Post by Planet Asia on Dec 24, 2005 17:03:07 GMT -5
Wartime Leningrad
"In the worst period of the siege Leningrad was in the power of the cannibals. God alone knows what terrible things went on behind the walls of apartments."
During World War II, the starving people of besieged Leningrad resorted to eating their fellow citizens in one of the largest outbreaks of cannibalism in human history. Harrison Salisbury's magisterial book The 900 Days is a sympathetic, well written and thoroughly researched account of the heart-rending story of the siege of Leningrad. In June 1941 the German Wehrmacht smashed through Soviet frontline defenses and raced towards the target destinations of Leningrad, Moscow, and the Caucasus. By December German forward reconnaissance units were at the edges of Moscow, so close that the Kremlin could be faintly seen through military-issue binoculars. Leningrad itself had been practically surrounded since early September and by October German artillery and bombing were turning the city into a charnel house. One particularly large scale bombing raid had destroyed the huge Badayev warehouse complex, the storage place for Leningrad's meager food reserves. The already perilous food situation was about to get much, much worse as the Germans tightened the noose around the city.
Bolshevik authorities instituted a strict rationing system as the only means to feed Leningrad's three million people and half million soldiers with the meager foodstuffs available. By the second month of the siege, factory workers were allocated half of a loaf of poor-quality bread daily, an ounce of meat, two ounces of macaroni and "pastry." Nonworkers and children were allocated half of these amounts. It was already a starvation diet, but to make things worse, the bread and pastries were of such poor quality that they possessed hardly any nutritional value. Adulteration of food increased. For example, scientists at the Leningrad Wood Products Institute discovered a way to convert pine sawdust into edible wood cellulose to be used as an ingredient to supplement bread. Rations would be cut again, and again.
To get even these small rations, you had to present your monthly ration card. Such cards were literally precious and irreplaceable. If you lost your card, or it was stolen, it could effectively be a death sentence. "The worst disaster which could befall a Leningrader was the loss of his ration card." Theft of ration cards, attacks on bread shops, and theft by workers in the food distribution system became increasingly common. City authorities announced that "robbers, speculators and marauders will be mercilessly punished by the laws of war," but even the threat of summary execution on the spot was not enough to deter violations of the system.
Black market prices for food began to soar beyond the means of ordinary citizens. In October a small loaf of bread could fetch sixty rubles in the black market, a sack of potatoes three hundred and a pound of meat five hundred. By January those prices would soar ten-fold, when loaf of bread might fetch a diamond wedding ring or family heirloom. As winter wore on and starvation set in, people began to tear wallpaper from the walls and in order to scrape off and eat the paste. City authorities struggled to balance declining food stocks against increase in the daily death rate which was running in the thousands daily.
The logistical system was stretched beyond the breaking point. Only in December did a trickle of supplies start to get through to the city's starving population. They were carried by night over the so-called "Road of Life," a small stream of trucks that managed to make it over the now frozen Lake Ladoga. But a populace of three millions persons cannot be fed by a few dozens of creaky Soviet trucks. The winter of 1941-42 was bitterly cold, the temperature dropping to twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit or more below zero. The few functioning bakeries were routinely shut down by a lack of reliable electric power. In fact, at one point the entire city was left with total power production of a mere three-thousand kilowatts turned out by a small emergency turbine.
By December people began eating their dogs. Even the rats disappeared from the city by mid-January, moving to the front lines where the food was more plentiful. The birds also disappeared. The crows flew off to the German lines to seek food, while the sparrows and starlings dropped dead from hunger and cold. Before very long all of Leningrad's dogs and cats had by now all been consumed, as urban hunting parties tracked down the dwindling population of strays. By February the entire dog population was comprised of five police dogs still in the service of the city's police department.
One survivor recalled the awful time. "In the worst period of the siege Leningrad was in the power of the cannibals. God alone knows what terrible things went on behind the walls of apartments." As the food situation became increasingly grim, some people resorted to the last remaining food resource. It began gradually. The Haymarket, a traditional peasant market near the downtown, was the center of the meat trade. As time went on, the food on offer became increasingly suspect, as Salisbury relates. "Starving men and women did not inquire too closely as to the nature of the cutlets -– ground meat patties -- which were offered for sale. Why should they? They knew that at best they must be made of horse meat, probably adulterated with cat meat or dog meat, possibly rat meat. They told themselves that, of course, there could be no human flesh mixed in. Indeed, it was not a question they were likely to put to the hard-eyed men or women who stood like rocks in their heavy boots and heavy coats, shrugging their shoulders at the potential purchasers. Take it or leave it."
As some people began to mysteriously disappear, rumors of cannibal rings kidnapping people began to race around Leningrad. And some people, despite the general spread of starvation, seemed unnaturally well fed. "Only here and there passed a man or a woman with a face, full, rosy and somehow soft yet leathery." Harrison recounts one story that suggests a basis for the rumors of cannibalistic gangs. Dmitri, a young man, accompanies his girlfriend Tamara to the Haymarket to try to buy a pair of woman's boots called "valenki" in exchange for loaf of bread. Women's boots were particularly hard to find, but they find one man offering a pair for sale. However, the man only has one boot on display and claims to have the matching boot back in his apartment. The three of them haggle over the price and finally settle on a pound of the bread for the boots. As Dmitri and the man proceed to walk over to the apartment to fetch the other boot, Tamara warns Dmitri half-jokingly, "better to be without valenki than without your head." After they climb several flights of stairs to reach the apartment, the man tells Dmitri to wait. Dmitri hears a voice behind the door say "who is it?" The man replies: "it's me. With a live one." As the door opens, Dmitri smells something sickeningly sweet and warm. He catches a glimpse of "several hunks of white meat, swinging from hooks on the ceiling. From one hook he saw dangling a human hand with long fingers and blue veins." Dmitri lunges and manages to escape out the front door just as a military truck is passing. He yells out, "cannibals!" A detachment of soldiers rush into building, and Dmitri hears shots ring out.
Things got even worse as winter wore on. In addition to the physical ordeal of starvation, Leningraders suffered from the psychological strains of living in a nightmarish and terrifying environment. "Among the fantastic tales which circulated in Leningrad in the winter of 1941-42 was one that there existed 'circles' or fraternities of eaters of human flesh. The circles were said to assemble for special feasts, attended only by members of their kind. These people were the dregs of the human hell which Leningrad had become. The real lower depths were those occupied by persons who insisted on eating only 'fresh' human flesh, as distinguished from cadaver cuts. Whether these tales were literally true was not so important. What was important was that Leningraders believed them to be true, and this added the culminating horror to their existence."
Finally, in January 1944 the Red Army managed to break the siege and relieve the city of its miseries
www.eathufu.com/cannibalism.asp?id=21
"In the worst period of the siege Leningrad was in the power of the cannibals. God alone knows what terrible things went on behind the walls of apartments."
During World War II, the starving people of besieged Leningrad resorted to eating their fellow citizens in one of the largest outbreaks of cannibalism in human history. Harrison Salisbury's magisterial book The 900 Days is a sympathetic, well written and thoroughly researched account of the heart-rending story of the siege of Leningrad. In June 1941 the German Wehrmacht smashed through Soviet frontline defenses and raced towards the target destinations of Leningrad, Moscow, and the Caucasus. By December German forward reconnaissance units were at the edges of Moscow, so close that the Kremlin could be faintly seen through military-issue binoculars. Leningrad itself had been practically surrounded since early September and by October German artillery and bombing were turning the city into a charnel house. One particularly large scale bombing raid had destroyed the huge Badayev warehouse complex, the storage place for Leningrad's meager food reserves. The already perilous food situation was about to get much, much worse as the Germans tightened the noose around the city.
Bolshevik authorities instituted a strict rationing system as the only means to feed Leningrad's three million people and half million soldiers with the meager foodstuffs available. By the second month of the siege, factory workers were allocated half of a loaf of poor-quality bread daily, an ounce of meat, two ounces of macaroni and "pastry." Nonworkers and children were allocated half of these amounts. It was already a starvation diet, but to make things worse, the bread and pastries were of such poor quality that they possessed hardly any nutritional value. Adulteration of food increased. For example, scientists at the Leningrad Wood Products Institute discovered a way to convert pine sawdust into edible wood cellulose to be used as an ingredient to supplement bread. Rations would be cut again, and again.
To get even these small rations, you had to present your monthly ration card. Such cards were literally precious and irreplaceable. If you lost your card, or it was stolen, it could effectively be a death sentence. "The worst disaster which could befall a Leningrader was the loss of his ration card." Theft of ration cards, attacks on bread shops, and theft by workers in the food distribution system became increasingly common. City authorities announced that "robbers, speculators and marauders will be mercilessly punished by the laws of war," but even the threat of summary execution on the spot was not enough to deter violations of the system.
Black market prices for food began to soar beyond the means of ordinary citizens. In October a small loaf of bread could fetch sixty rubles in the black market, a sack of potatoes three hundred and a pound of meat five hundred. By January those prices would soar ten-fold, when loaf of bread might fetch a diamond wedding ring or family heirloom. As winter wore on and starvation set in, people began to tear wallpaper from the walls and in order to scrape off and eat the paste. City authorities struggled to balance declining food stocks against increase in the daily death rate which was running in the thousands daily.
The logistical system was stretched beyond the breaking point. Only in December did a trickle of supplies start to get through to the city's starving population. They were carried by night over the so-called "Road of Life," a small stream of trucks that managed to make it over the now frozen Lake Ladoga. But a populace of three millions persons cannot be fed by a few dozens of creaky Soviet trucks. The winter of 1941-42 was bitterly cold, the temperature dropping to twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit or more below zero. The few functioning bakeries were routinely shut down by a lack of reliable electric power. In fact, at one point the entire city was left with total power production of a mere three-thousand kilowatts turned out by a small emergency turbine.
By December people began eating their dogs. Even the rats disappeared from the city by mid-January, moving to the front lines where the food was more plentiful. The birds also disappeared. The crows flew off to the German lines to seek food, while the sparrows and starlings dropped dead from hunger and cold. Before very long all of Leningrad's dogs and cats had by now all been consumed, as urban hunting parties tracked down the dwindling population of strays. By February the entire dog population was comprised of five police dogs still in the service of the city's police department.
One survivor recalled the awful time. "In the worst period of the siege Leningrad was in the power of the cannibals. God alone knows what terrible things went on behind the walls of apartments." As the food situation became increasingly grim, some people resorted to the last remaining food resource. It began gradually. The Haymarket, a traditional peasant market near the downtown, was the center of the meat trade. As time went on, the food on offer became increasingly suspect, as Salisbury relates. "Starving men and women did not inquire too closely as to the nature of the cutlets -– ground meat patties -- which were offered for sale. Why should they? They knew that at best they must be made of horse meat, probably adulterated with cat meat or dog meat, possibly rat meat. They told themselves that, of course, there could be no human flesh mixed in. Indeed, it was not a question they were likely to put to the hard-eyed men or women who stood like rocks in their heavy boots and heavy coats, shrugging their shoulders at the potential purchasers. Take it or leave it."
As some people began to mysteriously disappear, rumors of cannibal rings kidnapping people began to race around Leningrad. And some people, despite the general spread of starvation, seemed unnaturally well fed. "Only here and there passed a man or a woman with a face, full, rosy and somehow soft yet leathery." Harrison recounts one story that suggests a basis for the rumors of cannibalistic gangs. Dmitri, a young man, accompanies his girlfriend Tamara to the Haymarket to try to buy a pair of woman's boots called "valenki" in exchange for loaf of bread. Women's boots were particularly hard to find, but they find one man offering a pair for sale. However, the man only has one boot on display and claims to have the matching boot back in his apartment. The three of them haggle over the price and finally settle on a pound of the bread for the boots. As Dmitri and the man proceed to walk over to the apartment to fetch the other boot, Tamara warns Dmitri half-jokingly, "better to be without valenki than without your head." After they climb several flights of stairs to reach the apartment, the man tells Dmitri to wait. Dmitri hears a voice behind the door say "who is it?" The man replies: "it's me. With a live one." As the door opens, Dmitri smells something sickeningly sweet and warm. He catches a glimpse of "several hunks of white meat, swinging from hooks on the ceiling. From one hook he saw dangling a human hand with long fingers and blue veins." Dmitri lunges and manages to escape out the front door just as a military truck is passing. He yells out, "cannibals!" A detachment of soldiers rush into building, and Dmitri hears shots ring out.
Things got even worse as winter wore on. In addition to the physical ordeal of starvation, Leningraders suffered from the psychological strains of living in a nightmarish and terrifying environment. "Among the fantastic tales which circulated in Leningrad in the winter of 1941-42 was one that there existed 'circles' or fraternities of eaters of human flesh. The circles were said to assemble for special feasts, attended only by members of their kind. These people were the dregs of the human hell which Leningrad had become. The real lower depths were those occupied by persons who insisted on eating only 'fresh' human flesh, as distinguished from cadaver cuts. Whether these tales were literally true was not so important. What was important was that Leningraders believed them to be true, and this added the culminating horror to their existence."
Finally, in January 1944 the Red Army managed to break the siege and relieve the city of its miseries
www.eathufu.com/cannibalism.asp?id=21