In 🇷🇺 #Russia June 22 is #RemembranceAndSorrowDay.
— Russia 🇷🇺 (@Russia) June 21, 2021
2021 marks 8⃣0⃣ years since the start of the #GreatPatrioticWar.
🕯️ On this day we remember the 27 mln Soviet citizens who perished by the hand of the Nazis. In their sacred memory #CandleOfMemory are lit by the thousands 🕯️ pic.twitter.com/GmU5cL376w
Sputnik: Photos: Moscow Lights 1,418 Candles on 80th Anniversary of the Great Patriotic War
The Great Patriotic War claimed the lives of nearly 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians.
The war was fought along the Eastern Front of World War II between the Soviet Union, on one side, and Nazi Germany and its allies, on the other.
Russia marks the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow for the victims of the Great Patriotic War on Tuesday, as exactly 80 years ago, at dawn on June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union by attacking Brest, Kiev and other Soviet cities with the largest invasion force in the history of warfare.
As part of the Candle of Memory ceremony, volunteers, veterans, servicemen and other activists lit 1,418 candles in Moscow — according to the number of days the Great Patriotic War lasted. At midnight exactly, the memory of those killed during the war was honored with a moment of silence.
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Update #1: Hitler’s ‘war of annihilation’: Operation Barbarossa, 80 years on (AFP)
Update #2: Putin's article about war is in German, because the issue is crucial for Germany — Peskov (TASS)
WNU Editor: This was always a very special day for my father. He always talked to me about it. He was a 19 year old student studying mathematics at the University of Kiev when the war started. The Germans bombed the center of the city and my father rushed to see if he could help. But all that he saw were destroyed buildings and pieces of human beings everywhere. He was lucky. The Germans always bombed in two waves, but there was no second wave that day.
He then rushed by train to Bila Tserkva, a city 80km south of Kiev and the hometown of my grandparents. He turned on the radio and all that he heard was martial music being interrupted every five minutes with an announcement that there will be a special announcement later in the day. It was from that announcement that my father officially learned that a state of war now existed between the Soviet Union and Germany.
My grandfather was not at home when my father arrived. My grandfather was a senior official in the Soviet government, and it was only a few days later that he finally returned home. My father was drafted, and was first put in a press gang unit responsible for grabbing able-bodied men who did not want to join. There were many violent incidences. Many Ukrainians openly supported the German invasion, and they were hoping that this would be the end of Stalin. In time they were all proven wrong.
Because my father was studying math, he was then put in charge of an artillery unit, and his first real taste of combat was north of Stalingrad. After that it was two and a half years of combat that ended 30 kilometers west of Berlin. After the war he was in charge of arresting Soviet soldiers who would not stop killing Germans. He never talked about those experiences, but I learned later that these soldiers were always court-martialed and executed for their war crimes.
Sighhh ....
Numerous injuries. Many medals. And horrific memories that stayed with him for his entire life.
On a positive note. Everyone in the family survived. But among his cousins, friends and acquaintances. Almost all were killed in combat and/or disappeared during the Nazi occupation.
On my mother's side her hometown is Vyazma, about 60 - 70 kilometers west of Moscow. On this side of the family the roots in this region go back centuries. My mother was only 15 when the war started, but it impacted her and everyone else very quickly. Before the war there were 60,000 people in the city. When the Germans left, only 700 survived. The city has been rebuilt, and it is now a major industrial hub. Most of my mother's family survived the occupation. They survived because they choose to live in a cave on the outskirts of the city. Those who strayed in the city were all killed. When I was grown-up I visited with one of my cousins the cave that my mother and the family had lived in for almost two years. To say that it was a surreal experience is an understatement.
So yeah. I lit a candle tonight.
6 comments:
Victor, your family has an amazing history.
There was no second wave, because the NAZIs bit off more than they could chew. There were too few planes for the NAZIs fortunately for you.
I'll second 2:46. Bulgaria and Hungary were pugnacious. Romania on the other hand had a bone to pick. Not only had Russia invaded Poland, but they had stolen land from Romania.
It is worth noting that Romanian participation in invading Russia was made possible by Stalin and Neville Chamberlain. The NAZIS took the Czech war material and outfitted dozens of divisions, German and Romanian.
Without the Czech equipment would Romania have signed up to invade Mother Russia? Without Romania would Germany have invaded?
Answer is Hitler still would have wanted to invade, but the date would have been pushed back. Russia would have continued to arm up, calculations rechecked, and it could have gone on ad infinitum without a miscalculated correlation of forces and thus no invasion.
I have a friend whose grandfather was a russian speaking Greek who was an SS officer. He was captured. He heard the Russians talking about how to kill the captives and he went over an protested. He ended fighting with the Russians. Four years on the Russian front. The old man was in his 80's living in america and he was out splitting firewood. My friend was talking to his grandpa and the one thing he remembers is the old man telling him, "You American do not know how good you have it"
I suppose humanity will put us all through this again. The Covid bleating has proven that. Sigh. Ron
Stalin was too devious for his peoples longevity. He signed a non aggression pack with Hitler so as to divert Hitler's aggressions from Russian to Britain and France.
Germany and Russia agreed on a time line for the invasion of Poland, Germany would start from the west and Russia two weeks later from the east.
In fact Hitler and Stalin were the two responsible for launching WWII in Europe.
The fact the allies waited til mid 1944, just about as late as possible if they wanted to impose terms on Germany, can't be criticized by Russians. Stalin thought he could be clever and make the capitalist west eat itself. His blunder cost 10's of millions of Russian lives by May 1945, then millions more European lives during the Russian occupation of Europe over the next 50 year.
uncensoredhistory.blogspot.com
No holds barred website. Talks about everyone.
The comments bring up a point few take into consideration when talking about a potential combat with Russia. I spent a career in the us military and even there few leaders mentioned it. The point is the frame of reference people use when they discuss the amount of casualties a country is willing to accept.
If you use both revolutions, the American and the Russian as starting points remembering they’re about 140 years apart, Russia has lost about ten times the population to war and political strife than the US.
It’s just a different frame of reference.
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