That winter stopped to help fallen down from exhaustion, a young mother, hobbling to work, apologized that he could not submit his hands: “you Can fall there and not get up, but at home I have children.” On January 27 1944 it was fully lifted the blockade of Leningrad. How people lived in those terrible 872 days.
The Artist Nikita Cuzin. Siege of Leningrad (fragment)
- The bell over the blockade of Leningrad
- The bell over the blockade of Leningrad
- 900 days of faith
- The priests remember the siege of Leningrad
In the spring of 1942 Soviet official in his diary described the meals that were fed in the hospital of the city Committee: “Every day, meat — lamb, ham, chicken, goose, sausage, fish — bream, Baltic herring, smelt, fried, poached and in aspic. Caviar, salmon, cheese, cakes and as much black bread a day, thirty grams of butter and all this for fifty grams of wine, good port wine for lunch and dinner.”
This holiday home for the elite was just a few kilometers from Leningrad. Six months ago, burned Badayev warehouses, and people in the town have sold to each other land, soaked with the remnants of the destroyed products. They received 125 grams of bread a day, cooked “jelly” from linseed oil and wood glue, changed gold and the last property on the butter and bread.
Their lives in the first winter of the siege was so severe that the parents would decide who of the children to survive. Solder doomed to death were divided between family members.
In the winter children and teenagers snatched the bread from the hands of the old men and quickly ate it, not paying attention to a beating. Hunger and cold were quickly turned people into skeletons.
In may 1942, on the Leningrad barely moved the frozen people dressed in coats. They immediately saw visitors. A healthy complexion, the fullness, the ability to laugh. In the first winter of the siege of Leningrad, almost all of the suspected well-fed men and women in the theft — on meager rations could not look so good.
They had that right. People are too often deceived — sold oil instead of linseed oil, instead of monkey — based glue instead of candy paste.
For a loaf of bad bread in December 1941 or January 1942, buried relatives, or simply drove to the cemetery and laid in mass graves stacks. Naked, without a coffin — wood was a luxury, and people asked loved ones not to change food for coffins. Still they sell the second time, and the food will help the family to survive.
That winter stopped to help fallen down from exhaustion, a young mother, hobbling to work, apologized that he could not submit his hands: “you Can fall there and not get up, but at home I have children.”
In the winter of 1941 in Leningrad went to visit with his bread and made each other gifts — a tiny piece of sugar, a little flour. A woman who survived the siege, tells how he saw in the street a pea, which was soon swept away by the wind.
Children and adults are crumbled solder on a variety of particles, sorting them into boxes, and 125 grams of bread, divided into 50 pieces, for a bit cheated brain and stomach — some managed to stretch this meager food for the day.
In the first winter of the siege of Leningrad, some not immediately buried their relatives the cards were issued in ten days, and people could not long get bread for the dead.
The highest value was the food. Best workplaces for ordinary people nursery school, shops, hospitals, canteens and children’s homes, where it was a little fed up. The family food was shared equally among all members of the family, the children did not eat school Lunches entirely, to share with those who waited for them at home. In the hospitals the wounded have shared food with relatives who came to see them. From exhaustion in bread queues and University canteens were sometimes scandals, retailers and chefs were suspected of cheating. Husbands watching wives, adults for children. The older brother, afraid to eat rations for all family members, sent to the store for bread little sister. The kids were waiting for my grandma to eat her bread.
Other people tried to help each other. From death could save friends, or colleagues:
“Mother fell ill. I wrote a note to the bakery, where she worked as a pastry chef to make me something gave. In passing filed a brief. Gave a loaf, is said to have hidden under a jacket”.
Unfortunately, colleagues were not always so noble. Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev talks about the caretaker of the Pushkin house. The employee stole the cards grew weak from hunger. One of the dystrophic still came to the Institute: “he was terrible (his mouth ran saliva eyes crawled, climbed and teeth). He appeared in the doorway like a Ghost, like a half-decayed corpse of deaf and spoke only one word: “Card””. Barely heard the request, the caretaker, “was furious, scolded him and pushed”.
At the same time a member of the Military Council of the Leningrad front A. A. Kuznetsov gave one of the Leningrad Actresses chocolate cake, baked in one of the factories of the city. Other leaders of Leningrad requested for the Public library to find lewd images in the books that officials could use to hold the “rare moments of rest.”
900-day siege ended on 27 January 1944. People ran out of their apartments, looked at the fireworks and realized that at that moment they won not only the hunger, cold and fascists, but ourselves. They have kept their honor and dignity, and will soon be able to eat their fill of what they wanted in the siege.
In preparing the material used the book by Sergei iarov “the Siege of ethics. Morale in Leningrad in 1941-1942”. Moscow; 2012.