On the 27. In January 1944 the siege of Leningrad ended. Hundreds of cannons fired Salutes, Flares lit up the winter dark city, and was reflected in the waters of the Neva river. The Wehrmacht that had closed the siege ring to a tiny loophole to lake Ladoga 872 days earlier, was to come to the retreat she had in the vast Expanses of the Soviet Union since the fall of Stalingrad, a year earlier. Leningrad, formerly St. Petersburg, was selected by the Propaganda to the “hero city”, and Stalin at the same time held down. The dictator in the Kremlin was afraid of the defiant, at any time of ideological deviation, suspicious city that had shown in her indomitable will to live as constantly.
“An interest in preserving even a part of this large urban population is (…) on our part, not,” it said in the secret Directive, which was communicated to the German Navy in 1941 for the attack on Leningrad. The invitations to the victory party were already printed, as the Wehrmacht rolled over the outer districts, but in the 8. September 1941 on the outskirts of the city. However, the expectation of the Russian population would flee before the ever-victorious Wehrmacht to behind the Urals, was not fulfilled. On The Contrary. Stalin, to his opponent equal to, ordered, to keep every Meter of Soviet soil. A timely evacuation of the city was out of the question. Also, if during the siege, about one Million people could be brought through the icy corridor to lake Ladoga, and a few Thousand by plane, the majority of the three and a half million pre-war residents in the constantly under artillery shelling of the city. Added to this were hundreds of thousands of refugees from the countryside, were excluded from the strictly rationed relation to the meagre rations, and as the First in their unheated shelters hinstarben.
members and militiamen pulled the cloth wrapped bodies on sleds through the deep snow-covered roads.
Officially 649 000 Leningrad starved to death, after today’s estimates are closer to 900 000, possibly more. In the bitterly cold first Winter, the called to the beginning of the year 1942, the largest number of Victims after not only the food supply but was broken along with electricity and water, people died everywhere. They froze in unheated homes or on the streets. Relatives and militiamen pulled the cloth wrapped bodies on sleds through the deep snow-covered roads. How many Dead could not be recognized in the midst of the ever-present death, can only be guessed. The notdürftigste supply of the city, such as the evacuation of the most Vulnerable came anyway after the horrors of winter.
The Starvation of Leningrad was not the result of the course of the war, but was intended by Hitler and the Wehrmacht leadership from the beginning. The diet of the soldiers of the “enterprise Barbarossa”, the assault on the Soviet Union since the 22. In June 1941, could only be done out of the country and so on the expense of the population. The disastrous misjudgements of Stalin and the party leadership at least in the first year of the war, did their job. On the danger of the advancing army group North, Leningrad had been, notwithstanding its exposed situation, it is not in the Least prepared. This reduces the right taunt at the end of crimes of the German side, made the every peoples but the extent at all possible.
“Nobody is forgotten and nothing is forgotten”, is on the wall of the Leningrad Piskarew-cemetery
It has, of the official Propaganda, in Spite of, long time to eye-witness were widespread reports of the siege and printed. The Survivors had to do again in the bitter post-war years, and increasingly paranoid dictator in the Kremlin had any memory of the actual circumstances of the hunger years. In may 1946 opened “Museum of defense of Leningrad” was destroyed two years later, literally, a countless number of officials who had organized the Survival of the city, were arrested in an ever-enlarging “cleansing”, and condemns, many of them shot. Alone Stalin was allowed to baste in the glory of the rescue of Leningrad to the chest.
Meanwhile, there are a number of books, which lead to the horrors of the siege. Some of the Included have kept a diary. In 1972 Elena Scriabin’s “Leningrad diary”, 1984, “notes of a Blockade person” from Lidia Ginsburg, in whose estate in 2006, with the more significant Text of “A story of pity and cruelty”. In 1984, in censored Form, published “the blockade book” by Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin has been available since 2014 and now also in German Translation (blockade book. Leningrad 1941-1944. Building, Berlin, 2018. 703 p. m. 51 Fig., 36 €.).
More about
Arte-documentary about the Leningrad Blockade With major and minor against powder and lead
Manfred Riepe
Granin, the language five years ago as a 95-Year-old to the Holocaust remembrance day, which is also the Leningrad, memorial day, in front of the German Parliament, the Bundestag, and the Adamowitsch have interviewed over the years, witnesses to learn the thoughts and feelings of the people under extreme Hardship and to make it visible, including the border areas up to the point of cannibalism, the it has given. The countless examples of solidarity and willingness to sacrifice, to Share even the smallest of rations of bread, Yes of glue or grease, the people rose in desperation as food. “No one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten”, is on the wall of the Piskarew cemetery written on the hundreds of thousands in mass graves are buried. Records, such as the “blockade book”, preserving this memory for all time.
