MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/. Germany unconditionally accepts responsibility for the attack on the Soviet Union during World War Two, and Berlin has no interest in rewriting history, Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Lambsdorff said.
"Nazi Germany’s war of conquest was an egregious and unpardonable crime against international law. Germany is responsible for the outbreak of World War Two, including the attack on the Soviet Union. My country acknowledges this responsibility unequivocally. The occasional allegations that we are eager to rewrite history and deny responsibility are not true," the diplomat said at an event titled "The Siege of Leningrad in the Mirror of Contemporary Diaries and Documents," which was organized by the German embassy along with the German Historical Institute in Moscow.
Lambsdorff called the siege of Leningrad "a particularly horrifying and brutal war crime."
"The suffering inflicted on people during that siege alone is beyond measure. Remembering the victims is our duty before the survivors, their descendants, and in the end, to ourselves and our children," the German ambassador concluded.
The siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) lasted 872 days (from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944) and claimed the lives of more than a million people, according to the latest estimates. In defiance of the siege, industrial enterprises, schools and cultural establishments continued to operate in the city. Since the fall of 1941, five attempts were made to break the city’s encirclement, but only the sixth operation, code-named Iskra, yielded success in January 1943. However, the Red Army completely liberated the city, thus ending the Nazi siege, only on January 27, 1944. Nowadays, this day is annually celebrated in St. Petersburg, which sits on the Neva River, as the Day of Leningrad Victory.