Siege of Leningrad: Germany recalls victims of the Nazi siege
Siege of Leningrad: The Nazi army kept Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) under siege for three years. German lawmakers are honoring victims of the siege as part of this year's Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Two visitors walk inside the snow-covered Holocaust Memorial at the International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Berlin, Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. The German parliament Bundestag will hold a special remembrance session at the Reichstag building in commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp on Jan. 27, 1945.
Markus Schreiber/AP
BERLIN
German lawmakers have honored the victims of the Nazi army's three-year siege of Leningrad as part of this year's Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Daniil Granin, a 95-year-old Russian survivor, recounted in a speech to the German Parliament on Monday how thousands of people died of starvation each day during harsh winters in Leningrad, now the Russian city of St. Petersburg.
The siege began in September 1941, three months after Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.
About a million Soviet civilians and a similar number of soldiers died before the blockade was finally broken on Jan. 27, 1944.
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