Yesterday and today I had again an opportunity to chat with those Ingrian ladies cross the yard. I told them how enthusiastic people are to hear more, and so they kept telling. In fact, now I met a whole lot more of them even. On top of the three I met previous time, now I met four more, although three of them left shortly. However, the fourth new acquiantance sounds like the most interesting of them all...
This fourth one I met today, and she was eager to tell a lot, noticing how interested I was. What makes her story utmost interesting is, that she is a
survivor of the Siege of Leningrad! A Finn inside Leningrad in WW II... I'd never have even dreamed of meeting someone such!
When the Germans approached Leningrad, she was three years old. Her mother and grandmother were living in Leningrad, very close to where the Germans stopped. Being a small girl speaking Finnish among the Russians she was being watched by everyone as if she'd have been the worst of the enemies. A true symbol of the evil 'tsuhnas' (rerogatory word meaning Finns), so to say. Her father had been sent to front, of course. Being trapped in Leningrad, they couldn't go anywhere until February 1942, when the ice road (Road of Life) was open on Lake Ladoga. Until then they experienced the misery, which only turned to worse thereafter by the Russians.
Ok, back to Leningrad first. To my astonishment, she told there wasn't that much daily fighting, although they were very near the front!! At nights there was more shooting, but not at daytime. I myself have always thought it must have been pretty continuous fighting in the suburbs of Leningrad for much of the time, but she told different. She explained, that there had been very heavy fights before reaching Leningrad area, but then it pretty much stopped, because the nazis didn't want to destroy the city after all. (Hitler had earlier announced they'd destroy the whole city and not save anyone. That's why the people were desperately literally fighting for their lives in there.).
So, the nazis were sieging, but not attacking the city too heavily, because they ultimately wanted it unruined as a gem. I must say this really was some news to me, at least. I would have expected they'd have used the huge army they had tied up there at least for some militarily useful action! Why not attack towards the Finns again to cut Leningrad completely, for instance? But now, they wasted time and troops waiting.
She also told the fleeing people from all around Leningrad came to those areas they were living in. Being hungry, they ate everything they could get. Their dog was gone. Their cat was gone. Her mother had to keep the doors locked all the time, because people would have taken anything they could - even the children! She told some people literally tried to buy children. Yes, for food! And people did eat dead people, because there wasn't else - cats and dogs had gone already.
Now, I asked about how they were evacuated. She started laughing at the word "evacuated"...
It really wasn't evacuation. It was encampment... Or would you expect an evacuation to be such, where soldiers come with rifles and bayonnets to push you out of your home immediately without any warning nor possibility to take any valuables with you? A 3-year-old girl, her mother and sister and a 73-year old grandmother were pushed forward as prisoners along the Road of Life, then to a train and cattle wagons, and sent directly to Siberia as gulags... Sure, they must have been the worst possible criminals - for speaking Finnish!
In Siberia there had happened on several occations, that soldiers had attempted to separate them. Her mother stuck to her and her sister, telling they are her children and she'll go to death with them. So they got to a gulag camp by the Arctic sea on river Lena. That's like the most uninhabitable place on Earth one can imagine. Temperature may fall as low as -70 degrees centigrade! And she told there was snow like as much as a height of a two storey building... But their grandmother wasn't as lucky. At some point all the elderly were gathered elsewhere, and they never saw nor heard anything of their granny anymore.
About the prison camp on Lena she told, that before them there had already come lots of Jews to that camp. That was lucky for them, because the Jews had rich friends in the USA, who sent them help. And the Jews were very helpful, so they also helped the others a lot. Being educated people, the Jews soon organised the camp and became natural leaders. There also were lots of Carelians, Estonians, Votes, Lithuanians and Yakutians at the camp. Being in a desperate place everyone was helping each other. And all the children were playing together, although they couldn't understand each others' language. (Following the modern very egotastic western style of life, I must tell I'm not exactly very much appreciating it in comparison with such Russian prison camp co-operative style of life...)
Both she and the other Ingrian lady, who had lived in Lvov (in Ukraine; having married a Russian soldier she was the only one not sent to Siberia), agreed things Stalin had done sending people to prison camps were horrible. But on the other hand, they both also agreed, they had experienced something unique and valuable meeting so many different people, and having seen there are always people who want to help - even at desperate times and places.
Now, one more thing about the Winter war. The ladies told, that they had always been taught Finland was the attacker. Of course, they didn'ty believe it, but that's how things were always told in the Soviet Union. As the propaganda went, the Soviets weren't prepared, when the 'tsuhnas' attacked. Still... Stalin had planned and started building several new airfields near Leningrad for (offensive) military purposes before WW II already, but they hadn't been finished by WW II. Now, the sister of the fourth lady had went to see their old home afterwards. She found their tiny apple tree where their home had been. But now there was a massive concrete air field on top of the rest...
PS. I think it's just appropriate to add some photo reminding of the Siege of Leningrad. Here's the famous picture of a man in Siege of Leningrad with his daily ration on his hand:
http://it.stlawu.edu/~rkreuzer/pcavallerano/hunger.jpgNO act, written, spoken or physical, how ever hilarious and fun, intentionally or unintentionally, is hereby STRICTLY FORBIDDEN!
