the people in his hometown to remember How the victims of the Blockade, Daniil Granin described the following way: place on the anniversary of biscuits, chocolates and pastries on their graves. So, you showed “your love and memory” to the people who had been in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, lost his life. The German army had bombed the city and starved. Against the German Granin fought at that time as a soldier in Leningrad.

On Sunday, the people in St. Petersburg have celebrated the liberation of the city 75 years ago. President Vladimir Putin brought red roses to the memorial cemetery Piskarjowskoe; hundreds of thousands are buried, including the older brother of Putin. He had died as a small child during the Blockade.

The big military parade, as it was called was away from the President. About 2500 soldiers moved to the anniversary of the former Tsar’s Palace, and miscellaneous military equipment, tanks from the Soviet time and the modern air defense system S-400. A Demonstration of military strength, beyond the previously much discussed.

the war against children

you have Celebrated the victory over the Germans: 872 days, from September 1941 to January 1944, besieged by the Wehrmacht in the city. It was not only about to break the resistance of the population. Hitler wanted to let deliberately starve, and exterminate. The Germans have waged war only against soldiers, but against civilians, women and children. The estimates on how many died vary, probably there were more than a Million, most from starvation. The worst time, many were given 125 grams of bread a day, where all kinds of beige paste and cellulose was mixed: about.

The people of assen glue from the Wallpaper, and they ate their Pets. The dead stayed in the apartments and house entrances, when no one had physically the strength to bury her. The Hunger, the bombs came. When houses were burned, burned for a long time, because the water pipes and the electricity did not work. The first Winter was particularly cold and demanded many victims. It was an unimaginably wretched, dark, desperate time.

Over the frozen lake Ladoga transports arrived in the town, and some hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated. The “road of life” they called the dangerous path over the ice, on the Germans, and the “road of death”. The car broke through the ice, and refugees drowned. The “Blokadniki”, the people of the Blockade, were later celebrated as heroes who had given their lives in the struggle against fascism and for the Soviet people. The image of the fierce opposition also came from the German side, because it blurred the great war crimes of the Wehrmacht.

The bread paste and cellulose beige were mixed. The people ate their Pets.

“trying to get The people to help each other,” said the Survivor of Daniil Granin during a speech before the German Bundestag. “It seemed that someone stayed on the road, to a wall, leaned, and collapsed. And sometimes, another Passer-by, the aufhalf him and take him to the next place, there was hot water.” In these scenes he saw, who belonged to the blockade of hero – the one who saved other people. “The Only thing that could be the Hunger and the inhumanity of fascism, was the spiritual resistance of the inhabitants of the single city in the Second world war, has not given up.”

the Fact that the now with a military parade is meant to be, there was a lot of criticism in the city. In a survey of Fontanka, an Online news site from St. Petersburg, held the half of the 3000 survey participants, the Parade is not appropriate. In an open letter to the citizens in November, in addition to the persons in charge of the city and demanded to stop these “outrageous carnival”. It was not only the military lift. They criticised among other things that there are no official victims, no complete lists of names. Nearly 5000 people signed the letter.

“A Signal that such a thing must never happen again.”Heiko Maas

In Germany, did not remember for a long time on the Blockade, in many textbooks it is not mentioned. Now the Federal government wants to support the still living victims with a total of 12 million euros, and, among other things, a hospital for war veterans, modernizing. The gesture was a “Symbol that we are aware of our responsibility,” said the foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, “but also a Signal that something must never happen again”.

Daniil Granin wrote after the war, together with the writer Ales Adamovich, a book for which he has interviewed in the seventies, about 200 Survivors in Leningrad. “A monument in the form of a book has been called” the book later. In Germany, the uncut version appeared only a few months ago. Daniil Granin is dead in 2017 at the age of 98 years.

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 27.01.2019, at 22:19