The Siege Of Leningrad

If art is the expression of the soul, then without art, we have no soul. On June 22, 1941, Adolph Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. His intent was to gain more land for Germany, control the oil fields of Azerbaijan, eliminate Bolshevism, and to exterminate the “racially inferior” Russian people. The simple summary of Hitler’s plans was expressed this way, “The Fuehrer has decided to wipe the city of St. Petersburg from the face of the earth. We have no interest in the preservation of even a part of the population of that city.” Hitler’s army was bent on destroying St. Petersburg, the artistic soul of Russia, by using an air strike campaign, surrounding the city, and starving the people to death. This began the siege of Leningrad. On this same date, the staff of the Hermitage Museum began the exhausting task of packing up and evacuating 1.1 million pieces of art.

The Hermitage workers and their families (Hermitage-Niks) worked 23 hours straight for days. During this process, the German air raids caused severe damage of the museum. The workers had the additional task of clearing bodies and rubble from the bombed buildings. There was never enough food or rest for the workers, and many froze to death from the intense Russian winter. Hundreds kept coming to the Museum drawn by the desire to help in the effort to save the priceless works of art. The workers cut the canvases from the paintings, leaving the empty frames as a reminder that the art would return.

"We all followed a barracks-like regime. The work went on round the clock... The crates in which we put things stood on the floor and we had to work bending over all the time. Soon many of us had nosebleeds. Ready to drop, you would doze off for half an hour towards morning… Your mind immediately switched off, but half an hour or an hour later some internal impulse turned your mind back on again, you shook yourself - and back to work." Alisa Bank

By the time the workers finished loading the trains with the evacuated art, there were 12,000 people living in the Hermitage. All experienced severe depravation and many died, but their intellectual activities continued. Museum guides gave “tours” for the people and wounded soldiers. The guides had memorized the details of each of the empty canvases recreating in detail the missing painting. This gave comfort, pleasure and a respite from the insaneness of their situation.

"Professor Natalya Davydovna Flittner, a Doctor of Historical Sciences, was known to all as a major scholar of the culture of the Ancient East. During the siege, this little, rather wizened old lady gave lectures in military hospitals. One member of her audience said, "Your professor used to come to us, sit on a chair, or even a table, and began to tell us about the tombs of the ancient pharaohs so fascinatingly that we forgot about our wounds." O.E. Mikhailova

Just hearing about these great works of art had the ability of repairing the souls of the Russian survivors (600,000 people died during the siege). The art gave the Russian people pride, and from this pride, they were able to withstand the German’s bombs and starvation.

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