Here's my collection of pictures of the Breakthrough of the Siege of Leningrad Panorama museum. The panorama recreates the fighting on the Nevsky Bridgehead on one particular day - January 13, 1943. One day earlier the 45th Guards Rifle Division, the only Guards division on the Leningrad Front, joined three other divisions of the 67th Army in Operation Spark. Although their comrades who attacked in the northern part of the Schlisselburg-Sinyavino salient or "Flaschenhals" as German soldiers nicknamed it, ultimately succeeded and linked up with the Volkhov front in 6 days, the assault of the 45th failed, just like all previous Soviet attempts to advance from that blood-soaked bridgehead. This life-sized diorama pays tribute to those who gave their lives to break the Nazi stranglehold on Leningrad. Almost all figures of Soviet soldiers were crafted in the likeliness of actual soldiers of this division who fought there in January 1943.
The "now" part of the "now and then" collage is the picture I took on the bridgehead a few years ago.
