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ELDERLY WIDOWS-
babushkas
- congregate on bench in Kiev,
thírd largest city in the Soviet Union.
The last war left a generation of
Soviet women bereft of their husbands.
" Help M e Find My
Mother"
Piskarevsky is not the only link
that today's Leningraders have with
their recent tragic past.
Quite often, our chief lntourist
guide informed us, personal ads ap–
pear in the local newspaper, the
Le–
ningradskaya Pravda,
to this effect:
"My name is .... Please help me
find my mother and father. At the
age of three 1 was evacuated by
truck from the city with other chil–
dren over the Lake Ladoga ice road
in December 1941. 1 desperately
want to find out if my parents sur–
vived the siege and are still alive.
My mother was slight of build, had
a birthmark ...."
Occasionally such pleas for help
are successful. The resulting re–
unions are deservedly given front–
page billing in the newspaper.
Historians such as Alexander
Werth
(Russia at War: 1941-1945)
and Harrison Salisbury
(900 Days:
The Siege of Leningrad)
have viv–
idly recorded the events which oc–
curred during that period of bellish
tribulation. But gripping though
their accounts be, it takes a visit to a
place like Piskarevsky to make their
documented historical facts come to
life.
Brit ish and Ameri can
Uves Saved
Those of us living in the free
world today actuaUy owe a debt of
gratitude to the Soviet people for
the "unequal sacrilice" they paid
during maokind's bloodiest war.
Even though they were living
through the darkest days of Stalin's
harsh rule, the Soviet people never–
theless rose in unison to defend
their country against a foe who had
determined to annihilate them.
Hitler and bis strategic planners
had marked out the entire western
PLAIN TRUTH October-November 1974
Soviet Union as the
Lebensraum
-
extended living space - of the ex–
alted Third Reich. This area was
also to be a vast raw materials store–
house for the Nazi war machlne. Le–
ningrad, citadel of the Bolshevism
Hitler hated so much, was first to be
strangled to death, theo razed to the
ground.
Concerning the Russians, Ukrai–
nians and other Soviet nationalities
lyiog in the path of the blitz, Hitler
proclaimed that "our guiding prin–
cipie must be that these people have
but one justification for existence -
to be of use to us economically."
The same utter contempt for the
native Slavs characterized sorne of
the underlings Hitler placed in
charge of conquered Soviet areas.
Erich Koch, the Reich commissar
for the Ukraine, for example, re–
ferred to his subjects even in public
speeches as colonial peoples and
slaves. fit for nothing but menial
labor.
"1 will pump every last thing out
of their country," said Koch. "1 did
not come here to spread bliss but to
help the Führer." This was the type
of satanical mentality that the So–
viet people were up against in their
grim struggle for existence.
Historians know that Hitler's
greatest gamble was his attempt to
knock out the Soviet Union in a
four-month blitzkrieg before "fin–
ishing off" a desperate Great Britain
which he had left literally hanging
on the ropes.
The invasion of Russia by the
Nazis and their allies revolutionized
the war - and rescued the Western
powers from the brink of defeat. But
in the process, the Soviet people
were forced to pay an extraordi–
narily large part - at Jeast in human
terms- of the eventual price of vic–
tory. Writes historian Alexander
Werth, a man of British-Russian
parentage who covered the eastern
front as a war correspondent:
"lt so happened ... that it was in–
deed the Russians who bore the
main brunt of the fighting against
Nazi Germany, and that it was
thanks to this that millions ofBritish
and American lives were saved.
"This was a genuine People's
War; first, a war waged by a people
fighting for their life against terrible
odds, and later a war fought by a
fundamentally unaggressive people,
now roused to anger and deter–
mined to demonstrate their own
military superiority ....
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