|
| Death in Besieged
Leningrad |
| Message from Yurik, my
uncle and World War II soldier |
| Brian invited Vladimir and myself into his
office. He gave a brief introduction to my son, who had never attended any of these
events. We were warned that the sitting might be a failure if there were language barriers
with the spirits. Brian said a prayer calling for protection. Then the session began.Soon
there was a surprise awaiting us. Brian said: "Yuri, Yura, or Yurik is here! Does
that name mean anything to you?" |
|
At first it didn’t, but the "caller from the other side" insisted I
think about his name. Then I remembered. Yuri was my father’s brother. I had last
seen him when I was six years old. At the beginning of World War II he was mobilized into
the Red Army, and then he vanished forever. When the war was over, we received an official
notification that Yuri served in the besieged Leningrad and died in hospital from liver
inflammation. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, this most grueling and memorable
siege in history lasted from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944. The worst was the
extremely cold winter of 1942, when the temperature dropped below -40 degrees Celsius.
(Metal surfaces could not be touched by the bare hand.) The city's population—several
million people—were cut off from food supplies, electricity, hot water, and any kind
of heat. People went to the wells to get water. The sick and weak fell down and did not
get up: frozen corpses were collected in piles. The number of victims from the winter of
1942—soldiers, civilians, women and children—who suffered death from cold and
hunger has been estimated as 650,000. *
Brian’s voice continued: "Yes, Yuri is deceased, his spirit is here. He says,
"Those were the nightmare years on earth—a bad dream." He has awakened from
that bad dream of life, and is talking about people with frostbite. He keeps saying
"Now I’m free, free, free! No one can harm me anymore!" When I realized who
Yuri was, I was shocked. My mind filled with images of Leningrad where soldiers had lost
fingers and toes in the biting cold. Without antibiotics, gangrene developed and took the
lives of scores of young men.
I winced in terror and clearly heard Yuri’s spirit saying he would not come back to
earth. He didn’t want another body. He needed to stay there and rest. Pictures of
unspeakable suffering flashed before my eyes. I saw the dead and the wounded, and heard
the cries as they went through hell on earth. Later I discovered that none of those words
were on the tape recording of that session but I had heard them clearly. Yuri’s
message had hit me with a tremendous force. Images of that torturous Russian winter
flooded my mind.
When the reading was over I found it strange that Brian, the medium, an English gentleman
with no knowledge of Russian life, history or language, obviously indifferent to politics,
brought through this tormented message. ...A couple of well-groomed cats walked around.
Through the window was a quiet, sunny and sleepy garden. This dramatic contrast convinced
me that the message was real.
* More and more historians have come to the conclusion that Leningrad’s "900
days siege" was purposeless and has to be considered one of Stalin's more crime
against his own people.
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