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MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Two sentences inscribed above the refurbished entrance hall of Moscow's Kurskaya metro station are causing great agitation for survivors of Russian labor camps.Yuri Fidelgoldsh, who had five ribs removed after imprisonment six decades ago, is one of the offended survivors.
"Stalin reared us on loyalty to the people," says the inscription above the pristine marble floors of the metro station. "He inspired us to labor and to heroism."
Fidelgoldsh, now 82, doesn't use the metro station much, but he has been there to see the restoration. When he invokes the name "Stalin," he gets angry. "For people who were imprisoned, punished and whose parents were killed, this is still in their hearts," Fidelgoldsh says.
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Well, I think it's perfectly dreadful and disgusting, but that's only part of what caught my eye. I read the following paragraphs:
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"This metro station was built by prisoners of gulags who were in there for no reason, just because. They were the ones building this station. I think all of this is simply wrong," says Valeri M. Shevchenko, a musician, whose father suffered at the hands of Stalin's regime.
"They came in the morning, Stalin's police, took everyone outside and shot my grandfather in front of his family. My grandmother and her eight children, including my father who was 8 at the time, were sent to work camps. Only three children survived."
As Shevchenko looks around the metro station today, he shakes his head.
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Valeri M. Shevchenko. I blinked twice and I asked myself "could it be?"
Of course. The middle initial and his profession said it all.
Valeri M. Shevchenko was my flute teacher at the conservatory where I studied during my teenage years! Eventually he left to go back to Russia and I never heard from him again.
At least, until this very moment.
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