Federal President Joachim Gauck has sent the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the following letter commemorating the liberation of Leningrad on 27 January 1944:

Dear Mr President,

The people of St Petersburg and the whole Russian Federation are now commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Leningrad by the Red Army on 27 January 1944.

I can think only with deep sorrow and shame of the war of annihilation waged by Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union. The brutal siege of Leningrad was a particularly horrific part of this war. How the besieged city’s desperate inhabitants and the people of the Soviet Union yearned for the day of liberation! How utterly terrible was the suffering and dying, which ended at long last after two and a half years of siege.

With the people of St Petersburg I remember the martyrdom endured by so many innocents, so many women, men and children, who were deliberately starved to death. From devastating records like Tanya Savicheva’s diary we know the screams and tears, the despair and never-ending hunger, the struggle of the besieged to survive. The immense scale of this human suffering is something we still find beyond comprehension.

In Russia, but also in Germany the memory of this pitiless siege remains vivid. For all right-minded people it epitomises the criminal nature of the methods the Nazi leaders quite intentionally employed in their war on the Soviet Union. This year the German Bundestag dedicated the remembrance ceremony it holds on 27 January for the victims of National Socialism also to those who died or were traumatised during the siege of Leningrad.

Germany is conscious of the responsibility it bears before history for the suffering visited on the people of Leningrad and the brutality shown by its soldiers, Einsatzgruppen and SS units. For you and your nation I have this message: We share your pain over those who perished and we feel with those who survived the war yet suffer still from its consequences.

World War II inflicted deep wounds on the relationship between our countries. We have a continuing responsibility to keep alive the memory of the suffering which Germans have visited on Russians. Yet these memories also help us to value particularly highly every single step towards German Russian reconciliation. Thanks to great hearted and magnanimous people, we can once again look one another in the face and meet with good intentions.

From convinced humanists like Lev Kopelev we have learned that mutual trust builds new bridges. Truth and empathy can overcome hatred and enmity. In this spirit we intend to bend all our energies to furthering the work on building a shared Europe. That way we today can look forward with confidence, despite the memory of so much evil and horror, to a shared future that is peaceful and safeguards the human values we hold dear.