So many people died in Leningrad during the blockade that the dead often could not be buried straight away.
Image: Bridgeman
Nowhere did so many people die in the Second World War as in Leningrad. During the blockade that ended on January 27, 1944, the German occupiers killed about a million people through starvation.
AWhen the end of the blockade of Leningrad marked the seventieth anniversary ten years ago, the Russian Daniil Granin took to the lectern in the Bundestag. The writer was 95 years old at the time and had come as a contemporary witness from Saint Petersburg, as the city has been called again since 1991. During their blockade by the German invaders, which lasted from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944, Granin was a soldier there and, as he told the German audience, he himself ate nettles.
Granin recounted how, after the first winter of hunger, his unit was deployed to remove bodies in cars that were “in piles” near cemeteries. “We threw them like sticks,” said Granin, “they were so dry and light. The regimental doctor told us that this was a result of the body wasting itself.”