Blockade of Leningrad, children of the blockade. History of the Great Patriotic War

The blockade of Leningrad, the children of the blockade ... These words were heard by everyone. One of the most majestic and at the same time tragic pages in the archives of the Great Patriotic War. These events entered the world history as the longest and most terrible aftermath of the siege of the city. The events that took place in this city from 8.09.1941 to 27.01.1944, the whole world showed the great spirit of the people, capable of a feat in the conditions of hunger, disease, cold and devastation. The city survived, but the price paid for this victory was very high.

Blockade. Start

The Barbarossa plan was the so-called enemy strategy, according to which the seizure of the Soviet Union was carried out. One of the points of the plan was the rout and complete capture in a short time of Leningrad. Hitler dreamed of getting the city no later than autumn of 1941. The plans of the aggressor were not destined to materialize. The city was captured, cut off from the world, but not taken!

Officially, the beginning of the blockade was fixed on September 8, 1941. It was on this autumn day that the German troops seized Schliserburg and finally blocked the land communications of Leningrad with the entire territory of the country.

In fact, everything happened a little earlier. The Germans systematically isolated the city. So, from July 2, German planes regularly bombed the railways, preventing the supply of products in this way. On August 27, the connection with the city through the railways was completely interrupted. After 3 days there was an interruption of the city's connection with hydroelectric power stations. And from September 1, all commercial shops stopped working.

The fact that the situation is serious, at first almost no one believed. Yet people who felt something was wrong, began to prepare for the worst. Stores are very quickly emptied. Straight from the first days in the city, they entered cards for food, schools and kindergartens were closed.

Children of the siege town

Siege and horror on the fate of many people imprinted a blockade of Leningrad. The children of the blockade are a special category of the inhabitants of this city, whose circumstances were deprived of childhood, forced to grow up much earlier and fight for survival at the level of adults and wise people.

At the time of closure of the blockade ring, in addition to adults, there were 400 thousand children of different ages in the city. It was the care of the children that gave the Leningrad citizens the power: they were guarded, protected, tried to hide from bombing, thoroughly cared for. Everyone understood that it was possible to save children only if the city was saved.

Adults could not protect children from hunger, cold, disease and exhaustion, but everything was done for them.

Cold

Life in the besieged Leningrad was difficult, unbearable. The shelling was not the most horrible, which happened to survive the hostages of the city. When all the power stations were shut down and the city was shrouded in darkness, the hardest period began. It was a snowy, frosty winter.

The city skidded with snow, frosts of 40 degrees led to the fact that the walls of unheated apartments began to become covered with frost. Leningraders were forced to install stoves in their apartments, in which everything, furniture, books, household items, was burned for the sake of heat.

A new trouble came when the sewage system was frozen. Now the water could be taken only in 2 places: from the Fontanka and the Neva.

Hunger

The sad statistics say that the greatest enemy of the inhabitants of the city was hunger.

The winter of 1941 became a test of survival. To regulate the provision of people with bread, food cards were introduced. The size of the solder was constantly decreasing, in November it reached its minimum.

The standards in the besieged Leningrad were as follows: those who worked were supposed to have 250 gr. Bread, military, firefighters and members of the fighter squad received 300 gr., And children and those who were on other people's security - for 125 gr.

There were no other products in the city. 125 grams of blockade bread was not much like our usual, well-known flour product. This piece, which could only be obtained after a long standing in the queue in the frost, consisted of cellulose, cake, wallpaper paste glued with flour.

There were days when people could not get this coveted piece. During the bombings, the factories did not work.

People tried to survive as best they could. Empty stomachs tried to fill with what could be swallowed. In the course everything went on: the first-aid kits were empty (drinking castor oil, eating petrolatum), tearing off the wallpaper to get the remains of the paste and weld at least some soup, cut into pieces and cooked leather shoes, prepared jellied joinery paste.

Naturally, for children of that time the best gift was food. They constantly thought about the delicious. That food, which at the usual time disgusted, was now the limit of dreams.

Holiday for children

Despite the terrible, deadly conditions of life, the Leningraders tried with great zeal and zeal to ensure that children caught in hostages of a cold and hungry city lived a full life. And if there was no food and heat where to take, then it was possible to make a holiday.

So, during the terrible winter, when there was a blockade of Leningrad, the children of the blockade celebrated the New Year. By the decision of the executive committee of the Leningrad City Council, New Year holidays for small residents of the city were organized and held.

All the theaters of the city took an active part in this. Were made festive programs, which included meetings with commanders and fighters, artistic greeting, a game program and dancing at the Christmas tree, and most importantly - lunch.

On these holidays there was everything, except for games and a dance part. All due to the fact that weakened children simply did not have the strength to do such entertainment. The children were not at all happy-they were waiting for food.

The festive dinner consisted of a small slice of bread to a yeast soup, a jelly and a cutlet made from cereals. Familiarized with the famine, the children ate, slowly, carefully collecting every little one, because they knew the price of blockade bread.

Hard times

Children in this period, it was much harder than an adult, quite aware population. How to explain why during the bombing you need to sit in a dark basement and why there is nowhere to eat, children? About the blockade of Leningrad in the people's memory left a lot of terrible stories about abandoned babies, lonely guys who tried to survive. After all, it often happened that, leaving for the treasured ration, the native child just died on the way, did not return home.

The number of orphanages in the city was inexorably growing. In one year their number increased to a figure of 98, and in fact at the end of 1941 there were only 17. About 40 thousand orphans tried to maintain and keep in these shelters.

Every little inhabitant of the besieged city has its terrible truth. The diaries of the Leningrad schoolgirl Tanya Savicheva became known all over the world.

The symbol of the sufferings of the Leningraders

Tanya Savicheva - now this name symbolizes the horror and hopelessness with which the inhabitants of the city were forced to fight. What did Leningrad experience then? Tanya Savicheva told the world this tragic story through her diary entries.

This girl was the youngest child in the family of Mary and Nikolai Savichev. At the time of the siege, which began in September, she was to become a fourth-grade student. When the family found out about the beginning of the war, it was decided not to leave the city anywhere, but to stay to provide the army with the possible assistance.

The girl's mother sewed clothes for fighters. Brother Leka, who had poor eyesight, was not taken into the army, he worked at the Admiralty Plant. Sisters Tanya, Zhenya and Nina, were active participants in the fight against the enemy. So, Nina, while there were forces, went to work, where along with other volunteers she dug trenches to strengthen the defense of the city. Zhenya, hiding from her mother and grandmother, secretly donated blood for the wounded soldiers.

Tanya, when in the occupied city in early November, again earned the school, she went to study. At this time, only 103 schools were opened, but they also stopped working with the arrival of fierce frosts.

Tanya, being a little girl, also did not sit idle. Together with the other guys, she helped dig trenches, extinguished the "lighters."

Soon a grief knocked at the door of this family. Nina did not return home first. The girl did not come after the most severe shelling. When it became clear that they would never see Nina again, Mama gave Tanya a sister's notebook. It is in her that the girl will subsequently make her notes.

War. Blockade. Leningrad is a besieged city in which entire families died out. So it was with the Savichev family.

Next, Zhenya died, right at the factory. The girl worked, stabbing 2 shifts in a row. She also gave blood. Here are the forces and ended.

Such grief was not made by my grandmother, the woman was buried at Piskarevsky Cemetery.

And every time, when the grief was knocking on the door of the Savichevs' house, Tanya opened her notebook to mark the next death of her relatives and friends. Soon Leca died, he was no longer the two uncles of the girl, then his mother died.

"Savichevs have died all. There is only one Tanya left "- these terrible lines of Tanya's diary convey all the horror that the residents of the besieged city experienced. Tanya was dead. But the girl was mistaken, she did not know that among the Savichevs there was a living person. It was her sister Nina, who was rescued during the shelling and was taken to the rear.

Nina, returning to her native walls in 1945, will find her sister's diary and tell the world about this terrible story. The history of a whole nation, steadfastly fought for their hometown.

Children are the heroes of the besieged Leningrad

All the inhabitants of the city who have stood and defeated death must by right be called heroes.

Especially heroically behaved most of the children. Small citizens of a large country did not sit and wait for the liberation; They fought for their native Leningrad.

Almost no event in the city took place without the participation of children. Children along with adults took part in the destruction of incendiary bombs, extinguished fires, cleared tramways and roads, and dismantled the debris after the bombing.

The blockade of Leningrad lasted. The children of the blockade were forced to replace the factory machines of adults who died, died or went to the front. Especially for children working in factories, special wooden stands were invented and made so that they could, as adults, work on making parts for machine guns, artillery shells and machine guns.

In the spring and autumn, children actively worked in the kitchen gardens and farm fields. During the raids, the signal from the teacher served that the children, falling off their headdresses, fell face to the ground. Overcoming the heat, dirt, rain and the first frosts, the young heroes of the besieged Leningrad collected a record harvest.

Children often visited hospitals: they cleaned there, entertained the wounded, helped to feed the seriously ill.

Despite the fact that the Germans were trying to destroy Leningrad with all their strength, the city lived. Lived and stood. After the lifting of the blockade, 15,000 children received a medal "For the Defense of Leningrad".

The road that brings life back to life

Lake Ladoga - the only way that gave at least some opportunity to maintain communication with the country. In the summer it was barges, in the winter - cars moving on ice. Before the winter of 1941, tugs with barges arrived to the city, but the Military Council of the Front realized that Ladoga would freeze and then all roads would be blocked. New searches and intensified preparation of other means of communication have begun.

So the way was prepared on the ice of Ladoga, which eventually began to be called "The Road of Life". In the history of the blockade, the date when the first horse-drawn train paved the way across the ice was preserved, it was November 21, 1941.

After that, 60 cars went by, the purpose of which was to deliver flour to the city. The city began to receive bread, at the price of which was human life, because the advance along this path was associated with a huge risk. Often cars fell through the ice, drowned, taking people and products to the bottom of the lake. The work of the chauffeur of such a car was deadly dangerous. In places, the ice was so fragile that even the car, laden with a couple of sacks of flour or flour, could easily be under the ice. Each journey that was taken this way was heroic. The Germans really wanted to block it, the bombing of Ladoga was permanent, but the courage and heroism of the city's residents did not allow this to happen.

The "road of life" really fulfilled its function. In Leningrad, stocks of food began to replenish, and children and their mothers were taken out of the city. Not always this way was safe. After the war, when examining the bottom of Ladoga Lake, toys were found from Leningrad children who were drowned during such transportation. In addition to dangerous thawed patches on the icy road, transport for evacuation was often subjected to enemy shelling and flooding.

About 20 thousand people worked on this road. And only thanks to their courage, strength of spirit and the desire to stand the city got what it needed most - a chance to survive.

An enduring hero city

The summer of 1942 was very tense. The Nazis intensified the fighting on the fronts of Leningrad. The bombardment and bombardment of the city increased noticeably.

New artillery batteries appeared around the city. The enemies had schemes of the city, and important areas were fired on every day.

The blockade of Leningrad lasted. People turned their city into a fortress. So, on the territory of the city at the expense of 110 large units of defense, trenches and different moves, it became possible to carry out a hidden regrouping of the military. Such actions served to reduce the number of wounded and killed significantly.

On January 12, the armies of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts launched an offensive. In 2 days the distance between these two armies was less than 2 kilometers. The Germans stubbornly resisted, but on January 18, the troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts joined forces.

This day was marked by another important event: the lifting of the blockade was due to the liberation of Shlisselburg, as well as complete clearing from the enemy of the southern coast of Lake Ladoga.

Along the coast, a corridor of about 10 kilometers has turned out, it was he who restored ground communication with the country.

When there was a lifting of the blockade, there were about 800 thousand people in the city.

Significant date January 27, 1944 went down in history as a day when the blockade of the city was completely removed.

On this joyous day, Moscow gave way to Leningrad in honor of lifting the siege to produce a salute to commemorate that the city survived. Order for the troops that won, was signed not by Stalin, but by Govorov. This honor was not awarded to any commander-in-chief of the fronts during the entire period of the Great Patriotic War.

The blockade lasted for 900 days. This is the most bloody, cruel and inhuman blockade in the history of mankind. Its historical significance is enormous. By restraining the huge forces of the German forces throughout this time, the inhabitants of Leningrad rendered invaluable assistance in carrying out military operations on other sectors of the front.

More than 350,000 soldiers-participants in the defense of Leningrad received their orders and medals. 226 people were awarded the honorary title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 1.5 million people were awarded a medal "For the Defense of Leningrad".

The city itself for heroism and fortitude received the honorary title Hero City.