Monday, September 5, 2016

Siege of Leningrad


The Siege of Leningrad lasted at about 900 days; from the period of September 1941- January 1944.  During those times, around 800,000 individuals starved to death.  Many of them can be found on the streets.  The government was able to keep the real deal of the situation a top secret.  After the fall of communism documents started to appear; a police records, diaries personal accounts, these things were able to tell the true horrors that happened during the Leningrad Siege,

Dmitri Likhachev wrote: “In time of famine people revealed themselves stripped of all trumpery. Some turned out marvellous, incomparable heroes. Others - scoundrels, villains, murderers, cannibals. There were no half measures.” 
Written on a timetable that was kept in the book by a certain Tanya Savicheva were the days that her relative died. “28 December 1941 - Zhenya died. 25 January 1942 - Granny died. 17 March - Lyoka died. 13 April - Uncle Vasya died. 10 May - Uncle Lyosha died. 13 May at 7.30am - Mama died. The Savichevs are dead, everyone is dead. Only Tanya is left.”

No one knew what happened to Tanya after that. Irina Bogdanova whose family also died one by one was found 10 day later and was sent to an orphanage.  There was a great depravation of food during that time.  People would allegedly swap their pets in order to refrain themselves from eating their own pet.  Dogs are not to be seen anywhere, it seems that every last one of them has been butchered.

They reportedly find alternatives food like the dry paste on the wallpaper, sawdust, toothpaste, cold cream, etc.  There was a report of an 18 year old boy who killed his younger brothers in order to survive, a man cooking the liver of his grandmother and they even stole corpses from the gravesite in order to cook.

At least 2,000 people were put to arrest due to cannibalistic act, 586 of those were proven to commit murder and feast on them.  There were also mothers who cooked their younger child in order for her older kids to survive.

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