75 Years Ago - the Breach of the Blockade - Survivors of Leningrad Siege Remember First Relief Train
75 years ago, in February 1943, the first train after the Breach of the Blockade arrived in Leningrad via the legendary Road of Victory. Despite the bombings, 34 km of the Road were built within 17 days. The famous locomotive was called M'ka. It brought the necessary food and warm clothes to the city.
Our correspondent Ekaterina Fisenko spoke with those who greeted the first train.
Sooty and festive, it arrived in the besieged Leningrad in February of 1943, on the 520th day of the Siege. The famous M'ka covered kilometers through the broken stronghold.
"The heroic Red Army has broken the Siege of Leningrad! Fighter-workers build a railway on the freed territory. Today, the first train from the Big Land arrived here!"
75 years later, the locomotive and Nadya Kovaleva met again. She was 15 in 1943. Her mother had already died, she studied and worked, was terrified by the roar of planes and looked forward to this train which brought butter to Leningrad. A young girl, she wasn't let to the rally at the Finlyandsky railway station. But she still greeted it as crowds were standing along the railway.
Nadezhda Kovaleva, citizen of besieged Leningrad: "People bowed and fell, from joy or I don't know what".
The Siege was broken on January 18. On the same day, it was decided to build a railway in the freed corridor. They were given 20 days for it. But 34 kilometers of railway and several rail bridges were built within 17 days.
Vladimir Tydman, son of engineer G. Tydman: "When they started building the railway, Germans almost didn't bomb it. They didn't understand what was going on there, so they didn't want to waste the bombs. Only after the railway was almost completed, they got air photos and realized the possible outcomes. Then they started to actively bomb bridges and those who were building the railway".
It was a giant construction, frostbitten people chopped wood to build the railway to the besieged city. The bridge over Neva River is more than 1 km wide. This is the least deep section. But still, it was 6-8 m deep with strong current and thick ice in January. The pillars pierced the ice to reach the bottom.
The first arc-shaped bridge was built 1 km far from the Oreshek fortress. The second one was built later upstream. Of course, the orders were encrypted, the bridges were called overshoes. If an old overshoe was mentioned, it meant that all trains were to go through the first bridge in the coming night.
The Road of Victory functioned for over a year. Not a trace of it is left now. Shortly after the Road was opened, the daily bread ration in Leningrad was the same as that in Moscow.
M'ka locomotive is a monument now, but for Nadezhda Vasilyevna it's dearly beloved. Now, at the age of 90, she visits him like an old friend.
“Glory to you! Great glory!”
Ekaterina Fisenko, Alexei Sasyrin, Sergey Ishchenko, Galina Orlova for Vesti from the Leningrad Region.