The siege of Leningrad

I am a bit tired of the frequent: "Leningrad is a joke in comparison with..."

And so I took a documentary text of the time (of the siege of Leningrad) as an example to practice my English.

I would appreciate if you correct any errors you find (especially tenses).

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Ольга Берггольц
20 декабря 1943

Writer: Olga Berggoltz
20 December 1943

Артиллерийский обстрел продолжается
(письмо за кольцо).

Artillery bombardment is going on
(a letter to outside of the ring).

С осени 1943 года на моем доме, как и на тысячах других домов Ленинграда, появилась новая надпись – белые буквы на синем квадрате: «Граждане, при артиллерийском обстреле эта сторона улицы наиболее опасна…»

Since the fall of 1943 new notice appeared on my house as well as on thousand other Leningrad’s houses. White letters on a blue square say: “ Citizens! When artillery bombardment this side of the street is most dangerous!”

Да, нам уже точно известно, какая сторона улицы наиболее опасна, какие улицы наиболее простреливаются, на каких трамвайных остановках и площадях чаще всего ложатся снаряды, - так долго живём мы под непрерывным обстрелом. Более двух с половиной лет не сводят мушки немцы и финны с нашего города, а значит – с каждого из нас.

Yea, we already exactly know, what street side is most dangerous, what streets are most exposed to fire, on what tram stops or squares a shells are laid down most often. So long we live under unbroken fire. More than two and a half years the Germans and Finns don’t remove (take) their aims (front sights) of our city then that of each of us.

…Вот и сейчас – не успела я написать два первых абзаца, как слышу характерный свист снаряда (это тяжелый фугасный)… и взрыв и долгий гул (да, это тяжелый, калибр не менее двухсот миллиметров – взрыв сильный, и гул обвала продолжительный). Сейчас – ночь, ноль часов восемнадцать минут… Вот ещё свист и взрыв, ближе… Надо уйти из комнаты: она выходит на ту сторону улицы, которая «наиболее опасна при обстреле». А эта, куда я перешла и где продолжаю писать, выходит окнами во двор, в противоположную сторону. (Ещё взрыв – ноль часов двадцать три минуты.) Здесь… «безопаснее»! Здесь мне угрожает только прямое попадание снаряда через крышу, прямо в эту комнату. Если же снаряд попадёт в кабинет, из которого я ушла, - может быть, капитальная стенка между ним и этой комнатой выдержит, и я останусь жива. Ещё три взрыва – один за другим. (Я так и думала, что это в наш район. Вот диктор объявил обстрел… «Населению – немедленно укрыться», - сказал он.) Сейчас – ночь, ноль часов двадцать шесть минут. В течение восьми минут, пока я писала эту страницу, убиты десятки ленинградцев, разорены десятки квартир. В нескольких минутах ходьбы от меня, в темноте и холоде, льётся кровь, рыдают дети, и санитары и дружинницы, освещая ручными фонарями то, что совсем недавно было мирно спящим домом, а теперь – очаг поражения, уносят мёртвых и раненых и «складывают людей»… Это термин у нас такой есть – «сложить человека», то есть собрать его растерзанные части в одну кучку.

…(So far ) Here is the thing now too … before I have time to write first two paragraphs I hear characteristic whine of a shell (it is a crump high-explosive shell) … and detonation and long boom (yes, it was a crump its calibre was not less than 200 millimeters – a detonation is strong and a boom of caving-in is prolonged). It is night right now 12:18 PM… Here next whine and detonation are more close... It is necessary to retire from the room: it faces the street that “is most dangerous when artillery bombardment”. This one where I have moved in and resume to write looks yard it is the opposite direction. One more explosion 12:23 PM... It is … “more safe” here. Here only a direct shell hit through roof exactly in the room threatens me. If a shell hits the study that I have left may be a main wall between the study and the room will stand and I will be alive. Next three explosions.. one after another. ( Just as I have thought it is in our district. Here an announcer has declared a bombardment. “Inhabitants must immediately take cover”, he said). It is night now 12:26 PM.
During 8 minutes while I was writing the page a scores of Leningrad’s citizens were killed, a scores of flats were destroyed. At a few minute walking distance from me in darkness and coldness there are effuse blood and crying children. Hospital attendants and patrols, shining a flash-light on quite recently having been a peacefully asleep house and now – being a center of damage, carry away the dead and wounded and “make people”. This is a such a term we have. ”To make one person” means “to put together one’s tousled parts in one small heap”.

Диктор повторяет: «Артиллерийский обстрел района продолжается». Я уже не фиксирую взрывов.

An announcer repeats: “Artillery bombardment of the area is going on”. I already don’t fix each of explosions.

Последнее время немцы начали часто применять ночные обстрелы. Но это только один из многочисленных приёмов обстрела города. За два с половиной года неустанно, с дьявольской изощренностью изобретают враги способы уничтожения горожан. Они до пятидесяти раз меняли тактику обстрелов. Цель одна: как можно больше убить людей.

Recently the Germans began often to use night shelling. But that is only one of the numerous methods of city shelling. During two and a half years the enemies diligently with devil’s refinement invent techniques for destruction of the townspeople. They have changed their shelling (gunnery) tactics about 50 times. There is only purpose to kill people as many as possible.

Иногда обстрел носит характер бешенного огневого налёта – сначала по одному району, затем по другому, потом по третьему и т. д. Иногда до восьмидесяти батарей бьют по всем районам города сразу. Иногда даётся сильный залп одновременно из нескольких орудий, и затем продолжительный интервал – минут на двадцать-тридцать. Это делается с расчётом, что минут через двадцать тишины укрывшиеся люди вновь выйдут на улицу, и тут-то вновь можно дать по ним новый залп. Обстрелы такого рода ведутся обычно по нескольким районам сразу и длятся иногда, как в начале декабря, до десяти и более часов подряд. Этим летом были обстрелы, длившиеся по двадцать шесть часов подряд.

Sometimes bombardment is characterized by a rabid fire batter – at first at one district, then at the second, then at the third and so on. Sometimes about 80 batteries hit on all districts of the city at once. Sometimes strong volley is fired simultaneously and then enduring interval about 20-30 minutes. It happens (It is going on) with an expectation that after 20 minute silence a having taken cover people again will go into the street. And here once again it is possible to fire new volley on them. A shelling of this kind realizes on a few districts at once and lasts sometimes, as at the beginning of December, about 10 or more hours on end. This summer there were bombardments lasting about 26 hours nonstop.

Враг бьёт по городу утром и вечером, учитывая, что в эти часы люди идут на работу или возвращаются с неё.

The enemy hits on the city in the mornings and evenings taking into account that people go to work and return home in these hours.

В это время он бьёт главным образом шрапнелью, чтобы убивать людей. Шрапнель применяется также часто по воскресеньям и праздникам, когда люди выходят на улицы отдохнуть.

In the time he hits with shrapnel to kill more people. Shrapnel is also often applied on holidays and Sundays when people go outdoors to rest.

Но сейчас, когда я пишу, он посылает нам не шрапнель, а тяжёлые снаряды. Ведь прежде, чем убить спящего человека, нужно ворваться к нему в дом… Ночью немцы бьют главным образом по самым населённым частям города, где больше всего спит людей. Они стреляют по сонным, неодетым даже, по беззащитным. Так «воюют» немцы!

But now when I am writing he send us not shrapnel but a crumps. Because before killing of asleep man it is necessary to rush into his house…
In the nights the Germans hit mainly on the most populated parts of the city where most of all people sleeps. They hit on the sleepers, even undressed, on the unprotected. That's the way of the German “fighting”!

<…>

Уже принято восхищаться мужеством ленинградцев … Однако мало кто понимает, что это значит. Многие думают, что это равнодушие к ложащимся рядом снарядам … Одна москвичка сказала мне даже: «Да ведь вы же просто привыкли к обстрелам». Это ерунда! Мы - обыкновенные живые люди. Ни привыкнуть, ни быть равнодушным к смерти, даже если она грозит тебе ежеминутно два с половиной года подряд, нельзя.

It already is the convention to admire courage of the people of Leningrad… However only few people understand what is it mean. Many think that this is an indifference to lying alongside shells. One girl from Moscow even said me: “ why, you are simply used to bombardment”. Fiddlesticks! We are ordinary living people. It is impossible to be used or to be indifferent to death, even if it threaten you every minute, two and a half years incessantly.

Однажды моя знакомая, журналистка Калинина, рассказывала мне: «Однажды я попала под сосредоточенный огонь на Аничковом мосту. Не понимаю, как я осталась жива, - почти все, кто был в эту минуту на мосту, погибли. Я еле перебежала мост и нырнула в подъезд … Теперь, даже в часы абсолютной тишины, мне надо делать над собой страшные усилия для того, чтобы перейти Аничков мост». – «Но ведь вы же можете ходить окольным путём», - возразила я. «Да, но по Аничкову мосту мне ближе … Но как я боюсь его…»

Once a friend of mine, journalist Kalinina, talked me: “Once I have got under concentrated fire on Anichkov bridge. I can not understand how I have escaped with my life (have survived) – almost all who had been in the minute on the bridge perished. I hardly run across the bridge and dived into building entrance … Now, even in hours of absolute quiet, I need to make terrible efforts under myself to cross Anichkov bridge”. – “But you can to go in the roundabout way, you see”, - I returned. “ Yes, it is more close for me to go over Anichkov bridge… But how I am afraid of it…”

Калинина не только по воспоминанию боится моста – она знает, что здесь её может в любую минуту убить. Но она идёт по нему, делая над собой усилие, и имя этому усилию – мужество.

Kalinina not only by (through) recollection is afraid of the bridge – she knows that here she may be killed in any minute. But she goes over the bridge, making an effort under herself, and name of the effort is courage (spirit).

Воля к жизни, к деятельности сильнее, она не убита, она заставляет нас делать усилия над собой и жить и работать в полную силу в нашем городе.

A will to life, to activity is more strong, it is not killed, it forces us to make efforts under ourself and to live and work at full capacity in our city.

Нет, под снарядами мы не ходим с гордо поднятой головой – это просто глупо. У нас целая система хождения по улицам во время затяжных обстрелов. Так пятого декабря, в день, когда обстрел длился одиннадцать часов, совсем по-особому люди шли в городской лекторий. Они двигались по «наименее опасной стороне» прижимаясь к стенам, прячась в подъездах, когда вблизи свистели снаряды, перебегая из подворотни в подворотню, а когда надо – ложась на снег. Никто не стыдился этого, никто никого не осуждал – они шли на лекцию типично фронтовыми перебежками.

No, we do not go under shells holding our heads high – that is simply stupidly. We have whole system of walking on the streets during long shelling. Thus, 5 December in the day when shelling was lasting 11 hours people quite especially went to the city lecture-hall. They moved in the least dangerous side pressing themselves to a wall, hiding into building entrances, when shells whined nearby, running from one gateway to other, and when it was necessary - lying on snow. Nobody was ashamed of that, nobody condemned anyone – they went for the lecture with typically front-line rushes.

А враг всё ещё кладёт снаряды в наш район. Диктор говорит через равные промежутки времени: "Артиллерийский обстрел района продолжается..."

And the enemy still puts shells in our area. An announcer speaks at regular intervals: "Artillery bombardment of the area is going on... "

Я солгала бы, если бы сказала, что мне сейчас страшно. Я солгала бы, если бы сказала, что мне безразлично. Нет, какая-то тоска, похожая на чувство глубокого одиночества, сжимает сердце и тянет его вниз…

I would lie if I said that I'm terrified now. I would lie if I said that it is all the same to me (I don't care). No, this is a kind of anguish similar to feeling (sense) of a deep solitude that compresses heart and pulls it downwards …

Это, наверное, тоска человека в нечеловеческих условиях. Это сильнее и страшнее страха. Минутами хочется лечь прямо на пол, лицом в ладони, и застонать от этой глубокой, тянущей сердце тоски, от боли за тех, кто сейчас погибает…

That probably is a human anguish in superhuman (inhuman) conditions. This one is more strong (intense) and terrible than fear. In some minutes I'd like (want) to lie on a floor face downwards in palms and begin to moan under the deep nagging (tormenting) a heart anguish, under the pain for those who are perishing now.

Но я не позволю себе сделать этого – я написала вам об этой ночи, я хочу, чтобы вы знали об этой ночи – двадцатого декабря в Ленинграде, - увы, об одной из сотен…

But I do not permit myself to do it – I have written you about this night I want you will be aware of the night – 20 December in Leningrad, - alas, one of a hundreds.

Мы обязательно будем судить их здесь, в Ленинграде. Мы ведь помним всё, где, в какую минуту, куда упал снаряд. Мы найдём тех, кто их посылал сюда…

We will necessarily judge them here, in Leningrad. Why, we remember all, where, in what minute a shell has fallen. We will have found those who sent them here.

Третий час ночи. Лягу спать. И всё-таки первые несколько минут полежу ничком, лицом в подушку. А диктор говорит: «Артиллерийский обстрел района продолжается…»

Three o'clock in the morning. I go to bed. And nevertheless first few minutes I will lie prone face in pillow. An announcer speaks: " Artillery bombardment of the area is going on... "
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A story talked by an eyewitness.

http://www.christasus.com/Testimony/TestimonyLucy.htm
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During World Was II (1941 - 1945) our family was in Leningrad. When, on the 8th of September, German fascists came near to Leningrad and the blockade started, all of us, except Boris, were in the city. Boris was called to military service to defend Leningrad. My father was not called to military service because of his age. My elder step-sister Nina did not work because she had serious heart disease. Lidia worded in an organization connected with the building of refuges. I was 9 at the beginning of the War.

I do not remember too much of that time, but I do remember that all the trams and trolley-buses stopped because the electricity system was ruined as well as running water system and sewerage one. And there was hunger because all depots with food in

Leningrad were burned to ashes in the beginning of September. On the 6th of September there was a great bombing during 7 hours and on the 8th the ring of the Siege was closed.

It was a period of starvation, cold, and darkness altogether. We had a window crossed with paper against glass cracking, and when it was getting dark, we had to darken the window. We used to sit in the kitchen (where there were no windows). The only light was from a small can with kerosene oil with a wick inside. The central heating system was also ruined.

My mother let go a small bird that was in a cage in my room. There was no food except a small slice of bread (125 grams) for dependents, and two slices for those who worked. But that bread was very heavy and wet. There was only one part of flour in it. The other parts were sawdust, pine needles, and a little soybeans. A well known Russian poetess, Olga Berggoltz, wrote in one of her poems: ". . . it was bread made half of blood, half of fire..."

At that time a drink from pine needles appeared in Leningrad. It was an invention of doctors who were in our blockade city too. People were told to drink that beverage as a remedy against scurvy.

We were all very thin, lean, even as thin as a lath. Our faces were as white as a sheet. Our gums were bleeding and our ankles and feet were swollen. Mother forced us - my sister Lidia's daughter Gallina (who was five years younger than me) and me - to lie in bed most days, to save power.

When my father became weak and tried to lie on the sofa or sit most of the time after his work, my mother gave him a jug with hot boiled water and asked him to deliver it to our neighbors who had no power to walk (we, too, had our "tea" very often: a cup of hot boiled water and the smallest piece of dried bread. My mother usually cut our portions into small pieces, dried them on the stove, and then divided them into portions, again the biggest for my father.) We used books and pieces of furniture as firewood.

I remember my mother mixing her and father's portions. After that she said that she had eaten hers and gave all to my father. She often joked that before the blockage she had been rather plump and then her organism started using up the fat.

Nina was the first we lost in February 1942. She had a dropsy. She was dying in conscience and her last words were: "Give my portion of bread to father... God, forgive my sins"... Nina was buried without any coffin. There were no boards to make it from, no timber in Leningrad. When we drew a sled with her dead body on it to the cemetery, I saw many dead bodies in snowdrifts.

There were sever frosts that year: about 60° F (48°-50° C). My mother said that it was God's will to freeze the German fascists who blockaded Leningrad.

Then we lost Boris because the soldiers defending the city suffered from starvation as much as the people inside the blockage. Next, Lidia's husband died of starvation. He had defended Leningrad in the battalion of anti-fire measures.

Leningrad had been bombed every day, several times a day and at night also. First we came to refuges, but then we did not. "Let it be God's will," my mother would say.

And then my mother died. She died not only of starvation, but because her blood pressure was too high and she had a stroke. She was paralyzed and was dying unconscious, faint, and I was sitting near her bed and praying for God to save, to keep my mother. Though she was paralyzed, she suddenly sat in the bed and made a sign of the cross, by crossing herself. Only God knows how it could be.

When I had understood that she did not breathe any more, I kneeled and prayed God to put life, to put spirit, into my mother, to keep here alive. That time God did not answer me, and I said crying - "There is no God!"

Some facts from the time of the blockade stamped in my memory:

Once we had a soup made of my father's leather belt. We could keep pieces of the belt in the mouth for a long time. We chewed them an felt as if we were eating something of meat.

Another time my father brought a piece of very firm oil-cake or cottoncake (pressed seeds without a pith), a kind of forage for horses. My mother soaked it and made small pan cakes on the stove (of course without oil or salt). She cooked about twelve but halved them and asked my father to treat our neighbors. My father was against it because all of us were too hungry and there was nothing to eat. I was a witness of their talking. I remember them both standing near the window: my very tall and broad-shouldered father with fair hair and my dear mother, not very tall, with blue eyes and black hair. It was morning. A ray of sun fell down on them. There were tears in my mother's eyes when she asked my father to have pity for the neighbors, one of which was pregnant. My mother was patting my father's hands, looking at his face with love and tenderness. She said, "I know you are not at all greedy, you are simply hungry.. . so much the more you are tall and big. But it is better to give than to ask. Those who give are always happy because their hearts are full of love. I am lucky to inherit that part of my mothers heart, that feature of her character, of her nature. And I hope my sons have inherited something of their grandmother whom they have never seen.

I remember a jelly made from carpenter glue. We were so happy to have it, but after the meal we were suffering from retention of stool for a week.

We did not have running water and had to bring it from the River Neva. And once I saw a frozen man in the water. The blockade lasted 900 days.

I tried to translate the poem having been written by one of Russian poets B. Kudrjavtsev - and published in the Saint Petersburg newspaper to the 50th anniversary of complete breaking of Leningrad's Siege (27th of January, 1943):

Bend your knees, burn a taper, put flowers

On Leningrad's sacred gravestones.

Stand quietly, calm and be silent

You are shadowed here by the Siege traces left...

All the civilized world must not forget

Nine hundred ghastly, blood-curdling days:

They are the pain; the wound to our city;

To those who were lost and to those who are alive.

It is the tombstone, which cannot be forgotten.

Maybe I could not find specific English words to render the contents more in English style and there are no rhymes, excuse me.
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