76 years ago began the Great Patriotic war
Today is the day of memory and grief. 76 years ago began the Great Patriotic war. Across the country there passes the action "Candle of memory" - a tribute to the fallen. In the Brest fortress, which first took the brunt of Nazi Germany, this morning to the citadel led the road from thousands of burning lamps.
The streets of pre-war Brest strolling couples, soldiers on leave, on the pavement of trotting cavalry. So, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, the city lived its last day of peace. Night rally-Requiem in the Brest fortress itself. Memory road from the lit oil lamps leads to the memorial. Around him thousands of people. On the huge screens are replaced by the faces of the heroes, the defenders of the citadel.
Peter Kotelnikov is one of the few survivors of the defenders of the citadel. 12-year old boy, he got to Brest in the number of students of 44 infantry regiment. During the shelling of the fascists was shot in the head. Woke up in the basement of the fortress. There were soldiers, there were their families - women and children.
At sunrise there took place reconstruction of fight at the Kobrin fortification, which lasted the longest. 6 commanded hundreds of soldiers, major Pyotr Gavrilov. The Nazis planned to take the citadel by noon. Prepared his signature rapid blitzkrieg, in the case of France and Poland worked flawlessly. Here something went wrong. Somehow from the broken artillery barracks the soldiers were not going to surrender to the invaders, and went under the ground, amassing troops and kept the defense in a month.
German Lieutenant-General Schiller after 2 weeks of siege in his dispatch briefly announced: "the attack on the Fort, which defended a brave enemy, is a lot of blood. For the moral shock of the enemy are good bombs." And the fortress was bombed by artillery, aircraft. Fighting against poorly armed fighters, the Germans lost 1.5 thousand killed and more than 2 thousand wounded. The fortress fell, but the words carved at its foot - the "Die hard" - hundreds of thousands of other soldiers have carried through the entire war.
|
