U.S.-U.S.S.R. exchange programs; Breaking the Leningrad blockade

We present a program prepared in the Soviet Union for listeners in the United States under the 78 American agreement for cultural exchange. Twenty years ago the city of letting grad broke through the blockade imposed on it by the Nazi forces during the Second World War. Leningrad was cut off from the rest of the world for almost 900 days and nights. It was one of the worst blockades in the history of the world. But beloved ratters held out and won. This program is dedicated to their heroic stand. Only. It was extremely important for the German command to seize Leningrad and the Baltic area and therefore Herald against the city. Forty three German and twenty one Finnish divisions supported by more than 2000 aircraft

and about a thousand and a half times. The enemy forces were overwhelmingly superior. The Finns attacked the city from the north and the Germans from the south locking it between the Gulf of Finland and Lake glad that. The fascists have the slightest doubt that they take the city. Hitler issued orders the day for the victory parade on palace square in letting rap. Every man woman and child in many rap came out to defend the city. Half a million women and children. Trenches and then dig ditches on the approach of the town.

On the streets of the square they put up barbed wire entanglements and barricade every first floor and show window with protected with sandbags. Every house was turned into a fortress. Almost every man took up arms. Hitler issued orders to wipe the city from the face of the earth. He wrote all forces you know blockade the city kindly and let him live to the ground by artillery fire all calibers and steady bombing from the air. Any surrender induced by these measures is to be rejected. Left ordered Hitler. Hundreds of thousands of tons of shells and bombs were asked on one of Europe's most beautiful cities widely

famed for its masterpieces of architecture. There were five or six air raids every day. Shellings lasted as long as nine hours at a stretch. There was a danger not only from bombs and shells starvation came in to help the Nazis. Regimes were cut to half a pound of bread a day per worker. Others received only a quarter of a pound. The bread was poorly baked and had to be adulterated. All supplies of coal oil and wood were consumed. The power station had to stop work and the street cars and trolley buses stopped running. There was no fuel and plumbing systems got out of order.

40 below weather of the winter of 1941. Worse than that the desperate situation. Here's an eye with the story virus of memory a clock who lived through the 908 latte. Doing remove trash community school community and I'm very new. Meaning we don't clearly hear the womb. We think could have done more. Thank me or with me. I generally agree with Doug. It's hard to recall that I will cry. How much misery the warm waters shells and bombs had let me wear every day. I remember the screeching of the sirens and the rumble of crashing houses it was

cold and dark in town. People from starvation walk like ghosts moving their feet with difficulty but there are dead right in the street. Standing in line for the bread ration. Even women and children went to the factories working 18 hours a day. If book buyers got the wanted out of the ruins and helped the sick and they are. I work with the premisses Graca continued all the window panes in the shop are blown out. And happening or is thrown out of the metal at the slightest contact. We swayed with the tea and were busy with hunger and all round us were exploded. We used to go to work and never know whether our house would be there when we came home or whether the children would still be alive. The front reached landing Grant in September 1941.

The only way to get in or out of the city was across Lake Glen attack which was unsuitable for shipping. Caches there over the lake constantly and they named all boats and barges afloat. If it wasn't the Germans then frequent heavy storms smashed the boats and cast them on the rocks near the shore. It is the measure of effort and sacrifice to deliver every kind of food over the lake. When the lake froze over a road was laid across it plays when and when the ice grew stronger. Trucks set out. Fashion guns a few miles away fired at the lake rode their

planes bombed it. Defying it all across the lake in a steady stream night and day. There were drivers who drove their trucks 48 hours at a stretch when spring came and the ice could no longer hold up heavy weights. The truck drivers carried their load on their backs waiting for word they delivered sacks of seeds to be planted in the city and 60 tons of onions. This was a priceless gift to the civilians and soldiers in Leningrad who suffered from scary. Mail began to arrive. It looked deliberate across the ice or the water of the lake. And sometimes by blockade running plays.

Dear dear I've gone through a terrible winter but I'm quite well. Our house was completely demolished while I was at work and our neighbors were killed. I want into the cellar. It's still here. Now I have my own individual bomb shelter. Don't worry about me. But my crew gives us some cereal every week and I get my bread ration. So I won't start. Right more often. You know nothing my. Dear papa. Why haven't you written so long. I had sent you two letters already and have received no answer yet. We are all well. Mom worked in a hospital and I still go to school. I still have moved into a bomb shelter and class with our help three hours a day. I'm very great man. At night I go up on the roof to fight off incendiary bombs.

I put out three of them already. I'm not afraid at all. Well our boys do do we up on the roof. Your iPhone. While. My Dear Stan. I received your letter and I'm very proud that you've been awarded a medal. We have a new member in our family. I mean they're from across the way. Her parents were both killed during the shelling. Father's well. He's repairing tanks at a factory. Sometimes he doesn't come home for a week at a time. And it's hard to get home anyway because there is no transportation. Left with life and living grad during the blockaded existence of self was a really good exploited. But the Leningrad lived and worked beside for victory factories of a besieged city built and repaired 2000 tanks and a thousand a half claim. They made hundreds of thousands of shells. A famous man who lived in Leningrad at the time was the composer Dimitri Jacques the

college. He worked on his great seven or Leningrad symphony in an unheated apartment to the rumble of enemy shell fire. This symphony was first performed in besieged Leningrad in the winter of 1942. The Premier was announced a long time ago at the Philharmonic Hall with pack and soldiers from the City's defense lines mingled with a civilian in the audience. Artillery forces protected the hall throughout the concert at tapping the German

batteries and preventing them from beginning their bombardment. The orchestra satin coats and fur caps and when possible in playing this heroic composition. A war correspondent recalls the situation it was in 1942 and this is what he tells us.

In the spring. I remember a German newspaper wrote that Leningrad was a dead city and the corpses had to suspend the advance on the city because of the stench. But it was no dead city I saw. It was badly shelled and many of the houses were demolished completely. But life was teeming in the half wrecked homes. Plywood substituted for window panes with pipes poked out of them releasing smoke from homemade iron stove. There was laundry on some of the windows. I was surprised to see spring bulbs and flower beds. It was not a flower bed however but radishes and carrots. Young onion shoots showed green among the surviving antique statues in the parks and there were potatoes growing on the streets. Streets stripped of asphalt. There were no epidemics On the contrary. Hundreds of Leningrad are as lean and pale came out on a warm sunny day to clean up the yards and streets. Old

men women and children moving with difficulty collected junk and garbage and carried it to trucks in their shopping bags. Lacking the strength to carry bigger loads. Every once in a while a shell would burst in the street. But little attention was paid to it as if to refute the German claims that this was a dead city a big soccer game was played at the Municipal Stadium that was on May 6. The traditional opening day of the National Championship Series. The local Garrison played a dynamo club. Several members being brought in from the front for the occasion. There were a few thousand fans in the stands making a fantastic scene. Lean exhausted men playing the national game in the besieged city. The game was radioed to the frontline as it testified at Leningrad and its defenders were still alive. In the summer of 1940 to an oral pipeline and cables were laid across the bottom of Lake ladder to supply the city without a Christie. The street

cars began to run and public bathhouses and laundries began to work. The food supply. Improved over sadly. In January 1943 the blockade was broken on one sector of the front and then the Year Later letting red launched a full scale offensive all along the line. To grab. The Frank realty of the January morning was shattered by the roar of 600 and first. No one in town paid any attention. They were used to it. Then it became clear that this was an offensive. It meant the end of the blockade. People ran out into the streets embraced and cried with joy as a steady stream of troops passed on the way to the front. The fighting moved farther and farther away from the city. The shooting room muffled by

distance as the Soviet soldiers advanced the resistive wait. Sergeant little I proved I was among them. Today he works at the electro syrup plant and letting RAK Here's how he remembers it. The memory idea that you felt happy to put it but he got to be in good at it. Don't you want read with me a question. But he would add to the reasoning. When you bought it you found down I did a grab bag and I'm going to get your reportorial. We couldn't recognize the suburbs when we got there. The fascists had wrecked our monuments and spoiled the parks and the farms of Petra duress. They demolished book about Observatory. It looked as if a thousand savages had held a bloody feast everywhere during the blockade. The Nazis heard of two hundred and fifty thousand bombs and shells at Leningrad. They described three thousand houses completely

and seven thousand partially. Bombs hit the World Famous palaces the unique hermit Taj the Russian art museum and the Winter Palace. Shallow and hunger carried away over half a million citizens. When he hears of. The traces of devastation have disappeared. Leningrad has been restored and doubled both in extent and in housing facilities. Its population has grown too. Planning matters come to the war memorial. Every January 27.

There's a blue eternal flame and it's what commemorating those who perished. During the 900 days of the blockade. And engraved on it are the words. No one. And nothing has been forgotten. That was dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the

breaking of the blockade of Miami during the Second World War. You just heard a program prepared in the Cygnet union for listeners in the United States under the Soviet American agreement for cultural exchange. This is the National Education already own network.