"To be honest, such subjects in school were pretty dull. Not because the teacher was bad -- he knew what he was talking about. But I didn't want to devote my life to that -- I wasn't planning to study at some institute connected with history," Yevgenia said. "So during those lessons I was doing my own thing. I was writing poems. Now we are writing music -- we are into music."

Asked if they had heard of Auschwitz, Yevgenia said no, while Ksenia said: "It is something about some sort of civil war, I think."

In October 2012, with financial support from the Polish Cultural Center in Moscow, documentary filmmaker and former RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Mumin Shakirov took the sisters on an emotional visit to the museum and memorial complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau in the Polish town of Oswiecim. A film of the trip is currently in the works with the working title "Holocaust -- Wallpaper Paste?" and Shakirov discusses the project in the latest issue of Sovershenno sekretno.

It was the sisters' first trip abroad. Both were deeply moved by the experience. Yevgenia broke down into loud weeping as she stood in front of an enormous pile of children's shoes. Ksenia wept through a showing of the Soviet documentary film "The Liberation Of Auschwitz."

"By coming here, like it or not, we are now among those who know," Ksenia said afterward. "It is shameful that events of this scale [took place], filling a whole stage of history, where Soviet troops participated in the liberation of the prisoners -- and we knew nothing about it."

Shakirov asked the sisters if they would tell their friends and relatives about what they had seen at Auschwitz.

"Hardly anyone we know is interested in things that happened 70 years ago," Ksenia replied. "If they ask, we'll tell them and explain everything. But we won't raise the subject ourselves."



This post appears courtesy of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.