La flor de la vida

Around St. Petersburg in the 1960s of the last century was created what is known as the 'Green Belt of Glory', which includes several dozen different monuments and memorials, dedicated to the heroic defense of Leningrad. Today I will tell you about one of the most scary from the emotional perspective monuments. The topic will be about the monument 'Flower of Life', which is located in the All-Volzhsky district of the Leningrad Oblast.

Anyone who has at least once driven along the Road of Life, connecting St. Petersburg and Lake Ladoga, has seen this 15-meter concrete memorial, erected in memory of the children who died during the 900-day siege of Leningrad.

The monument is located on the third kilometer of the Road of Life, along which, in severe years of the siege, evacuations of the besieged city were carried out. The monument in the form of a giant concrete flower was designed by architect Pavel Melnikov and erected in the valley of the river Lubya in the fall of 1968. On the granite rosebud are inscribed the words of the famous children's song 'Always Let the Sun Shine'. Another petal depicts the face of a schoolboy.

During the siege, children, like adults, had to go through all the horrors of the war: hunger, cold, endless bombings and artillery shelling. During almost 900 days, about 150 thousand shells were dropped on Leningrad, more than 100 thousand incendiary and explosive bombs. As a result, around three thousand buildings were completely destroyed, and another order of magnitude seven thousand received serious damage. Children and adolescents took an active part in the construction of defensive structures: toves, gun emplacements, barriers and anti-tank barriers. Only three percent of Leningraders died as a result of bombings and artillery shelling, the rest 97 percent died of hunger and cold. According to official data, this is 630 thousand people, among whom tens of thousands were children. In memory of them and was created the memorial 'Flower of Life'.

En los años setenta cerca del brote de hormigón apareció el Camino de la Amistad, plantado por los participantes de la reunión delestyal del Sindicato soviético de pioneros. Por ambos lados del camino se encuentran signos memoriales dedicados a los pioneros héroes, a los jóvenes partisanos y a los trabajadores del campo, y acaba con otro memorial. El kurgán triste – es un pequeño montículo artificial, donde en un entorno de avellanos están instaladas placas con frases del diario de Tania Savicheva.

La primera entrada en su famosísimo diario Tania Savicheva, de 11 años, hizo el 28 de diciembre de 1941. En ese día murió su mayor hermana, Zhenia. Hasta mediados de mayo de 1942 solo quedó Tania en la gran familia. Tras esto, fue evacuada desde el sitio de Leningrado a la región actual de Nižni Novgorod, donde murió el 1 de julio de 1944 de un pulmonaire y otras enfermedades relacionadas con el grado extrema de distrofia. Su diario de bloqueo se convirtió en un testimonio sobre los horrores de aquellas 900 días, en memoria de los cuales, cerca del memorial «Flores de la vida», se plantó una rosa de olmo: 900 árboles, por número de días de bloqueo.

Fuentes:

https://dzen.ru/a/Xi2d15UV7gCup9GF