 That year, the last day of September in Kyiv was a typical example of Indian summer. Under other circumstances a passer-by might slow down their quick pace to admire the colorful palette of the yellow-leafed trees, contrasted beautifully with the impeccably clean azure blue sky.
However, for Ivan this was an exception to the rule, for he had weighty reasons to be depressed. Deep in thought, he hardly noticed the beauty of the picturesque scenery.
Ivan Leonenko, Kyivan-an ordinary but diligent civil servant - had retired on the first day of this month. An event so distressing to him that he thought he might have a nervous breakdown. He felt like a racehorse, suddenly brought to a complete stop from a full gallop.
The loss of his job was overwhelming. Like the death of a family member or a loved one, unemployment had left him mentally devastated as well as socially, emotionally, physically, and financially crippled.
Prior to the event, he had spent two years in a state of agitation and misgiving but strove to prepare himself for a more or less painless crossing of this inevitable and sad Rubicon.
Sure, he was still of sound body and mind. It seemed only yesterday he had a good reputation, decent post and good salary. Then, seemingly in a flash - he had lost everything!
He saw no future except a very low, pauper-like pension and no chance to be hired again for a decent job in the civil service. The situation with job openings in private enterprise seemed equally bleak, especially since the trend was to hire mainly young people - in their twenties and early thirties- leaving those over 40 with little if any chance.
So, like many other pensioners he found himself hopeless and helpless to change his situation.
These and many other thoughts were swimming in his mind when he strolled along the noisy Oleny Teligy Street. Lost in thought, he aimlessly roamed the streets of his natural habitat, the Syretz region.
Suddenly, a forgotten truth burst into his mind, something he had almost totally forgotten.
In spite of what the official records said, he was not yet 60 years old! He was, in fact, two years younger and should rightfully still be employed. He knew that he had born on 17 June of 1943, not 1941 - as declared in his passport. He knew this because his mother had revealed it to him just before her death.
But the momentary burst of joy almost instantly changed to depression. He remembered the long held secret of his life. The one he'd managed to hide from all of his associates and even from next of kin during all those years.
He was of mixed parentage - half Ukrainian and half German.
As his mother neared death, she confessed to him that his father was a young, blond German soldier. That she, a very young and orphaned girl, had fallen in love with him during the German occupation of Kyiv. She had even told him the soldier's name: Paul Schuster.
His mother's deathbed confession had turned his whole world upside down, as it was completely different from the embellished legend related to him as a younger boy. For so long Ivan knew his father to be Peter Leonenko, a fighter pilot, who went missing soon after being called up to military service several months before WWII broke out.
In her confession, Ivan's mother tried to show his father in a very favorable light. She told him how his father was the only son of a very respected and good family who had fallen in love with her at first sight. Being honorable and honest, he asked for her hand in marriage, but his insistent appeals to the command of his sub-unit refused permission for their marriage time and time again.
Ivan's mother also told him that his father was shocked by the horrible scenes of mass shootings of Jews in Babiy Yar on 30 September 1941. A trauma so great, that his hair turned gray at a very young age. Forced to be an accessory to such horrific crimes haunted the heart and conscience of this young and impressionable soldier.
Ivan's mother described how they become acquainted - in the officer's canteen at the storehouse - where she had been employed as a waitress. Though a happy coincidence, Paul, an ordinary soldier and military driver, had been allowed to dine in the officer's canteen.
And it was this same ordinary soldier who, somehow, managed to save her from compulsory shipment to Germany as an ostarbeiter - the terrible slave labor status that befell so many other Ukrainians.
Mother told Ivan how incredibly hard it was for them to survive those long postwar years-struggling to avoid starvation and poverty in the chaos of mass hunger and deprivation.
Whenever she was able to find some work, she always carried her little boy on the luggage frame at the rear of her bicycle.
She always hid the truth of his birth. First, because of the shame of being born out of wedlock, but even worse, it might become known that he was the by-product of an amorous liaison with an enemy soldier. Had this fact become known, it would be seen as high treason and she would have been sent off to one of Stalin's notorious death camps.
On her deathbed, Ivan's mother asked his forgiveness for what might have been considered a deadly sin. He understood everything and not only forgave his mother but also profusely thanked her for saving his life and for her superhuman sufferings in the process.
He agreed to her request and promised that the secrets revealed would die with her, although her death left a giant, aching wound in his heart.
>From occasional obscure newspaper stories, Ivan knew that he was part of a group of secret keepers, for it was quietly known that many of Ukraine's leaders shared his false birth date and his mixed German-Ukrainian parentage. Regardless, he kept his promise to his mother-never revealing the truth.
As Ivan walked, musing over his past and his future, a long, white, well-maintained Mercedes switched on the right blinker, slowed down and stopped at the edge of the curb.
The car had foreign plates and a quite noticeable black letter 'D' on the boot.
The car stopped just short of the intersection of Oleny Teligy and Dorogozhyzkaya streets, not far from where Ivan was walking.
An elderly married couple was visible through the car's windshield. The elderly driver climbed out of the car.
Speaking Russian with a very pronounced German accent, he addressed questions to passers-by, and he soon discovered he was a few hundred meters from the Babiy Yar Memorial.
It was the same Paul Schuster, who as a young Wehrmacht soldier, some sixty years earlier, found himself in the middle of horrible and unthinkable truths-there at Babiy Yar.
Though he took no active part in the Nazi ordered mass shootings of Kyiv's Jewish population of September 29 and 30, 1941, inwardly he counted himself as a war criminal.
With his own hands he was forced, trembling, to touch the personal items of innocent victims. He had in fact witnessed these items being taken away, or rather torn away, just before the executions-by ruthless SS-men.
Before his very eyes, great mounds of goods seized from those about to be killed - food, clothing, footwear, valuables, gold, jewels and even child's toys - were declared property of the Reich. He and other drivers like him were ordered to load these items into covered lorries and deliver those goods up to the special storehouses on Nekrasovskaya Street.
Those storehouses became places of pilgrimage for the German servicemen and officials supplied with special coupons.
Now together with his faithful wife Helen, who also suffered much in the war, Paul at long last stood again in this mournfully famous place, with its enigmatic name, Babiy Yar.
He stood in front of this oddly shaped memorial, where he could see the many freshly laid flowers from people of all walks of life.
He tried and somehow succeeded to translate the inscriptions engraved on three fixed slabs of granite that were laid before the memorial.
Written in Ukrainian, also in Russian and Hebrew, the slabs read: "To the Soviet citizens and prisoners of war soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army shot down by German fascists in Babiy Yar"
Now after years of consideration from afar, he saw this monument.
A monument that put great emphasis on the killing of Soviet citizens and Soviet military personnel, but had nothing to say about the Jews who suffered the greatest losses, nor of the homosexuals, mentally incompetent and Roma who eventually became a part of the growing mounds of dead and decaying corpses.
Paul Schuster, once the dutiful Wehrmacht soldier, was now back at Babiy Yar - the scene of a crime against both nature and humanity.
But the Babiy Yar Memorial wasn't his main goal, rather pretext only. There was another more weighty reason-a reason that he had concealed from his devoted wife and friend Helen.
Earlier, for some vague misgiving, he was rather afraid to come. Maybe he wished to avoid any implication of hostility on the part of locals. Maybe it involved something else. Who knows? But now sixty years later, in his declining years, he at long last had made up his mind.
Before this year's September the circumstances did turn out particularly favorably.
He and his wife decided to finally visit Kyiv, regardless of the end result.
By some strange and ultimately wonderful coincidence-on that very day, on that very street - Ivan was trudging along the sidewalk when, from the corner of his eye, he noticed the old white Mercedes stopped a small distance ahead.
His senses were aroused by the hoarse voice of an old gray-haired man who suddenly arose before his eyes.
Apparently a foreigner, he thought, speaking with an accent, attempting to spell the separate words in Russian. The foreigner was looking for the memorial in Babiy Yar.
Ivan promptly answered in English and pointed to the monument, just visible between trees on the opposite side of a wide street.
Ivan returned to his interrupted thoughts and didn't attach any importance to the passing moment.
However, step-by-step, his subconscious assembled all the facts into one definite thought.
An old man speaking Russian with an accent, a black letter 'D' on the boot of a white Mercedes that just drove off and at last - Babiy Yar Memorial... And again, today for the second time, the truth burst upon him! His heart skipped a beat as he contemplated his feelings.
-Maybe? No, it's too incredible! But it wouldn't hurt to ask him!
With a renewed sense of purpose, Ivan rushed to the monument, dodging passing cars without a care.
Fortunately, prudence triumphed and it took him several minutes to cross the dangerous road by underpass and end up on the spot just in front of the white Mercedes.
He watched the elderly couple from a distance. He allowed them to familiarize themselves with the memorial. The old man thoroughly studied the sculpture walking around it while his wife was standing at a distance.
At last when he heard the woman addressing to her husband, 'Paul, com doch zu mir!', Ivan made up his mind and came up to the old man as he stood alone.
Initially they exchanged some meaningless words of acquaintance. Finally, they formally introduced themselves.
After alternating short, vivid questions and answers to each other they found themselves standing silent - eyes wide open in amazement. For some moments they were standing opposite each other and didn't know what to do...
Their stupor was interrupted by frau Helen:
- Paul, sagst du mir bitte, wer ist dies junger Mann mit welchem sie haben so angeregte Unterhaltung?
- Dies Mann ist mein Sohn, - answered
a confused Paul Shuster.
For Ivan Leonenko - soon to have his name correctly changed to Shuster - the day that began so inauspiciously suddenly became the happiest day of his life.
For Ivan, the future looked immensely brighter and would certainly be as he claimed his German citizenship and the rewards of being part of a moderately well-off German family.
But for the new Ivan Shuster, finally having a father that was real, alive and truly his own was the greatest reward of all.
And it all happened by chance... the chance of a lifetime.
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