Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 by Anna Reid Read Free Book Online

herself.
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    In the crowded half-darkness of the air-raid shelters, conversation became unusually free. People talked, Osipova wrote, ‘about things that before the war we wouldn’t have discussed even in our sleep, or when very drunk, except in the company of people we knew intimately. I’m sitting here writing my diary quite openly and nobody pays any attention.’ As shells began to fall in Pushkin itself, she and her neighbours moved permanently into their cellars. Privately, Osipova longed for what she regarded as liberation. ‘We sit here all day’, she wrote on the 15th. ‘The impression is of complete confusion. We asked – Where are the Germans? At Kuzmino. That means they’ll get to us in about two hours.’ Two days later the streets were still empty:
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    No Germans yet. We walked into the town. Overwhelming silence . . . No sign of the authorities at all. If they are here, they are hiding. Everyone’s afraid that it might be our lot coming, and not the Germans . . . If it is the Germans – a few unimportant restrictions, and then FREEDOM. If it is the Reds – more of this hopeless vegetable existence, and most probably repression . . .
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    The next day she had her first uneasy intimation that the Nazis really were a different breed from the Heine and Schiller of her schoolroom, when she picked up an anti-Semitic leaflet dropped by a German plane. ‘What mediocrity, stupidity, coarseness. “A muzzle that asks for a brick!”; “Fight the Yid- politruk !” And what vulgar, mutilated language . . . Is it possible that we are mistaken, that the Germans really are as bad as Soviet propaganda makes out?’ On the 19th the waiting was finally over. ‘It’s happened’, she wrote exultantly in her diary, ‘THE GERMANS HAVE COME! At first it was hard to believe. We climbed out of the shelter and saw two real German soldiers walking along. Everyone rushed up to them . . . The old women quickly dived back into the shelter and brought out sweets, pieces of sugar and white bread.’ ‘NO MORE REDS!’ the entry ends. ‘FREEDOM!’ 9
    She was horribly wrong – or wilfully blind – of course. One of the refugees from Pushkin into Leningrad was the composer Bogdanov-Berezovsky, who before being sent with other musicians to load timber at the Leningrad docks had lived in a wing of the Catherine Palace. Shortly after Pushkin’s fall he bumped into a former neighbour, who had witnessed the town’s takeover before escaping to the city on foot:
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    She told us of awful things . . . An ordinary German language teacher at the Pushkin middle school took a ‘leading role’, volunteering as an interpreter and identifying various Communists, among them sweet Anechka Krasikova from the Palace administration. Anechka often used to drop round – pretty, young, always cheerful. Her little face wasn’t even spoiled by pince-nez, though they didn’t really suit her at all. Her husband and five-year-old boy managed to get away in time. But she was put in charge of the palace’s air-raid shelters, in which much of the town was hiding, and so missed getting out either by truck or on foot. The fascists shot her and various others on the lawn opposite the parade ground, next to the Monogram Gates, having first made them dig their own graves. An elderly Jewish couple – the Lichters from the right-hand wing – were hanged. (The old lady was so proud of her boy, the tankist !) So were three Jews from the left wing. Two of them were the boys with sticking-out ears, aged about seven or eight, who were always dashing about outside our windows. 10
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    The Germans’ initial searches for Pushkin’s Jews and Communists were followed by an order that all Jews appear for ‘registration’ at the Kommandant’s office – opposite the ‘Avant-Garde’