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appalachiablue

(41,056 posts)
Thu Mar 10, 2022, 06:24 PM Mar 2022

Woman Who Survived Brutal WW2 Nazi Siege of Leningrad As Girl, Trapped In Kharkiv, Ukraine

Last edited Thu Mar 10, 2022, 07:27 PM - Edit history (1)



- An apartment building seen damaged in Kharkiv, Ukraine after shelling, March 8, 2022.
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- The Guardian, AP, March 8, 2022. Ed. - Woman who survived siege of Leningrad as a girl now trapped in Kharkiv. - Daughter-in-law speaks of her anger that Alevtina Shernina, 91, is ending her life as it began.

Alevtina Shernina was a young girl when she survived the brutal siege of Leningrad during the second world war. Eight decades later, so frail she can barely talk, or move unassisted, she is besieged again. The 91-year-old lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s 2nd largest city and one of the most battered urban areas in Russia’s invasion. The bombardment has come so close that windows in her apartment building were blown out.

And yet Shernina cannot flee, even to a bomb shelter. Her heart problems leave her too fragile to be carried down the flights of stairs to the basement when the air raid sirens sound. She could communicate before Russia’s invasion but now is almost unresponsive, her daughter-in-law Natalia said. A bombardment this week shook Natalia, too. She said she was in the kitchen pouring tea: “Then I opened the door, and I couldn’t understand what was going on. There was fire behind the window, and windows were shattering”.

Cold air now comes in through a window left damaged by the attack. Her face pale, her eyes closed, Shernina sits nearby in a blanket, an electric heater at her feet, a tabletop of medication beside her. “I feel inhuman anger from the fact that Alevtina began her life in Leningrad under the siege as a girl who was starving, who lived in cold and hunger, and she’s ending her life [in similar circumstances],” Natalia said. She spoke bitterly of the Russian forces & compared them with the “fascists” who besieged Leningrad, now St Petersburg, for nearly 900 days so long ago.

“What sort of defenders are these?” she asked. “Who did they come to defend?” She showed off an official card stating her mother-in-law’s status as a survivor of one of the deadliest sieges in history. - German forces encircled & starved Leningrad from 1941 to 1944, and hundreds of thousands of people died. - Now Kharkiv, just over 25 miles (40km) from the Russian border, sees little escape from the invasion. Some residents have managed to flee. Others, like Shernina & her family, have little choice but to stay & wonder how long it will go on. “We can’t leave because of Alevtina"...

More,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/10/woman-who-survived-siege-of-leningrad-as-a-girl-now-trapped-in-kharkiv
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- SIEGE OF LENINGRAD, World War II.



- LENINGRAD WW2- 2 women collect remains of a dead horse during the Siege because food had become so scarce.
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- LENINGRAD: 872 Days In Hell: 38 Chilling Photos Of The Siege, WWII. All That's Interesting, Oct. 4, 2021.

* 2.5 Mill residents reduced to just under 800,000 from starvation, disease, & exposure in the siege of Leningrad.*

Known as the 900-day siege, the siege of Leningrad by Axis forces in World War II was one of the longest and most destructive blockades in world history, with some historians even classifying it as a genocide. In total, roughly 1.5 million people were killed during the siege of Leningrad while some 1.4 million were evacuated. - On Hitler's orders, the Soviet city suffered a daily barrage of artillery attacks from the German and Finnish forces that encircled it. The city's water and food supply were cut off and extreme famine soon set in.- The siege of Leningrad began on Sept. 8, 1941, and ended after a grueling two-year period on Jan. 27, 1944. - After 872 days of starvation, disease, and psychological torment, the citizens of Leningrad were freed.

After successfully taking France at the beginning of World War II, Adolf Hitler was eager to take on the Soviet Union.
The Soviets still managed to hold on to their position in the East, largely in part because of the massive number of Red Army troops under their command, despite many of those army men being mostly untrained. - Hitler saw the Soviet's presence as nothing more than taking up *Lebensraum, "living space"* for the Germans. In order to defeat the Soviets, Hitler's military strategists came up with an all-out campaign to invade the Soviet Union, which came to be known as Operation Barbarossa, so-named for the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I. - Roughly 80% of Germany's army was sent to partake in this invasion.

The strategy encompassed a far-reaching net of separate attacks of 3 different major Soviet areas: Leningrad in the north, Moscow in the center, and Ukraine in the south.

Joseph Stalin's 5 million soldiers and 23,000 tanks were not prepared to face this attack. By the summer of 1941, 500,000 German soldiers had advanced toward the city of Leningrad. Under the command of General Field Marshall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, the German troops descended upon the Soviet's 2nd-largest city. But instead of taking it over, Adolf Hitler established a blockade around Leningrad, rendering it inaccessible to the outside world. Leningrad's entire able-bodied population was mobilized to fortify the city's perimeter in support of Leningrad's remaining 200,000 Red Army defenders. Until their military could break through the German blockade, citizens of Leningrad would have to wait.

- The First Days In The 900-Day Siege: German troops were eager to conquer a Soviet city & so the order to siege Leningrad instead of burning it to the ground was met with protest. "The troops are shouting as one 'we want to march forward!'" Hitler's right-hand man Jos. Goebbels wrote in his diary. Ultimately, all land communication in Leningrad was cut off as the city was bombarded with artillery attacks day in & day out. Germans continued their siege of Leningrad dutifully, & by August, the last railway which connected the city to the outside world was blocked. There was only one opening out of the surrounded city & it went across the frozen Lake Ladoga. The ice road was little more than a death route, considering it was the only point through which where meager supplies & refugees could get — besides, it was constantly under German fire. - Read More, https://allthatsinteresting.com/siege-of-leningrad






- Nearly 30 million people were trapped in Leningrad during the siege in WWII. More than 30% of them died.
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Woman Who Survived Brutal WW2 Nazi Siege of Leningrad As Girl, Trapped In Kharkiv, Ukraine (Original Post) appalachiablue Mar 2022 OP
I cannot imagine their grief and fear. redwitch Mar 2022 #1
Same here, what's happening to this world? appalachiablue Mar 2022 #2
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