Siege of Leningrad
Makayla Boisvert
Background
On September 8, 1941 Hitler and the Germans, instead of invading immediately, surrounded the city of Leningrad Russia to watch the city crumble. Life as one knew it had changed as the siege began. The cold weather was coming and the resources were getting cut short due to lakes, such as the Karelian Isthmus, becoming frozen making it hard to transport goods and the Germans surrounding the city. In order to stay warm, civilians were willing to burn library books and anything made of wood , that lasted over 872 days due to the siege. As November came around, hunger sparked up as food supply was cut, leaving people starving and desperate enough that one would eat a zoo animal, a family pet, or another, dead or alive, human. The Germans wanted to see the city and people of Leningrad struggle, so they used air bombardment to destroy warehouses which held most of Leningrad's food supply. As a civilian of Leningrad, Major Lozak stated that one could never shut his or her eyes, because the Germans could strike any minute, in any part of the dreadful city of St. Petersburg.
Hardships
Bombardment
Cannibalism and Hunger
Winter
Journal #1; Hardships of Hunger
As one of the main hardships of the siege of Leningrad, hunger was one of the main focuses in the book The City of Thieves. In the beginning one of the main characters, Lev, and his neighbors/friends Vera and the twins Oleg and Grisha taught people what it was like to live with hunger. As friends, they sat on the roof of their home, the Kirov, waiting and watching for the German bombers to come and ruin one more piece of the city of St. Petersburg (page 8). As hunger raged the city, family had to be family and friends had to be friends and share what they had found for food. Before going on the roof Vera found a half of an onion and they all shared it each receiving 1/4. With their onion, they also split some ration bread with summer oil, 4 ways (page 11) . Ration bread was a sawdust tasting bread and its recipe included anything around the city that could not poison humans. That was their meal, but if one got lucky they would of got some pigeon meat. People were so hungry they ate their own pets, and afterward they didn't cry, they laughed , hunger in the siege of Leningrad caused people to do unexpected things (page 7).
City of St. Petersburg also known as Piter
Before the war- Real Historical from the Novel
Life before the siege to Lev was like a regular Russian city. They had a lot of apartment buildings lining the streets, Lev's building had eleven hundred people in it before the siege (page 8). There was the crosses, a Russian prison, which feared kids the most. Every boy in Leningrad heard the phrase " You keep on with that and you'll end up in the crosses." (page 18). Life before the siege was also not the best for Lev. He had a family but not a complete one. His dad was a poet, who died in the Crosses for making fun of Josef Stalin in his writing (page 34 ). The Nesky was a beautiful place where there were beautiful buildings, such as the clock tower which stood above everything else. Cherry blossoms lined walkways with chocolate and meat shops. It was a lovely place with the prettiest girls in the city but War changed it. It turned into a wonderful street with everything into a bomb zone (page 42). Life was normal for most people but once the siege began, it was a disaster.
During the War
Post War
Journal #2- Emotional and Physical Challenges
The war brought pain among everyone, not just the people of Leningrad. One would get physically shot or burned, but others would become emotional due to experiences they went through. For example the siege, caused people emotional pain by the sound of the bombs, being hungry, or seeing people die or corpses piled on the ground. There were experiences which one would never forget. In the book The City Thieves Lev and Kolya went through a lot of experiences which caused him emotional and physical pain.
The Germans would train dogs to search for food under the Panzers and then not give them food and starve them, and once the tanks came they would let dogs free but the mines which were attached to them would blow up (page 111). When Kolya saw all the died dogs and one dog which was suffering, it caused him emotional pain. Kolya loved dogs, he told Lev that through his story The Courtyard Hound. At the end of the book the hound that the community loved died, and a man who never left his house for seven years who fed him and loved watching him guard, finally left his apartment and buried the dog. That connected to Kolya's challenge of seeing the sheepdog suffering, which Kolya later killed with a knife so it would stop aching (page 239 and 240). After walking through the never ending woods of the Russian borderline, Lev and Kolya found a farmhouse where they met four girls about their age. The girls were Russian slaves who were force to feed, clean, and "entertain" Germans in combat. Lev and Kolya asked why they haven't fled the house and leave for the city when the Germans weren't there, but the girls told them that there use to be five of them (page 129). Her name was Zoya. She was the prettiest of the five girls. She got raped every night by a German soldier and would cry herself to sleep if she even fell asleep. She got to the point where she couldn't take it anymore and tried to escape, but she was too slow and the German soldiers found her. Once they found her, they held her down and one of the officers of the group that was there, sawed her feet off leaving nothing but her the memory of her scream and blood all over (132 and 133). Lev couldn't believe what he heard. Throughout the rest of the journey of finding the eggs, all Lev would think about was Zoya, the Russian girl who got her feet sawed off by Germans. Every time Kolya would talk about the Germans, Lev got really emotional. Hearing Zoya's story only made Lev want to destroy the Germans even more. After the farmhouse Koyla, Lev, and Vika kept going on until they got only a few feet away from their target ,a German killer named Abendroth. Abendroth saw right threw their lies, Vika wasn't a boy, Lev was a Jew, and all three of them were capable of reading and writing (page 221). But what he didn't see was their plan on killing him. Their plan succeeded by physically killing Abendroth and his officers. That resulted in Lev going throught the pain of losing his top half of his left hand index finger (page 232). You'd think that after Lev killed multiple people he would be emotional, but Lev wasn't. He proved that he was capable of becoming a man.
World War II not only created great physical and emotional pain for some people, but it also showed one that life is not perfect and what started as a little conflict could spread in to a national phenomenon which killed not only soldiers but mostly innocent, civilians of countries. World War II also taught one how to be strong and fight, because in the end you are granted to still be alive, just like Lev.
Journal #3- Essential Question
Discrimination was a very big factor in World War II. If one believed that Jewish people are terrible and don't deserve to live, everyone else did. Hitler was famous for that during the War. If one believed that women are not capable of being a soldier, that results in all men fighting while females are home working and taking care of the house and kids. People such as Jews identity changed, while the females identity got destroyed. The Jewish people went from being able to live as any other human, but war and it's leaders changed that, resulting in about 5 million deaths of Jews! For females, they were never given a second look at to fight in the war, and if they wanted too they couldn't because no one was stupid enough to let a female fight for his country. In the book The City of Thieves Lev was Jewish, but he wasn't a terrible human being. Vika was a female sniper who was given an opportunity of fighting for the Red Army, and she took it because she was capable of doing it and the captains saw it in her. When Abendroth on page 221, stated that he could see that Lev was Jewish and Vika was a girl, he acted as if they were misfits of the world and just saying that one is a girl or one is Jewish was a sin. World War II is famous for discrimination, some still remains today, such as women not getting paid the amount men do, or people treating Muslims the way people treated the Jewish.