The Foreign Service Journal, September 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2020 93 sent home and stripped of their party membership. (They were no doubt lucky that was the extent of their punishment.) Silvashko said he was too young and stupid to be punished; and besides, his unit was moving on to engage the Germans in more bloody fighting in Czechoslovakia. Robertson, too, was arrested for disobeying orders, but he was quickly released under General Dwight Eisenhower’s personal order. After the war, Silvashko returned to his native Ukraine to find his family and his village wiped out. Army comrades from Belarus encouraged him to settle there in the small village of Morach where he would spend the rest of his life. Robertson went on to study medicine and became a noted neurosurgeon in Los Angeles. Silvashko and Robertson did not see each other again until 1975, when détente between the United States and the Soviet Union brought them back together in Moscow to commemorate the 30th anniversary of their meeting on the Elbe. Silvashko showed us a photo album of a subsequent time when Rob- ertson, and other Americans who were at Torgau, visited Silvashko in Morach together with their spouses. s Shortly after our visit, the embassy public affairs section sent a team down to Morach to film an interview with Alexander Silvashko. It would become the centerpiece of a film the section produced titled “The History of a Hand- shake.” We were able to unveil the film to the Belarusian public in time for the Victory Day commemorations (the Rus- sian language version can still be viewed online). Public reaction was overwhelm- ingly positive. Even the Belarusian gov- ernment, with which we were not on the U.S.NATIONALARCHIVESANDRECORDSADMINISTRATION Above: Lieutenant Bill Robertson (at left) and Lieutenant Alexander Silvashko, Germany, 1945. Right: Robertson and Silvashko meet after 30 years in Moscow in 1975. DAVISCENTER,HARVARDUNIVERSITY best of terms, indicated tacit approval. Watching the film brought tears to the eyes of many viewers. It still brings tears to mine. In subsequent ambassadorships, I gave copies of the film to my Belarusian, local and even Russian counterparts, some of whom told me how they and their staffs wept while viewing it. A few months after we made the film, we invited Silvashko to the Belarusian capital of Minsk to retell his personal tale to a group of visiting West Point cadets along with their Belarusian counterparts. He overwhelmed them. To top it off, the Belarusian Defense Ministry gave Silvashko, who up till then had lived largely in obscurity, full military honors when he laid flowers at Minsk’s Victory Monument. The Defense Ministry later told our defense attaché how much our embassy’s respect and attention to this simple veteran had impressed them. Although Bill Robertson died in 1999, Alexander Silvashko never forgot his friend. And I will never forget Mr. Silvashko. He survived a brutal war and a harsh postwar life. Many times he said that if only the comradeship American and Soviet GIs enjoyed during those fleeting days in 1945 had endured, what a different and better world it might have been. Alexander Silvashko died a few years ago. May he rest in peace along with his friend Bill Robertson. As we mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, the story of Silvashko and Rob- ertson’s historic meeting on the bridge at Torgau should inspire us. We should also draw inspiration from Embassy Minsk’s public affairs effort to bridge diplomatic divisions through shared memory. n