Germans approaching the leningrad (sept. 1941)

A video of the Germans approaching the outskirts of leningrad

Captured German soldiers being marched through the streets of Leningrad. October 1942

Members of the staff of the Architects Institute:



"A lot of our people stopped shaving. The first sign was the men going to pieces. But most of those people pulled themselves together when they were given work. But on the men collapsed more easily than the women. And at first the death rate of men was the highest.

The famine had peculiar physical effects on people. Women were so run down that they stopped menstruating. So many people died we had to bury them without coffins. People had their feelings blunted and never seemed to weep at the burials. It was all done in complete silence, without any display of emotion. When things began to improve the first signs were that women began to put rouge and lipstick on pale, skinny faces."

Washing off the sign which says, "This side of the street is dangerous", after the German threat to the city receded in 1944

"By January 1944, the Red Army had pushed the German army beyond Leningrad allowing the city to celebrate the end of its siege. Alexander Werth was a correspondent for the London Sunday Times and the BBC who accompanied the Soviet troops as they pushed the Germans from their soil. He interviewed a number of Leningrad residents shortly after the siege was lifted.

The Astoria looks like a hotel now, but you should have seen it during the famine! It was turned into a hospital - just hell. They used to bring here all sorts of people, mostly intellectuals, who were dying of hunger. You just stepped over corpses in the street and on the stairs. You simply stopped taking any. It was no use worrying. Terrible things used to happen. Some people went quite insane with hunger. And the practice of hiding the dead somewhere in the house and using their ration cards was very common indeed. There were so many people dying all over the place authorities couldn't keep track of all the deaths..."

Russian women training to be firefighters

"Food supplies were cut. And by November, individual rations were lowered to one-third of the daily amount needed by an adult. The city's population of dogs, cats, horses, rats and crows disappeared as they became the main course on many dinner tables. Reports of cannibalism began to appear. Thousands have died about an estimated of 11,000 in November, increasing to 53,000 in December. The frozen earth meant their bodies could not be buried. Corpses accumulated in the city's streets, parks and other open areas."

Russian soldiers wait with their anti-aircraft gun for the German planes (1943)

"It was horrific . The siege of Leningrad (which is the modern day St. Petersburg) lasted almost two and one-half years and cost the lives of an estimated 1,000,000 city residents. It started on Sept. 8, 1941 when German troops completed their hold of the city. As his blitzkrieg rushed towards Moscow, Hitler decided to bypass Leningrad and strangle the city into submission instead of commiting valuable resources to attackt them directly."