by Mark Leshkevich
[REGNUM] January 27, 1944 marks the day the siege of Leningrad was completely lifted. Since September 8, 1941, the city had been effectively cut off from the rest of the country, and its tragic siege lasted 872 days.
In German headquarters, the mission to besiege Leningrad was formulated as a program of annihilation. An order from Chief of the General Staff of the Army, Franz Halder, issued on August 28, 1941, to Army Group North stipulated: close the encirclement, destroy vital infrastructure (water supply, power supply), do not accept surrender, and do not allow people to leave the encircled city. It also outlined the role of Finnish troops, who were ordered to maintain the blockade on the Karelian Isthmus.
On September 22, 1941, the headquarters of the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) issued directive number 1601/41 and titled “Die Zukunft der Stadt Petersburg” (“The Future of the City of Petersburg”).
The document set the task: the city, with a pre-war population of 3.2 million, was to be wiped off the face of the earth. The directive, verbatim, stated the following :
“The plan is to surround the city with a tight ring and, by shelling it with artillery of all calibers and continuous bombing from the air, raze it to the ground.
If, as a result of the situation that has arisen in the city, requests for surrender are made, they will be rejected, since the problems associated with the stay of the population in the city and its food supply cannot and should not be resolved by us.
In this war waged for the right to exist, we are not interested in preserving even a part of the population."
The mass death of residents of besieged Leningrad was not an “unforeseen consequence” of the military operation – the blockade was a planned act of genocide.
Let us recall that the legal concept of "genocide," although only formulated in 1948 in the relevant UN Convention, has retrospective force in Russian criminal law —that is, it applies to these crimes against humanity committed before 1948. Liability for genocide has no statute of limitations.
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Directive 1601/41 stated in plain text: “ After the defeat of Soviet Russia, the continued existence of this largest settlement is of no interest.”
One of the tools to end the existence of millions of people locked in the blockaded city, including the elderly, women, children, and the seriously ill, was to be hunger.
On November 20, 1941, Leningrad's leadership was forced to reduce bread rations: 250 grams for workers, 125 grams for employees and their families. For the city's defenders—the paramilitary guards, fire brigades, and extermination squads—300 grams.
On November 28, 1941, Leningrad ninth-grader Yura Ryabinkin wrote in his diary, admitting with horror to himself that he was not prepared to sacrifice his rations for the sake of his younger sister, Ira:
"Not only is there not a single piece of bread at home (they're now given 125 grams of bread per person per day), but not a single crumb of bread, nothing edible. And it's cold, my hands are freezing, my feet are freezing... Today, Mom will come and take Irina's bread card from me—oh well, I'll donate it to Ira, let her at least stay alive from this hellish [further illegible], and I'll somehow..."
Sixteen-year-old Yura didn't survive the first winter of the siege—even the date of his death in the archives is given as approximate, "no later than March 1942." His mother, Antonina Mikhailovna, and sister, Ira, were evacuated along the Road of Life to Vologda. Antonina died of exhaustion during the evacuation, right at the Vologda train station. Irina, who was given the last crumbs of food from the siege, survived.
Ryabinkin's siege notebooks, along with other diary accounts, are collected in " The Children's Book of War," published in 2015. Also included is Tanya Savicheva's diary, one of the most famous and horrific pieces of evidence that the siege was an act of genocide.
And in January 2026, on the 82nd anniversary of the liberation of Leningrad, excerpts from a captured document stored in the archives—a report from the intelligence department of the headquarters of the 50th Army Corps of the 18th Army of Army Group North— were published on the official FSB website:
“In the first days of February (1942), the absolute majority of mortality reached 20 thousand people per day.”
The Nazis expected that the population of the dying city would “systematically decline” not only due to hunger, but also due to epidemics.
But here the enemy miscalculated.
Thanks to the heroism of doctors and other medical workers, by April 1942 the mortality rate had been reduced to 1,000 people per day—this data is cited in the same report by the intelligence department of the headquarters of the Wehrmacht's 50th Army.
“The lack of spread of infection is explained essentially by the highly intensive work of Soviet institutions in terms of sanitary matters,” the German document noted.
Even after the blockade was broken in January 1943, the city remained under fire.
Operation Iskra ended on January 18, 1943, when the troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts united and created a land corridor to Lake Ladoga 8-11 km wide, in addition to the Road of Life.
This saved hundreds of thousands of blockade survivors who were able to be saved by evacuation to the mainland, but until January 1944, Leningrad continued to live as a besieged fortress.
By January 30, 1944, during the Leningrad-Novgorod Operation, our troops broke through the German defenses. Troops of the Leningrad Front launched two attacks in converging directions, encircling and destroying part of the German force near Krasnoye Selo, southwest of Leningrad.
From January 31 to February 15, troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts defeated the Wehrmacht's Luga group and, reaching the Narva River, occupied a bridgehead on its left bank.
The threat to the Northern capital was lifted, the blockade became a fact of history.
Soviet prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials cited horrific figures: 630,000 people died in Leningrad between 1941 and 1944. But when, on October 20, 2022, the St. Petersburg City Court recognized the crimes of the Nazis and their collaborators in Leningrad and the surrounding region as genocide against the peoples of the USSR, the case file recorded the deaths of at least 1,093,000 men, women, and children.
Some historians suggest that the actual death toll from the siege is even higher—around 1.5 million people. Of these, only 3% died from Nazi bombing and artillery fire; the remaining 97% died of starvation.
FINNS TO GERMANS: "ACHIEVE THE DESTRUCTION OF ST. PETERSBURG"
Germany was not alone in its responsibility for the planned campaign of extermination.
In the north, she had a partner who, through positions, decisions, and attempts to strike at Ladoga, supported the general plan: Leningrad must disappear.
On the Karelian Isthmus, the front line ran just 32 km from the outskirts of Leningrad, and the territory occupied by Finnish troops remained the very same “Finnish blockade link” that posed a threat even after January 27, 1944.
Finland's complicity in the Leningrad tragedy begins with documents and decisions from 1941. On June 25, 1941, a secret telegram from Finnish envoy Toivo Mikael Kivimäki arrived from Berlin to Helsinki : Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring discussed Finland's role in the blockade and siege of Leningrad and stated bluntly that "St. Petersburg... would be better destroyed."
On the same day, Finnish Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim issued the order to begin military operations against the USSR. This was a coordinated entry into the war, with the understanding that this would take place at the northern border.
On September 26, 1941, Kivimäki reported to his boss, the head of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rolf Johan Witting : it was necessary to “officially obtain from Germany that St. Petersburg be completely and finally destroyed.”
Finnish political leader, President Risto Ryti, discussing the future border of Suur Suomi – Greater Finland – and the German Reich, speaks of annexing the territory “up to the Neva”, adding that Leningrad “ should no longer exist as a major city”.
At the same time, the position of the German command is also recorded: the aforementioned directive on the “Future of the City of St. Petersburg” speaks not only of the intention to erase the city, but also of the fact that Finland has declared its “lack of interest” in its continued existence at the new border.
In 1942, Mannerheim attempted to contribute to the strangulation of the city by means of Lake Ladoga. In October, an attempt was made to capture Sukho Island, which protected transport along the Road of Life.
At the request of Mannerheim's headquarters, German and Italian boats and landing craft were added to the Finnish forces on Lake Ladoga. The operation failed on October 22, but the plan was the same: to cut off the artery that kept Leningrad alive, fed its people, and continued to work.
On April 3-4, 1944, approximately twenty German Junkers-88s attempted to break through to the city from the Finnish region of Joensuu. They were thwarted by airborne surveillance, warning, and communications (VNOS) and anti-aircraft fighters, but the fact itself demonstrates that the northern corridor remained operational.
It was only in the summer of 1944, after the Finnish leadership refused to accept the terms of the armistice and the start of the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk Operation, that the real drive out of the Wehrmacht's Finnish allies by force began.
“WHEN I ENTERED THE BARRACKS, I THOUGHT: ‘LIVING ASHES’”
On the day Leningrad finally breathed a sigh of relief, on the other side of Europe the same death factory created by the Nazis and their allies continued to operate.
The siege and the camps, hunger and gas, the ring around the city and the barbed-wire fence around the barracks were all different forms of the same policy of the Third Reich. That's why January 27th stands side by side in historical memory as two dates.
On January 27, 1945, the Red Army entered the Auschwitz camp. This was the link in the liberation of Poland.
On January 12, strategic offensives began, and in the Vistula-Oder Operation, troops were supposed to defeat the enemy, reach the Oder and open the road to Berlin.
The armies of the left wing of the 1st Ukrainian Front under the command of Ivan Konev, the 59th and 60th, approached the Auschwitz area.
There were battles in front of the camp: they liberated Monowice and Zaracz, fought their way to Neuberun, and then, on the morning of January 27, the battle for Auschwitz began.
The Germans counterattacked with infantry, supported by tanks and armored personnel carriers, but retreated. According to participants, command prohibited artillery fire on the camp area to avoid hitting the prisoners.
"We thought there was a military base behind the barbed wire. We asked for artillery, but they refused. They said there was a prisoner-of-war camp behind the barbed wire. They ordered us to avoid firefights," Ivan Martynushkin, a participant in the liberation of Auschwitz, recalled in a 2022 interview with the RuBaltic portal. In January 1945, he was a company commander in the 1087th Rifle Regiment of the 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front.
The priority of who entered first was not documented: the camp and its branches stretched for tens of kilometers, and several divisions operated simultaneously.
When the territory was occupied, about 9 thousand prisoners were found alive, driven to extreme exhaustion.
"We went into a barracks after the crematorium. I saw ashes there, and at the entrance, things and clothes... And when I entered the barracks, I thought, 'Living ashes.' It's impossible to describe the feeling—it's like a living person, but then again, it's not... Someone was sitting on the ground, chewing grass..." recalled Vladimir Chernikov, a soldier from the 1st Ukrainian Front.
Medical units were transported to Auschwitz, food was established, and later a mobile hospital specializing in the treatment of malnutrition arrived (by this time, the Soviet medical system had learned from the Leningrad experience how to properly treat malnourished people: for example, doctors discovered that starvation victims needed to be fed gradually).
At the same time, the SMERSH counterintelligence service began searching for the camp guards and leadership, collecting testimony, and the materials became part of the evidence base for the post-war trials.
The investigation by the ChGK (Extraordinary State Commission of the USSR for the Establishment and Investigation of the Crimes of the Nazi Invaders) recorded that out of 405,000 registered prisoners, 340,000 were killed, and the exact total number of victims is difficult to establish.
Civilians from all over Europe and 12 thousand Soviet prisoners of war languished in the concentration camp.
Fighters of dozens of nationalities served in the units of the 60th Army that liberated Auschwitz: the largest number were Russians and Ukrainians, but Belarusians, Tatars, Jews, Uzbeks, Poles fought alongside them…
REMEMBER FOREVER
Every year, on January 27, Russia remembers one of the most tragic and heroic events of the Great Patriotic War – the complete liberation of Leningrad from the siege.
In St. Petersburg, solemn mourning events are taking place: the laying of flowers and wreaths at the Motherland monument at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of residents and defenders of the city are buried.
The metronome, a symbol of life in besieged Leningrad, sounds, military bands perform, and fireworks ceremonies are held. Schools and museums hold courage lessons and exhibit archival photographs and diaries of those who survived the siege. Veterans are invited to memorial evenings where eyewitness recollections are heard, letters are read, and poetry is read.
In other Russian cities, candles are being lit in memory, and "Blockade Bread" campaigns are being held, reminding people of the resilience and strength of spirit of Leningrad.
On the same day, the world also bows its head to the victims of the death factory: January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by Soviet troops.
On the eve of the anniversary of one of the greatest tragedies in human history, on January 26, Israeli Ambassador to Moscow Oded Yosef issued a statement declaring that his country and Russia are united in their desire to preserve the memory of the Red Army's role in crushing Nazi atrocities against Jews, Russians, and other nationalities. The diplomat presented a medal and a certificate of honor as "Righteous Among the Nations" to the grandson of Anastasia Sergeyeva, who sheltered Semyon Sherman, a Jew, during the Great Patriotic War.
Russian schools also hold remembrance lessons, screenings of documentaries, meetings with historians and human rights activists, and candle lighting at Holocaust memorials.
January 27th becomes a common day of historical remembrance for Russia, the heir to the heroic deeds of the Soviet people, regarding the atrocities of the Nazis and the genocide of the peoples of the USSR.