🚀 go-pugleaf

I watched TV reporter, amazed and surprised, praising to heaven heroism
of a woman, who had invited total strangers - evacuees from New Orleans
to stay in her house.  Our generation 64 years ago, back in the Soviet
Union, had experienced a much bigger calamity.  Not thousand and not
hundred thousand, tens of millions of evacuees were running from
invading Hitler.  Everybody was in panic, there were no helicopters, no
National Guard to help anyone.  And guess what, nobody was placed in a
stadium, nobody was placed in a public shelter or a refugee camp.
Everybody was placed in the strangers' homes and nobody called it
heroism.  It was so obvious to everyone that nobody even questioned it:
the evacuees lost everything, they are homeless and they can not be
left out in the street, so they should be let in, no matter how crowded
the apartment becomes.

My mother ran with me (18 months) and my brother (7 years old) till
Tataria.  She had a lot of help from strangers all the way and, of
course, there has never been a case of one evacuee raping another one.
She was given a room, a job and rations of food.  Everybody had a job
and a ration and nobody was in the street.  Soviet Union was never
famous for extra living accommodations, nevertheless, everybody had a
roof over the head.  Unlike US, Soviet Union was not famous for surplus
of food either, nevertheless, nobody was dying of hunger, except for
Leningrad, but it was because Hitler blockaded the city and it was
extremely difficult to get food there.  Even in this extreme situation,
people dying of cold and hunger, year after year, there were no rapes.
Can you imagine, how would Americans behave in this situation?

It was not just Russians accepting Russians in their homes - hundreds
of thousands were evacuated to Asian republics, and everywhere they
were accepted, without any problem.  Oprah said to be dismayed by the
level of disrespect among evacuees towards elderly.  Here I also have
to say that during my 39 years of life in the USSR, I have never heard
of a single case of a young man knocking out an elderly lady in order
to get her purse.  USSR had a lot of crime, they could rob me, but they
would not touch an elderly woman.  My mother lived alone in her old
years and I never worried about her safety and she was indeed safe till
her death.

It seems like Americans can learn a thing or two about morals from a
very technologically backward people of the old USSR.

Fabrikant