A theatre performance, “The Russian-German soldier's phrase-book”, based on the diaries of a young man from Ukraine and a German woman, written during the Second World War, recently had its premiere in Moscow.

The creators say this performance is “a story of the meeting of two worlds, two languages, two bodies…”

The director Aglaya Romanovskaya studied phrasebooks issued for Russian and German soldiers in the 1940s. And by chance she discovered the diary of a young woman from Berlin. Later she went on to look for the diary of a man, and she found it, when she stumbled across Vladimir Gelfand's diary. He had witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust in Ukraine.  

The director brought together actors from Moscow, Berlin and Vienna for this production. And almost all of them speak fluent Russian and German, except for two actors. 

“They play one scene together… It's about a German couple… The husband returns from the War… And they can't understand each other at all… They don't have a common language any more,” says  Aglaya Romanovskaya

The performance will tour a number of stages in Russia telling the stories of people, who are divided by the front line, but who have so much in common in the way they love, suffer and hope.

The production was first presented in Berlin at the end of February and later – at the Theatre by the Stanislavsky house.