Petersburgers organized a blockade “Memory Line” on Vasilyevsky Island

Petersburgers organized a people’s memorial on the 12th line of Vasilyevsky Island, not far from house number 41, Bremme’s wooden mansion, which was a “vitamin pharmacy” during the years of the blockade, a Rosbalt correspondent reports.

The action “Line of memory” is coordinated with the district administration and will last from January 18 – the day when the breakthrough of the Leningrad blockade is celebrated, until January 27 – the Day of the complete lifting of the blockade of Leningrad. The campaign was first held in 2021. At that time, the townspeople, among other things, wanted to draw attention to the fate of the Bremme mansion, a monument of wooden architecture, so that the old house would be restored. This year, the mansion is already standing in the woods, its reconstruction should be completed in February 2022.

Schoolchildren from the local history circle of school No. 21 and students of school No. 29 took part in the “Line of Memory”, who brought portraits of their loved ones – blockade survivors and participants in the Great Patriotic War. Adults told children about the history of their relatives. So, Alexandra Zadneprovskaya brought the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” to her mother, Tatyana Vagner, the daughter of the repressed scientist and teacher Nikolai Wagner. Tatyana survived the blockade, entered the history department of the university and became a famous archaeologist and bibliographer. Entering Leningrad State University, she hid the fact of her father’s arrest, and the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” became a kind of “pass” for a girl from the “former”, from an intelligent St. Petersburg family, to higher education.

The Bremme mansion, which in 2015 was recognized as an object of cultural heritage of regional significance, was built in the first half of the 19th century, in 1851 the architect Nikolai Grebenka rebuilt it, in 1906 the architect Vladislav Karpovich reconstructed it into a residential building for the co-owner of the nearby factory of paints, oils and essences of “Brothers Bremme” by Eduard Bremme. During the blockade, behind the mansion there was a factory where vitamin C and carotene were produced from needles, and in the mansion there was one of the “vitamin pharmacies”. Technologies for the production of vitamins were also developed in the blockaded city at the All-Union Scientific Research Vitamin Institute (VNIVI). For the production of vitamins in November 1941, a special decision was made by the Leningrad City Executive Committee “On measures to prevent beriberi”

The organizers of the “Line of Memory” tracked down the siege survivor Valentina Alexandrovna Nevskaya, who told about how products from one of the city’s “vitamin pharmacies” were brought to their home.

“In the winter of 1941-1942, we lived in a communal apartment on Kirovsky Prospekt. grandparents, parents, my brother and me. I was five years old, my brother was nine. A neighbor lived in this communal apartment, who also had children. And she periodically went to the pharmacy, where, according to the lists, they gave coniferous infusion. Sometimes she took the children with her, sometimes she left them at home, and then our grandmother looked after them. A neighbor brought a small bottle that looked like a penicillin bottle and gave it to my grandmother. I don’t know if she got the infusion on us too or shared hers. Life was such that all the neighbors helped each other. Grandmother poured water into a small mug, took a bottle and dripped from it into the water. Then she gave it to my brother and me. I dipped my finger into this water – and then did not take it out of my mouth for a long time. These were the vitamins that Leningrad children lacked so much, ”the blockade survivor shared her memories.

Recall that from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944, during the Great Patriotic War, Leningrad was blocked by German troops. The Nazis decided to starve the city out after unsuccessful attempts to break through the defenses. According to the calculations of the German command, the isolated inhabitants had to die of hunger and cold. More than two and a half million inhabitants turned out to be in the city, of which 400 thousand children. The blockade lasted almost 900 days and became the most tragic blockade in the history of mankind: more than 641 thousand people died from starvation and shelling. According to other sources – at least one million.

On January 18, 1943, the troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts liberated the city of Shlisselburg and the southern coast of Lake Ladoga. Operation “Iskra” became a radical turning point in the battle for the city, and the breakthrough of the blockade was the first big victory for Leningrad. The city restored overland communication with the mainland. On January 27, the northern capital, together with the whole country, will celebrate the day of the complete liberation of the city from the fascist blockade.