A resident of St. Petersburg remembered the day the blockade was broken

After the blockade was broken, joy and relief overwhelmed the residents of Leningrad. People were screaming: "We are alive, we will live!" Tatiana Kuzmina, a resident of Leningrad, told Izvestia about this on January 27.

At the Nuremberg Tribunal, it was recorded that 632,000 people died during the siege of Leningrad. However, modern research conducted by Russian scientists Valentin Kovalchuk and Gennady Sobolev has concluded that the real number of victims may be much higher — according to their estimates, it is at least 800 thousand, and some sources even indicate a figure of up to one and a half million.

In the besieged city, people had to survive with temperatures dropping to -30 degrees. The diaries of the besieged give a terrifying insight into life in besieged Leningrad — many descriptions are filled with a sense of the inevitability of death, but also express a strong belief in victory.

In addition, the notes reflect the daily suffering of people. For example, in the diary of Valentina Skuratovich (Borneman), a resident of besieged Leningrad, there are stories about dead people lying on the streets of the city who cannot be buried due to lack of strength. According to her, hunger has become even more devastating than mortality.

In turn, the great-grandson of a resident of besieged Leningrad, Bair Irincheev, noted that letters and postcards had become an important means of communication during that period. He also called it amazing that his great-grandmother kept them. An example is Volodya's letter to his mother, in which he writes about his desire to return to Leningrad, despite the constant shelling.

"Suddenly, they started shooting from all over, from all the ships, such big loud volleys. We didn't even understand what it was. Then someone shouted on the stairs: "Breaking the blockade! We believed to the end that our army would defeat fascism," Kuzmina said.

At the same time, Tatyana Gorbacheva in her diary called the liberation of Leningrad from the "German executioners" a worldwide, national happiness.

The story of the Day of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi blockade: how the townspeople survived the blockade and learned about the lifting of the siege

In mid-January 1944, Soviet troops launched an offensive operation that ended on January 27.

On the same day, a commemorative event dedicated to the 82nd anniversary of the complete liberation of the city was held at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg. The ceremony began with the changing of the guard of honor at the Eternal Flame and the monument "Mother Motherland". After it, the participants of the event honored the memory of the victims of the blockade and the fallen military with a minute of silence, flowers and wreaths were laid at the monument.

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