© Sputnik / Aleksey DanichevCommemorative military parade rehearsal is seen in St Petersburg, on January 24, 2019.
Russian Senators have lambasted a German journalist, who criticized the parade commemorating the end of the Siege of Leningrad - one of the most tragic events of WWII - in a bid to take a jab at the Kremlin.
St. Petersburg will see a parade on Sunday to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the blockade of the city by the Nazi Germany troops that lasted almost 900 days and claimed about 1 million deaths mainly from starvation. But for a journalist at Suedduetsche Zeitung, one of the most popular national dailies in Germany, this is a wrong way to mark the occasion.
"It surprises me that this criticism ... comes from a German journalist," the deputy head of the Russian Senates Defense and Security Committee, Franz Klintsevich, said, commenting on the piece published by the German daily.
The journalist, who wrote this piece, must be either "ignorant of history" or "lacking ... mercy and compassion" to write something like this, the senator said in a Facebook post.
"I cannot rule out that someone in Germany would like Russia to forget about the Siege of Leningrad," Klintsevich said, commenting on the German article. "That is not going to happen!" he
added.
Another Russian Senator, Aleksey Pushkov, also condemned criticism voiced by the German journalist by saying it was "immoral" and "out of place.""Of all the media, the German ones should be the last to criticize us," he
wrote in a Twitter post, adding that Germany's journalists should better focus on "the horrors of the [Leningrad] blockade and numerous crimes committed by the Third Reich against our people."
In the lengthy article titled 'Moscow abuses the memory of the Leningrad' Silke Bigalke argues that Russian authorities daring to hold a military parade as part of the commemorative events shows interest in stirring up national pride and controlling the people rather than preserving the memory about the tragedy.However, the author's apparent desire to shame the Russian authorities produced an article filled with inaccuracies and some bizarre assumptions, even though the journalist does admit that the siege was "genocide." The author claims through the text that the Soviet leaders just gave up on the Leningrad residents and left them to the mercy of the Nazis.She further states that the city defenders were too weak to put up any decent fight because of starvation. The Nazis allegedly did not take the city just because they did not actually want it, the author claims. "Their goal was not to break the resistance of the residents. The goal was to starve them to death."
The article does not say a word about the fact that several armies and a significant part of the Soviet Baltic Fleet were defending the city making regular attempts to break the blockade. Over 1.5 million people were awarded the medal for protecting Leningrad after the war. She also didn't mention the German commanders admitted they would be unable to take the city outright. Neither does the article talk about the so-called Road of Life - the ice road winter transport route across the Ladoga Lake used to deliver food and munitions to the besieged city as well as to evacuate the civilians.
The Road of Life was created just days after the start of the siege in September 1941 and was used until January 1943 when the Soviet troops managed to open a land corridor into Leningrad. Each winter, the Lake Ladoga ice route was reconstructed by hand, and built according to precise arithmetic calculations depending on traffic volume. The truck drivers were working on the road under constant Nazi shelling and bombardments.
© Sputnik / Aleksey Danichev
The city of Leningrad, now known as St Petersburg, was almost completely surrounded by the German-led forces in 1941. The horrific Siege of Leningrad was one of the most lethal in world history, and lasted for 872 days, from September 1941 to January 1944.
The city's civilian population of almost three million refused to surrender or flee in panic, even though they were completely surrounded by advancing German forces. The extreme famine and frequent shelling claimed the lives of around 1 million people - with some historians putting the numbers as high as 1.5 million.
It is not the first time, the parade, which provoked such an angry reaction from the German journalist, is held in St Petersburg. The event marking the lifting of the Nazi siege of the city as well as the deeds of the soldiers that defended and liberated it, involves a historical part, in which soldiers dressed in the WWII uniform as well as some military equipment pieces of that time march through the central Palace Square following by a display of the modern troops and military hardware.
For those readers who would like to know what the Russian people of Stalingrad endured, here is an old SOTT article entitled "The Siege of Leningrad: Last entry in the WWII diary of dying 12-year old Russian girl."
The Siege of Leningrad: Last entry in the WWII diary of dying 12-year old Russian girl
On May 13, 1942 Tanya Savicheva made the final entry in her diary - a short collection of notes that eventually became one of the most heart-wrenching accounts of the Siege of Leningrad. At first...That story will devastate you. Since I know that so few readers follow links, here is an excerpt from the story. I do recommend you to go to the link, read the whole thing and look at the photos in the article.......... Here is the excerpt.
"At first glance the diary of Tatyana Nikolayevna Savicheva, often referred to as Tanya Savicheva, looks like an ordinary small notebook. It is also a fairly short read, containing only several notes.
Its contents however are anything but ordinary: it is a chronicle of the demise of a Russian family trapped in the city of Leningrad by the besieging Nazi German and Finnish troops, written by the family's youngest member, a 12-year old girl.
Yevgeniya Savicheva was the first to perish. The eldest child of the Savichev family, born in 1909, she was working at a factory and, in spite of the severe workload, even insisted on donating blood for army hospitals. She failed to report to work only once - on the day of her death.
Grandmother died on the 25th of January at 3 o'clock, 1942
Even though she was well aware of the fact that her dystrophy was progressing and only immediate hospitalization could save her, Yevdokiya Savicheva chose to remain at home, insisting that the hospitals are already full. Feeling her impending doom, she asked others not to bury her until the end of the month so that the family could make good use of her monthly ration card.
Leka died March 17th, 1942, at 5 o'clock in the morning, 1942
Leonid Savichev, also known as Leka, was Tanya's older brother. A talented worker and a gifted amateur musician, he wasn't drafted due to his myopia but like many other Leningrad residents kept working in a factory in spite of his worsening condition, until severe exhaustion and malnutrition finally claimed his life.
Uncle Vasya died on April 13th at 2 o'clock in the morning, 1942
Vasily Savichev, Tanya's paternal uncle, turned 56 in 1941 and wasn't drafted due to his age. A consummate bibliophile, he used his sizeable library as fuel to help keep the family warm - every book but one, a collection of ancient Greek myths, which he presented as a gift to Tanya.
Uncle Lesha (died on) May 10th, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, 1942
Alexei Savichev was 71 when the war began - way too old to be drafted. However, just like countless other city residents, he helped construct fortifications, dug trenches and kept watch for enemy aircraft. And just like many other city residents, he died at the final stage of dystrophy.
Mama (died) May 13th at 7:30 in the morning, 1942
By Spring 1942 Maria Savicheva, Tanya's mother, was already suffering from severe scurvy. And unfortunately, even her daughter's efforts (Tanya tried to obtain fresh vegetables to reverse her mother's condition) weren't enough to prevent her demise.
The Savichevs are dead. Everyone is dead. Only Tanya is left.
Tanya wrote the final entry on May 13, 1942, and never found out how wrong she actually was. Her brother Mikhail was away from the city during the beginning of the war. Trapped on a territory occupied by the Nazi forces, he joined a local guerilla squad to fight the invaders. Meanwhile, Tanya's sister Nina, whom the rest of the family believed dead, was on fact evacuated along with the rest of the personnel at the plant she was working at - the surprise evacuation was so swift that she failed to send word to her relatives.
Both Nina and Mikhail survived the war and later returned to Leningrad, to discover the fate of their kin.
In August 1942 Tanya was evacuated along with over a hundred other children and sent to the Gorky Region (now Nizhegorodsky Region) for recuperation. But with her health already severely weakened by months of malnutrition, on July 1, 1944 Tanya died of intestinal tuberculosis.
Her diary was eventually put on display at the State Memorial Museum of Leningrad Defense and Siege, and in 1968 a memorial complex, known as the Flower of Life, was erected in her honor - a tribute to the thousands of Soviet children whose lives were cut short by that terrible war."
( Lemuel Gulliver here ) The utterly spoiled and narcissistic Millennial generation, such as this whore of a journalist, have no concept of courage, suffering and heroism. Their lives are shallow, barren, drab and meaningless. And that allows them to write filthy screeds such as this attack on the Russian memorial commemorating the genocide of Leningrad by her very own Nazi ancestors. Shame, shame, and shame again. She should go crawl under a Nazi rock and hide for the rest of her miserable life.