History’s bloodiest siege
More than two million people died when the Nazis blockaded Leningrad for 872 days in 1944
pieces before they could make it to the other side.
Recently unearthed residents’ diaries describe how the people were soon reduced to skeletons. One, Aleksandra Liubovskaia, described how men and women had become “so identical”. She wrote: “Everyone is shrivelled, their breasts sunken in, their stomachs enormous, and instead of arms and legs just bones poke out through wrinkles.”
As starvation, freezing temperatures and desperation took hold, corpses began to litter the streets and many of those still alive began to do the unthinkable and eat them.
A special police force was created to combat cannibalism. They reportedly arrested about 1,500 people and after the siege was lifted those believed to have engaged in it were charged and some were sentenced to death.
There were also accounts of murders committed to get hold of someone’s ration card, or even families taking a dead loved one to the ration station and pretending he or she was still alive.
Meanwhile, those in charge of dishing out the rations often stole food, or exchanged it for sexual favours. Food wasn’t the only necessity in short supply during the two-and-a-half-year siege. Electricity supplies were strictly limited and, as temperatures plummeted, many people resorted to setting fire to precious possessions to keep warm.
People would burn everything from furniture and floorboards, to books and artworks, as well as clothes they were not wearing.
Then, in 1942, came the rats. With so many dead bodies on the streets, the winter ground was frozen and people were too weak to dig graves, rodents flourished.
BEFORE long, the rats finished off the meagre supplies of food still left in the stores. Matters weren’t helped by the fact that most families had already eaten their cats. Once the blockade was lifted in 1944, one of the first things sent in to the city were four train cars full of cats to kill the rats.
Some of the cats were given to residents, while others were just released on to the streets. The cats quickly dispatched the rodents, and today the feline saviours which helped bring the city back from the brink of death and destruction are commemorated in statues dotted around St Petersburg. The Siege of Leningrad finally ended after Russia’s Red Army put into action a carefullyplanned attack called The Spark. Troops converged on a narrow stretch of land where the German army was concentrated and attacked on two fronts.
With 20 divisions and more than 800 planes, they vastly outnumbered the Nazis, who they hit on all sides, pushing them back two to four miles a day. The two fronts finally met on January 18, and nine days later Leningrad was finally liberated.
GENTLEMANLY Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has long got under the skin of combative party colleague and fellow Old Etonian Sir Nicholas Soames.
With Rees-Mogg, 49, taking aim at European Council president Donald Tusk’s inflammatory comments about a “special place in hell” for Brexit campaigners, 70-year-old Soames, grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, insultingly tweets: “The Mogadon strikes back.”
He is of course unkindly comparing plummy-voiced Jacob to sleep-inducing drug Mogadon.
WITH a much-publicised online auction of old Spitting Image characters scheduled for next week, chirpy broadcaster Gyles Brandreth, 70, notes his own TV puppet is up for grabs.
Married to wife Michèle for over 45 years, Gyles announces: “Could buy this for my wife for Valentine’s Day, which is when the auction opens. She says she’d infinitely prefer Tom Hanks, who is also for sale.”
ENJOYING the most successful period of his career to date after earning a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for his role in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Richard E Grant, 61, pictured, reflects on being suddenly embraced by Hollywood’s elite.
Highlighting what he calls “pinch yourself” encounters with the likes of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg at glitzy
Tinseltown events, London-based Grant says: “It’s like being granted temporary membership of the A-List fame club.”
The amiable Withnail and I star jokily adds: “I’m enjoying my Cinderella-like ride to the ball, knowing that on the stroke of midnight on February 24, the glass carriage will turn back into a pumpkin.”
MORE than 50 years after achieving child stardom as Oliver Twist on the big screen, Mark Lester insists he doesn’t resent being constantly reminded about the hit 1968 film all these decades on.
“It doesn’t get on my nerves. It was a great movie. It’s still played regularly,” says Lester, 60, these days a Cheltenham-based osteopath. “It’s like having a painting you look at. I’ve fond memories.”
Recalling how fiction and reality merged when his own offspring watched orphaned alter-ego Oliver on TV years later, Lester fondly adds: “My youngest daughter, when she was about three years old, turned to me and said, ‘Dad, you had a really hard life, didn’t you? Growing up in that workhouse!’ ”