The Tragedy of the Siege of Leningrad: A Statistical Record

In the autumn of 2021, marking the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad, the German Government approved a directive on supplementary compensation payments to the survivors of the city's siege. According to a statement by the Claims Conference (the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany), monthly pensions will be paid for the first time to Jewish survivors of the Siege of Leningrad, as well as to Jews who went into hiding in France and those who survived persecution in Romania.

This decision was preceded by years of dedicated effort by activists of the Union of Veterans of Israel, Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Dr. Michael Beizer, and historian Yuri Nemeiser. Since 2015, Nemeiser has analyzed and systematized over 100 historical works dedicated to the siege by scholars from the USSR, Russia, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Israel. This culminated in a comprehensive analytical study aimed at demonstrating the necessity of equating siege survivors with prisoners of concentration camps and ghettos. The study was presented to the Claims Conference and the governing state authorities of Israel and Germany.

The EAJC presents excerpts from Yuri Nemeiser's study.

Leningrad was a multi-ethnic, closed-type ghetto, with the sole difference being that the contact of the fascist occupiers with the population of the besieged city was not maintained within arm's length or a rifle's barrel, but within the range of artillery shells. Almost all communications connecting Leningrad to the Mainland were severed, and a state of near-total starvation was engineered.

By the beginning of the siege, approximately two and a half million people resided in the city, including 400,000 children under the age of 12. By the final month of the siege (January 1944), the population of Leningrad had declined from 3 million to 557,600, a decrease of 5.36 times. Ninety-seven percent of the siege victims died from starvation and absolute exhaustion, while only 3% of the total casualties perished from artillery fire and aerial bombardment. Starvation was the most decisive factor governing the fate of Leningrad's population. The blockade, established by the German army in compliance with Hitler's directives and orders, was deliberately designed to starve the urban population to death. On November 8, 1941, during a speech in Munich, Hitler stated: "Leningrad must die of starvation," which sealed its fate.

The tragedy of Leningrad and its inhabitants was dictated by three extreme factors.

• The constant psychological pressure of a 900-day siege, characterized by air raid sirens, bombings, artillery shelling, the loss of relatives and loved ones, and the daily threat of death.

• Near-total starvation during the first four months, followed by almost two years of severe dietary restriction and three years of highly rationed nutrition.

• The harsh weather conditions of the first winter of the siege, exacerbated by the complete absence of heating, as well as non-functioning water supply and sewage systems.

To this must be added a significant number of deaths associated with heavy physical labor, which was often beyond the strength of an exhausted and weakened body. People died at their workplaces in production halls, at defense fortification construction sites, and elsewhere. Any one of these factors could have proved fatal. In the winter of 1941-1942, these factors operated in a lethal combination.

The tragic nature of the situation resulted in a widespread onset of severe pathologies. In 1942, up to 90% of Leningrad residents suffered from alimentary dystrophy, with more than half of them suffering from stage 2 and stage 3 dystrophy. According to leading clinicians and historians of siege medicine, a body at the 2nd and 3rd stages of exhaustion existed in a state of minimal death, with a profound disruption of the biological foundations of life, which in itself predetermined an extremely high mortality rate. Under the physiological and medical understandings of the time, this was considered incompatible with life. There are solid grounds to believe that the survivors of the siege, with rare exceptions, lost their health and remained disabled, in other words, victims of the siege, regardless of whether they were officially registered as disabled.

In total, 1,413,000 people became victims of the siege, representing approximately 58% of the population of Leningrad at the start of the blockade, or 47% of the pre-war population of 3 million. Approximately 100,000 of them were Jewish.

Altogether, the death toll from the siege and defense of Leningrad, which lasted for nearly 900 days, exceeded 2.3 million people, representing over 8.5% of the total USSR citizens lost in the Great Patriotic War.

Inhabitants of besieged Leningrad perished from bombings and shelling, died of starvation, and froze to death in unheated apartments where temperatures fell below freezing and window panes were often shattered. Drinking water and water for other needs had to be collected from rivers and canals, requiring holes to be broken in the ice during winter, and buckets of water carried up to the 4th, 5th, or 6th floors. People worked in unheated workshops, often in the open air at sub-zero temperatures.

The energy value of the food rations received by Leningrad residents from December 1941 to March 1942 ranged from 403 to 1,009 kilocalories per day depending on the category of the population, compared to a physiological norm of 3,200 kilocalories. This energy balance included, in addition to bread, other products (fats, meat, grains, sugar, and confectionery) that were generally not distributed to the population due to their complete absence.

Largely due to this, the mortality rate in the city was exceptionally high. In January-March 1942, it exceeded pre-war figures by more than fiftyfold. The Deputy Quartermaster of the German Army, Professor Ziegelmeyer, a renowned nutrition expert, wrote that "people cannot physically survive on such rations. Therefore, we should not risk German soldiers. The residents of Leningrad will die on their own."

According to Russian medical scientists, the sole source of survival under conditions of absolute starvation was the body's own structural tissue, as evidenced by the complete disappearance of fatty tissue and a dramatic reduction in the mass of the heart, liver, and spleen. In individuals who died of dystrophy, only the brain and kidneys remained unaltered in size. All cats, dogs, and crows in the city were consumed. Incidents of necrophagy and cannibalism were recorded.

Around fifteen of Leningrad's cemeteries were overwhelmed with bodies, and burial services could not keep pace. On certain days in February, the number of deceased brought to the Piskaryovskoye Cemetery reached 20,000 to 25,000. They were stacked in piles up to 180-200 meters long and up to 2 meters high. Several militarized and construction organizations were mobilized to bury the bodies. They were buried in trenches and mass graves, yet the mounds of bodies persisted. A decision was then made to cremate the remains. In February 1942, bodies began to be cremated in the thermal kilns of the Izhorsky Plant, and from March 1942, in the tunnel kilns of the 1st Brick Factory. In total, 117,300 bodies were cremated there between March 7 and December 1, 1942.

Under these conditions, Leningrad residents continued to work in factories and plants, scientific research institutes, and design bureaus, manufacturing ammunition and armaments. By the Decree of the Leningrad City Soviet of June 22, 1941, the workday for unemployed men and women was set at 8 hours, and for employed individuals, an additional 3 hours of mandatory labor after their regular shift, totaling 11 hours. Students of active educational institutions were required to work 3 hours. The same decree directed the population to participate in the construction of fortified regions, defensive lines, and fortifications on the approaches to the city. Women and teenagers performed the bulk of this work, as men had been mobilized into the army or worked in defense plants. Half-starved individuals worked to the absolute limit of their strength, frequently dying at their workstations, at home, or on their commute. Nevertheless, Leningrad almost completely supplied the Leningrad Front with ammunition, and rocket launchers ("Katyushas") were also delivered to other fronts. Tanks, various classes of vessels, aircraft engines, and other armaments were repaired and produced.

It is important to note that throughout the two and a half years of the siege, despite intense German anti-Semitic propaganda, to the credit of the city's inhabitants, no significant incidents of anti-Semitism were recorded in Leningrad.

The Siege of Leningrad, in its scale and the depth of its suffering and deprivation, remains one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Second World War. There is no doubt that the decision of the German Government to provide compensation payments and benefits to the survivors of the Siege of Leningrad is highly just and proper in light of these facts.