Echos of the tragedies
A life given to children
They just buried her yesterday, more than 40 days since she went to work on September 1st, the first day of school and every teacher's favorite holiday, a day from which she never returned. Olga Nikolaevna Soskiyeva was an elementary school teacher at School #1 in Beslan. Now she is on the list of twenty pedagogues who died heroically within the walls of that educational institution.
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Olga Nikolaevna was listed as missing all this time. Her loved ones kept a glimmer of hope that she had somehow survived, but everyone who knew her, knew that, even if Olga Nikolaevna was able to escape from the burning gymnasium, if there was still one child left to save, she would not leave. Such was Olga Nikolaevna's character. She always saw everything through to the end, and this was how she taught her children for 34 years. During their captivity, the frightened children pressed close to their teacher, as if clinging to their own mothers. Olga Nikolaevna supported them as best she could. After the fateful explosions in the gym, she helped them escape, and almost her entire class managed to make it....
During the three days of her captivity, Olga Nikolaevna took upon herself the care of an elderly colleague, war veteran and retired teacher Zaurbek Gutiyev, who later would say that he never before experienced such horrors, even during the battle of Stalingrad. Olga Nikolaevna secretly carried water to old man and carried him back and forth to the toilet, suffering all the while the insults mockeries of the terrorists.
Olya was a simple Russian girl from the village of Buron. Later, she married an Ossetian from Beslan, and proved to be true, to the very end, to the teaching profession, and to humanity itself.
Over the fresh mound on Olga Nikolaevna's grave her loved ones weep inconsolably: husband Viktor, their children Irina and Boris, and grandson Khetag.
T. Tautiyeva