When the 900 day siege of Leningrad was finally lifted and the Germans fell back from the advancing Red Army, Leningrad was revered as a “Hero City” by the majority of Russians. A city Hitler thought would fall like a leaf held its own against cold, deadly winters and little supplies. But what many didn’t know were the darker secrets to the survival of the city—namely, the illegal consumption of human flesh. Inside the walls of Leningrad, moral and legal questions came to light on a daily basis concerning the cure for hunger provided by cannibalism, the methods of dealing with homicidal cannibals, and the legal prosecution of active cannibals while maintaining a certain level of secrecy so as not to stain the city’s reputation.
In September of 1941, under the orders of Adolf Hitler and Operation Barbarossa, the Germans completed their encirclement of Leningrad, or what is today known as St. Petersburg. The idea was to bring the city to its knees with the use of as little resources as was possible, and continue Operation Barbarossa, or the invasion of Soviet Russia. The day Leningrad was enclosed by the Germans and their Finnish allies was the first day of this unsuccessful 900 day siege, a siege that would cause some of the greatest desperation of WWII and the corresponding deaths of anywhere between 400,000 and 800,000 people. The only route for evacuees or supplies was the frozen Lake Ladoga, which was constantly bombed by the Germans—1 in 4 trucks that crossed this frozen path fell through the ice and killed those on board. The city was provided with about 1/3 of what was needed for coal, 1/12 of what was needed for sugar, and meat was a rarity. As the days went on and the siege lingered, hunger drove the remaining i...
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With time, tragedies become statistics. The lives lost culminate to numbers, percentages, and paragraphs in textbooks,and though a recognition of its occurrence becomes universal, an understanding of its severity dies with those who lived it. “Leningrad Cemetery, Winter of 1941” is a literary medium by which the nature of tragedy is transmitted. Set in the post-battle Leningrad, the poem encapsulates the desolation not of war and its aftermath. Paramount in this translation is figurative language. Olds’ use of simile and metaphor in “Leningrad Cemetery, Winter of 1941” allows the reader to understand the incomprehensible horrors of war and, through contrast, the value of life.
Has your skin ever tasted the scorching coldness to the point of actually flavoring death, has your stomach ever craved for even a gram of anything that can keep you alive, has your deep-down core ever been so disturbed by profound fear? No never, because the deep-freeze, starvation, and horror that Kolya and Lev experienced were far worse to the point of trauma. In the novel, City Of Thieves, author David Benioff describes the devastating and surreal situations and emotions that occurred to Benioff’s grandfather, Lev and Lev’s friend, Kolya, during WWII the Siege of Leningrad in Leningrad, Russia. Both Lev and Kolya share some similarities such as their knowledge of literature; even so, they are very contrastive individuals who oppose
The battle of Stalingrad has often been referred to as the turning point of World War II. Stalingrad, now called Volgograd is located on the river Volga in the southern part of western Russia. It was of extreme importance because it was the last stronghold protecting the vast oil fields that lay beyond it to the east. Hitler believed his Operation Barbarossa would be an easy victory, claiming that troops would be home for Christmas. There was much symbolism in Hitler’s decision to attack Stalingrad and that was due to that it was named after the Russian leader Stalin and would cause a great loss of morale in the Russian army if the German army could capture it. The German 6th Army ran into incredibly fierce resistance on the part of the Russians. As the battle waged on for nearly 3 months the daily bloodbaths of the street battles began to take their toll on both sides. Russia’s use of snipers began to cost the Germans more and more lives everyday. Most famous of...
Feeding a baby is an indispensable duty of a parent. Part of that duty includes making
Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...
Cook Children NICU receives around one thousand babies per year. Since the new unit was opened two years ago, they have single rooms where the parents can stay with their babies overnight, and it is controlled individually according to the patients’ needs. In the single rooms they are able to accommodate twins, triplets and quadruplets. According to Carolyn Cowling (personal communication, April.18, 2014), who is the LCSW, preemies have shown an incredible improvement in their health and are able to go home faster because they have a quicker recovery. Single rooms also allow parents to be with their infants all the time they want, even spending the night with them. Since most of them are there for a long run, it provides the feeling of being in their home.
Cannibalism is a concept that is foreign to modern society despite its pertinence in recent human culture. In the essay “Cannibalism: It Still Exists,” Linh Ngo explains the concept of cannibalism, discussing in further detail and comparing and contrasting the different types of cannibalism and the situations in which it was utilized. By incorporating devices such as definition, illustration, and cause and effect, the essay was effective in relaying the idea that cannibalism is still around.
The battle fought between the Soviet Red Army and the Nazi Wehrmacht over the “city of Stalin” for four long months in the fall and winter of 1942-3 stands as not only the most important battle of the Eastern front during World War II, but as the greatest battle ever fought. Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad ended three years of almost uninterrupted victory and signaled the beginning of the end of the Third Reich. In this way, Stalingrad’s significance was projected beyond the two main combatants, extending to all corners of the world.
Christopher McCandless, a young American who was found dead in summer of 1992 in wild land in Alaska, wrote in his diary about his moral struggle regarding killing a moose for survival. According to Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, Chris had to abandon most of the meat since he lacked the knowledge of how to dismantle and preserve it (166-168). Not only did he have a moral dilemma to kill a moose, but also had a deep regret that a life he had taken was wasted because of his own fault. He then started recognizing what he ate as a precious gift from the nature and called it “Holy Food” (Krakauer 168). Exploring relationships between human beings and other animals arouses many difficult questions: Which animals are humans allowed to eat and which ones are not? To which extent can humans govern other animals? For what purposes and on which principles can we kill other animals? Above all, what does it mean for humans to eat other animals? The answer may lie in its context. Since meat-eating has been included and remained in almost every food culture in the world throughout history and is more likely to increase in the future due to the mass production of meat, there is a very small chance for vegetarianism to become a mainstream food choice and it will remain that way.
World War II was seen around the globe as a war to end all wars. Combat like this had never been experienced before and it was the largest scale battle in recent history. The death tolls for all sides skyrocketed to heights that had never been reached in any battle ever before. There was one man at the center of it all, one man who came to personify the root of living, breathing evil. That man was Adolf Hitler and to the rest of the world, he was a superhuman military machine who had no other goal but to achieve world domination through destruction. But the roots of the Battle of Stalingrad all began in 1941 when Hitler launched operation Barbarossa. Hitler’s powerful army marched across the east, seemingly unstoppable to any force. Stalin’s Red Army was caught completely off guard and their lines were completely broken apart. A majority of the country’s air force was destroyed when airfields were raided and many of the planes never even got the chance to leave the ground. Hitler’s army finally came to Leningrad where the city was besieged. The city held for 900 days and never gave way to the relentless Germans. At the cost of 1.5 million civilians and soldiers, the Red Army stopped Hitler from advancing further and postponed his plan to sweep over the south. Another cause for the retreat of Hitler was the brutal Russian winter, which Hitler and his army were completely unprepared for and the icy cold deaths would continue to haunt the Germans.
The extent to which the fact that the Western Allies did not respond with violence but with the airlift and its success was a main factor to its end will be assessed. The significance of the agreement made between the Soviets and the US in lifting not only the Berlin Blockade but also the Western counter blockade will also be evaluated. The reasons for the implementation of the blockade, the actions of the superpowers that do not contribute to the failure of the blockade, and the consequences of this crisis will not be investigated. The analysis will be done by researching different views on the blockade’s failure and the events leading up to it.... ...
Throughout the summer of 1942, nearly 300,000 Jews were deported from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka death camp. During this summer, a resistance organization known as the Z.O.B. was formed. It was headed by the 23 year old Mordecai Anielewicz, and was comprised primarily of young men. The deportations halted in September, and the Z.O.B. began collecting whatever weapons they could manage to smuggle into the ghetto. In January of 1943, the deportations resumed. While the Nazis expected that everything would go smoothly, as it always had, this time they were surprisingly met with resistance. As they were conducting their roundup, the Z.O.B. attacked. After a couple of days, the German troops had killed many Jews, but were forced to retreat, giving the resistance fighters the drive to continue resisting. They began planning, strategizing, and preparing for a full scale revolution. On the night of April 18, 1943, the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto received word that the Nazis were planning a final roundup of the ghetto for the next day. The Z.O.B. did all they could to plan for the next day. They arranged hiding places for the Jews of the ghetto, and assigned fighting stations for the members of the resistance. On the next day, April 19 of 1943, the Nazis came in to conduct their final roundup, and the most famous armed resistance of the holocaust began (ushmm.org). The German troops entered to find empty str...
... I 1944 [Over Warsaw - Warsaw Thermopylae 1939 and 1944], Warsaw: Fundacja Wystawa Warszawa Walczy 1939-1945, 2000.
(2001): n. a. page. Print. The. http://www.historyworld.net/about/sources.asp?gtrack=pthc>. Gascoigne, Bamber. The "World War II - The Blitz.