but they survived. They didn’t even check the basement: they thought that after something like that no one could survive there. But they all calmly came out, shell-shocked, but absolutely alive. Somehow you can’t explain that either.
And many people who have left Sudzha now are full of such stories. At first glance, insignificant, but on the other hand, when you think about it and understand that in fact the person was a hair's breadth from death, literally. They take it calmly, they talk.
Many stayed, they don't want to leave anymore. They say: well, ours have already arrived, we'll wait until they finally liberate. Although the risk is high.
— A hair's breadth from death - how does it feel? You were also a hair's breadth from death, what did you feel?
- I didn't feel it. Then you start to analyze and think, well, maybe something would have turned a little bit in him, he was sitting five meters away from me, the safety was probably off. Just pull the trigger - and that's it. Isn't that a hair's breadth from death?
Or when the column was coming out to intercept us. He would have turned towards us. What was stopping him? When we braked in front of the mines, literally intuitively, purely intuitively, we began to brake at a very high speed.
— The residents of Sudzha also performed some kind of spiritual feat. And they were cleansed of hatred.
— And there were those who behaved inappropriately. But that's human. People can't be condemned for that. And there were looters, just like the Ukrainian soldiers, they stole too. I don't condemn them either. Maybe they were trying to somehow escape hunger or they just wanted to make money with impunity, no one would know, no one would see. And who knows what thoughts they had. Honestly, everyone, everyone in Sudzha was on the brink of life and death. Everyone. The fact that they survived, stayed alive, yes, that's what the Lord decided.
THE LORD WILL RESET THEM
- Why don't you have a desire for revenge? I had a very strong desire when I came here in August and realized what was happening.
- Well, I would probably be lying if I said that there was none at all. There was a period when I was overwhelmed with feelings that were not close to hatred, but probably to the desire for just retribution, or something. And then you gradually begin to think: well, who are you? You are not God to decide the fate of people and control their lives. After all, God's will is everything. And one way or another it will be done. And they will get what they deserve. Especially since they began to fight with God, destroying churches, monasteries - Gornalsky, St. Nicholas. It means they have one path. The Lord will nullify them.
- And now it's been going on for so long, he just lets them drink until the end?
— The ways of the Lord are inscrutable. I don’t know, maybe He gives us more time again — to test our patience, our endurance. Or maybe He gives them a chance to come to their senses, to surrender, to realize, to atone for their guilt once again. I don’t know.
— We say: "we". We have to atone, we are patient. But we are not homogeneous. While someone was performing a feat of helping his neighbor, someone was simply stealing. And someone didn't care at all what happened in Sudzha.
- Yes. There were many like that. We were created by God to be different. That is how the Lord created the world. But there are moments when we cannot boast of our differences. On the contrary, we must find common ground and be together. Like in war, in the face of death, like in the trenches, in the dugouts, when Muslims, Buddhists, Orthodox, Catholics are all nearby - all in a single impulse defending the Motherland. Even if it sounds somewhat pathetic now, I really do always talk about this.
Now such concepts as patriotism, love for the Motherland, have acquired meaning, filled with real internal semantics. Finally, these words have gained weight. And we all feel this patriotism, we feel it to the point of goosebumps. It began back in 2022, when the Second World War began. We already realized this back then. We helped our army, we loved it and love it. And we collected money, and wove nets, and fed the boys, and bought them quadcopters, bought radios, weather stations. What we didn’t do for our army!
— They are the ones who believe that the civilians themselves are to blame, they supported their army, which launched an offensive on their territory.
- Well, it's not that simple. For example, I consider Donbass to be Russian. I consider Odessa to be a Russian city. I consider Nikolaev to be a Russian city. I consider Kharkov to be a Russian city. Honestly, I'm not some kind of, I don't know, chauvinist, I don't want to be an invader. But in fact, these are Russian lands, ironically, they ended up in a different legal field. And there is an opportunity to fix this, and for God's sake, I'm all for it.
— And even at the cost of such suffering that Sudzha endured?
— Sudzha really suffered for nothing. But it is not for us to judge. Not in military terms, not in psychological terms, not in spiritual terms. There is a lot of destruction. Magnificent temples have been destroyed. Not every city can boast such temples as we have in the Sudzhansky district. And they are destroyed. We will restore them. We will return and do even better.
- But you won’t bring the people back.
— And we will return people. Those individuals whom we lost — they did not die. We are believers, we understand that they are all with God. And if with God, then they are with us.
The Church is one, but there is a militant Church and a triumphant Church. The triumphant Church is in heaven: our ancestors, our saints, our relatives and friends who have now left us, who were shot, are there. They are all in the Church, only in that one.
And here is the militant church, where we still walk on the earth with our feet, wear our mortal bodies, and, unfortunately, sin. But we all have the opportunity to do something to tell the whole world that we are one.
Just as the church is one, triumphant and militant, so we all in our nation, in our country must say and show the whole world that we are united. They will shit themselves when they understand that we are all together. They will be scared shitless when they understand that we are together: both Muslims and Orthodox. And people who are generally, so to speak, without religion, but they still go into battle for the Motherland.
— We will probably approach the bottom of the cup of our trials when we learn to feel like we are in the same trench...
— Yes! When we all understand that we are all in the same trench, everything will change. This corruption that we are mired in will go away. The authorities will eventually become closer to the people, this is already happening — a conversation between the people and the authorities. Even in our region — everything is changing before our eyes, everything is coming to some amazing state. We feel it, we see it, we are waiting for these changes. We are happy to make some contacts, because we are heard, we are listened to.
I'M IN DEEP TROUBLE!
— Why did you become a priest?
— By chance (laughs). I was unbaptized, was into Eastern beliefs, a little bit of Blavatsky and all sorts of occult things. Well, in general, I was confused in life, understanding that there was something. And suddenly I meet a person who knows. And he spoke about it in such a way that I believed him. This is Father Nikolai Germansky, he still serves in Rakitnoye, God bless him. A wonderful priest. He baptized me, brought me to faith, and then introduced me to Bishop Juvenaly.
And with his light hand, suddenly I — without an education, without anything, a student of the journalism department of Voronezh University — became a priest. He said that we need educated priests. I took two weeks of pastoral courses, two weeks — and became a priest. Although I came to him to ask for a blessing to leave the university. I thought that I would live somewhere near a church, ring bells, read books, take care of myself. Well, I wanted an easy life…
I arrived like an apostle to a bare spot and realized: wow, I’m in deep trouble… And then I immediately felt that, it turns out, the Lord also gives strength. And what strength…
— If only then, thirty years ago...
- Thirty two.
— …if you had miraculously foreseen those days: the offensive in August last year, the people who would die. And all that power that was coming at us. Would you have stayed there, what do you think?
— If I say that I wouldn’t change anything, I’ll be lying. I would change something, of course, but I definitely wouldn’t leave. I wouldn’t leave Sudzhi. I would do something more to save it, to preserve it. I would dig trenches in my garden. Or, I don’t even know, I would get a machine gun for the bell tower (laughs ). I can’t tell you what I would do, but I wouldn’t leave Sudzhi.
You know, once Bishop Juvenaly suggested that I go to Jerusalem for Easter. And after my first child, I had no children for seven years. And my second child was supposed to be born during these Easter days, in April 2001. I called the bishop and apologized. I said: my holy land is here, in Sudzha. And he said: worthy! You answered me worthy, Father, I understand you…
I stayed and gave birth to a son. Now I know why Abraham gave birth to Isaac, and Isaac to Jacob...
- And now I know why Sudzha is a holy land. For many reasons.
— But in fact it hurts. Very much. It hurts to talk. To understand, to see your temple, to which you gave most of your life, — without windows, without doors, covered with stones, broken bricks, broken glass. But now I’m returning to Sudzha — and I still notice for myself that it is beautiful and in ruins. It is the best city, the best place in my life. Because there is a prospect of life to remove all this, clean it up, build anew, restore.
The same with the church. I go into the church and am overwhelmed with such emotions that I would just fall down and cry. But the Lord somehow gives me strength. And I want to sing, read some prayers, shout with joy that the church is here, alive! After all, we have been working for so long to paint our church. How many teams came, different artists, including from Ukraine, worked with us, painted our church. How much prayer and love was invested in it! It has not gone anywhere.
How much this church has actually endured! Just imagine, these are millions of bricks that have heard human prayers, cries, lamentations, tears, repentance, grief, cries of death for many, many years… In 1943, a thousand people were burned alive in my church.
BAPTIZED BY FIRE INTO ORTHODOX
- What do you mean, burned?
— They burned them alive. There was a hospital there — Hungarian soldiers who refused to fight against the Red Army because they were trapped near Voronezh, and General Gustav Jani signed the capitulation. They were leaving through Sudzha, a junction station. The Germans took the train for their own purposes, and settled the wounded in my church. They also drove our people from the district prison there. There were wives of red commanders, wives of communists with children, Jewish families. They drove them together. They closed the forged doors, the forged bars — and set them on fire.
— It must have been hard to serve there?
- No. It's a long story, I'll tell you someday how we got them out, dug up 356 remains. The rest remained in the temple. We don't have enough money just to open the floors and get them all out. The floors are now concrete, filled in.
- Why did they end up under the floor?
— The floors were wooden, everything burned down, and the remains went down. People found those who were on top, carried them out, buried them right here, some in craters, some in a lime pit. And the rest all remained in the temple.
And Bishop Juvenaly tells me: let them lie. How many such churches, he says, after the Tatar-Mongol invasion, after the French, after the Poles - how many such churches are there in all of Rus'? Let them lie. They were baptized into Orthodoxy by fire.
- But last August all this could have happened again...
— I thought about it. As soon as the children came in, we laid out the carpets. They were just crying, afraid of every sound. And now they are having fun, running around the church. I am watching them from the altar, and a thought flashed through my mind: the story of 1943 could repeat itself. My heart sank. And the next day we started taking them away.
- And when will you return there?
— I am there. I believe that I am there. I remained as the rector of the Trinity Church in Sudzha. Thanks to the ruling bishop, Metropolitan Herman. He was very touched by our situation and personally by me, he showed such interest in my life. He left me as the rector of the Trinity Church, and in principle I believe that I never left. Although in fact, yes, I am here. But I am returning. As soon as possible, I go to Sudzha.
- Well, God grant us to come to you there sooner.
- Come!
- Thank you.
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