Who can count how many cemeteries of Soviet soldiers the front line left behind? Tens, hundreds of thousands of soldiers rest in the bowels of the burnt earth. Among the mass graves of Russia there is a place next to which even complete cynics cannot hold back their tears. A modest obelisk with a granite slab, on which is engraved in large white letters: “To the children who died during the Great Patriotic War».

The war has been going on for almost a month now. Children were urgently evacuated from Leningrad deep into the country, away from the Finnish border - in the highest circles it was believed that the enemy would come from there. The trains leaving in streams from the Vitebsk railway station accepted new passengers along the way (“Save my child too!” the parents begged. How could they be refused?) and drove further south Leningrad region. No one suspected that the mouth of the underworld would soon open before two thousand children.

On the evening of July 17, the train stopped at the Lychkovo junction station. At night and in the morning, new children were brought in by buses and cars from the surrounding villages. They waited a long time for a group of children evacuated from Leningrad, who reached nearby Demyansk. As it turned out later, German tanks had already burst into Demyansk.

Evgenia Frolova (Benevich) was also among them - the guys who grew up so early, who survived the tragedy in Lychkovo only by providence from above. In 1945 she returned to Leningrad, where she graduated from Leningrad State University and became an outstanding publicist. Her memoirs are kept in a shabby notebook with a mournful inscription on the cover: "July 18, 1941."

In the morning, bustle reigned on the platform. A freight train was brought in: some of the wagons were still being washed, and the escorts had already begun to seat the guys in others. In anticipation of a long journey by train, the kids sat on the bunks, watched the turmoil of adults and vividly talked to each other, and someone was just getting ready to go inside. The day was so clear and the sky so blue that many did not want to plunge into the closeness of the car ahead of time.

- Look, the plane is flying! - Anya suddenly shouted, one of the eight students of school No. 182, who had gathered at the exit from the car. - Probably, our ... Oh, look, something is pouring out of it!

The last thing the girls saw before their minds filled with some incomprehensible hiss, deafening noise and pungent smell, was a chain of coal-black grains falling out of the plane one after another. They were thrown to the rear wall of the car, on bales with things. Wounded and stunned, the girls somehow miraculously got out of the car and ran to the only nearby shelter - a dilapidated gatehouse. Above them, a plane dived sharply, firing machine-gun fire at the cabbage beds, at the babies hiding in the leaves. “... We are all in white panamas, we did not understand that they were visible in greenery. The Germans were aiming at them. They saw that the children were shooting, ”recalled the witness of the tragedy, Irina Turikova

Original taken from sokura in Tragedy at Lychkovo station Original taken from

The tragedy at Lychkovo station. In the small village of Lychkovo, Novgorod Region, there is an unmarked mass grave from the Great Patriotic War… One of many in Russia… One of the saddest…

Lychkovo is not just a point on the map of Novgorodskaya. This small village will forever go down in history as a sad place associated with the tragedy of Leningrad children. Tragedy, for a long time deleted from the official annals of Leningrad during the war years. The first wave of evacuation of residents from Leningrad began on June 29, 1941. It was produced in the Demyansky, Molvotitsky, Valdai and Lychkovsky regions, then the Leningrad region. Many parents asked those accompanying the train: “Save my child too!”, And they took the children away just like that. The train gradually increased, and by the time it arrived at the Staraya Russa station, it already had 12 heated wagons, in which there were about 3,000 children and accompanying teachers and medical workers. On the evening of July 17, 1941, the train arrived at the first track of Lychkovo station, waiting for the next group of children from Demyansk to approach. After noon on July 18, newly arrived children from Demyansk began to be placed in train cars. An ambulance train arrived on the second track, from which lightly wounded Red Army soldiers and nurses began to leave to replenish food supplies at the station market. “The boys calmed down only after taking places at the tables. And we went to our car. Some climbed onto the bunks to rest, others rummaged through their things. We eight girls stood at the door. - The plane is flying, - Anya said, - ours or German? - You will also say - “German” ... He was shot down in the morning. - Probably ours, - Anya added and suddenly shouted: - Oh, look, something is pouring out of it ... And then - everything is drowning in hissing, and roaring, and smoke. We are thrown from the doors onto the bales to the rear wall of the car. The wagon itself shakes and sways. Clothes, blankets, bags ... bodies are falling from the bunks, and from all sides with a whistle something flies over the heads and pierces the walls and the floor. It smells like burnt milk, like burnt milk on the stove.” - Evgenia Frolova "Lychkovo, 1941". A German plane bombed a train with small Leningraders, the pilots did not pay attention to the red crosses on the roofs of the cars. Women from this village rescued the survivors, buried the dead. The exact number of children who died in this tragedy is unknown. Very few were saved. The children were buried in a mass grave in the village of Lychkovo, and the teachers and nurses accompanying them, who died under the bombing, were buried in the same grave with them. Memories of students of the Dzerzhinsky district: On July 6, 1941, students of the schools of the Dzerzhinsky district of the city on the Neva and several teachers, headed by a senior teacher of botany at school No. 12, set off by passenger train from the Vitebsk railway station to Staraya Russa. Leningrad children were supposed to be temporarily placed in the villages of the Demyansk region, away from the approaching front line. Three of our family were traveling: me (I was 13 at the time) and my nieces, twelve-year-old Tamara and eight-year-old Galya. From the Staraya Russa station to the village of Molvotitsy, the children were to be transported by bus. But this option was changed due to the alarming situation (it was already the third week of the war). It was decided to take the children by train to the Lychkovo station, and from there by bus to Molvotitsy. In Lychkov there was an unforeseen delay. We had to wait seven days for buses. We arrived in Molvotitsy in the evening, spent the night at the school camping, and in the morning the children were to be taken to the designated villages. In early July, the director of school No. 12, Zoya Fedorovna, left for her husband, who had been transferred to Moscow the day before. Having learned from the reports of the Sovinformburo that one of the probable directions of the enemy’s strike passes approximately at the place where her schoolchildren were placed, she, leaving everything, came to the village of Molvotitsy to save the children ... Arriving in Molvotitsy, Zoya Fyodorovna found a commotion in our camp. Having assessed the situation, Zoya Fyodorovna, who arrived in Molvotitsy, insisted that the guys be immediately returned to the Lychkovo station. By evening, some on buses, some on passing cars, we got to Lychkov and settled with our things near the freight cars allocated to us. We had dinner for the umpteenth time with dry rations: a piece of bread and two sweets. We spent the night somehow. Many boys darted around the station in search of food. The bulk of the guys were taken away from the station, to the potato field and the bushes. Lychkovo station was completely filled with trains with some kind of tanks, cars and tanks. Some of the wagons were filled with the wounded. But there was also an empty one. The morning for the guys began with breakfast and loading things into the wagons. And at that time, fascist vultures flew into the station. Two planes made three bombing runs while combing the station with machine-gun fire. The planes took off. Wagons and tanks burned, crackling and spreading suffocating smoke. Frightened people ran between the cars, children screamed, the wounded crawled, asking for help. There were rags of clothes hanging on telegraph wires. A bomb that exploded near our wagons wounded several guys. My classmate Zhenya's leg was torn off, Asya's jaw was injured, and Kolya's eye was gouged out. The director of the school, Zoya Fedorovna, was slain to death. The children buried their beloved mentor in a bomb crater. Her two patent leather shoes, placed by the guys on the grave, looked bitter and lonely...

Station Lychkovo. Memorial to the dead children Officially, almost nothing was said about the terrible incident. The newspapers only sparingly reported that a train with children had been subjected to an unexpected air strike in Lychkovo. 2 cars were broken, 41 people were killed, including 28 children from Leningrad. However, numerous eyewitnesses, local residents, the children themselves saw a much more terrible picture. According to some estimates, on that summer day on July 18, more than 2,000 children died under fascist shelling. In total, during the years of the blockade, almost 1.5 million people were evacuated from Leningrad, including about 400 thousand children. Few, very few survivors - the wounded, maimed, were saved by the locals. The rest - the remains of innocent victims, torn apart by shells, children were buried here in the village cemetery in a mass grave. These were the first mass casualties of Leningrad, around which on September 8, 1941 the Hitlerite land blockade was closed and which heroically, courageously had to withstand this almost 900-day siege and defeat, defeat the enemy in January 1944. The memory of those who died in a distant war for new generations is alive to this day. It seemed that the children were being taken away as far as possible from the trouble that threatened the city - Leningrad. However, fatal mistakes led to terrible tragedy. The leadership in the first weeks of the war was sure that Leningrad was in danger from Finland, so the children went to those places that they considered safe - the southern regions of the Leningrad region. As it turned out, the children were taken directly towards the war. They were destined to fall into the most fiery inferno. The tragedy that occurred at the Lychkovo station through the fault of short-sighted officials should have simply been forgotten, as if it had not happened. And they kind of forgot about it, not mentioning it in any official documents and publications. Immediately after the war, a modest obelisk with an asterisk was placed on the children's grave in Lychkovo, then a slab appeared with the inscription "To the Children of Leningrad". And this place has become sacred for the locals. But the scale of the tragedy of the city of Leningrad was difficult to comprehend - many of these parents had long been lying at the Piskarevsky cemetery or died at the fronts.

TRAGEDY AT KHAYYAM STATION

On February 18, 2004, a freight train carrying 17 wagons of sulfur, six tanks of gasoline, seven wagons of fertilizer and 10 wagons of cotton derailed and exploded at one of the railway stations in the province of Khorasan, in northeastern Iran. Since all of the above burns very well, a massive fire started at the station. While extinguishing it, another explosion thundered. As a result, more than 320 people died, about 400 people received injuries and burns of varying severity, 90 people went missing, and the surrounding settlements were badly damaged. According to the commission of inquiry, in this case, people again faced the most common cause man-made disasters- ordinary negligence.

To explosions on transport lines passing through peaceful cities and towns, modern man, alas, not to get used. Tragedies like the Iranian one occur every year, claiming the lives of people, causing damage to buildings and equipment. IN Lately emergencies have become more frequent, and the scale of their consequences has a bad tendency to constantly increase. There are plenty of reasons for this: congestion of many transport hubs, lack of personnel, outdated equipment, tragic accidents, natural disasters, someone's evil will and, no matter how trite it sounds, ordinary negligence.

According to the representative of the Iranian authorities, Vahid Barkechi, the tragedy occurred at the Khayyam station. It is located in the province of Khorasan, 20 kilometers from the city of Nishapur and 70 kilometers from the city of Mashhad. A train of more than 100 freight cars without a locomotive stood quietly on a siding at the Abumoslem station in the Nishapur region. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he began to move and started down the slope, in the direction of the neighboring station - Khayyam, gradually increasing speed. In the first official reports distributed by the media, a version was put forward according to which the cars moved as a result of the ground shaking that took place that day. Indeed, in the early morning of February 18, a seismic station in northeastern Iran registered tremors with a force of 3.6 on the Richter scale. Another question is how strongly the ground vibrations were felt in the Abumoslem area and whether they could push heavily loaded wagons and tanks from their places ... True, no one had the opportunity to seriously think about this in the first hours after the disaster.

Be that as it may, the overclocked train continued to pick up speed and crashed into another freight train at the Khayyam station, which stood in the way of the wagons that were out of control: the driver did not have time to remove the train waiting for loading from the impact. As a result of a powerful collision, 50 Abumoslem cars were taken out of the railway track. Until now, it remains unclear when the first explosion thundered - before the unmanaged train derailed, or after the cars loaded with combustible materials turned over. It seems that this is no longer so important, because a difference of several minutes could not save the people doomed to death.

So, after a collision, a roaring flame rose over one of the gasoline tanks. The presence of cotton, sulfuric acid and fertilizers in neighboring cars contributed to the fact that a flurry of fire raged at the station a few minutes later. Immediately after the train crash, teams of firefighters and qualified rescuers were sent to the crash site, who began to eliminate the consequences of the collision. Naturally, they were the first to try to extinguish the flaming fuel tanks. It was at this moment that the second explosion occurred, significantly exceeding the first in terms of power: the rest of the oil tanks could not stand it. As a result, there were many dead at the station - mostly firefighters and rescuers. In addition, the second explosion caused the death of many local residents and several high-ranking officials: the governor of Khorasan province, the mayor, the fire chief and the chief power engineer of the city of Nishapur. At the same time, the manager of the railway in this province went missing.

This explosion was so strong that it was heard even in settlements located 75 kilometers from the crash site. And the blast wave that swept through the neighborhood shattered windows in all houses located within a radius of 10 kilometers from the epicenter. But five nearby villages suffered the most: they fell into the fire zone and were almost completely burned. This explains great amount victims of the disaster at the station.

At first, the state television of Iran introduced confusion into reports of the tragedy. Immediately after the accident, it reported a collision of two passages - cargo and passenger. Journalists immediately began to estimate the possible number of victims ... Only a day later it became known that the disaster had affected two freight trains.

At the emergency site railway all trains were temporarily closed. The fact is that even on February 19, firefighters still continued to fight the fire: they could not put it out, and the threat of new explosions was quite real. Moreover, in the derailed train there were still fuel tanks that were not touched by the flames. To avoid the appearance of new, senseless victims, cordons of troops were put up within a radius of a kilometer from the burning wagons. Then, on February 19, in the city of Nishapur, the authorities declared three days of mourning.

In the end, Iranian firefighters managed to put out the hellish fire that raged for more than a day at the site of the explosion. The elimination of the fire was complicated by a large concentration of toxic substances that got into the air during the explosion of gasoline and chemicals: it was extremely difficult to work in such a toxic atmosphere, some rescuers were seriously poisoned.

After the news of the tragedy in Khorasan reached the media, General Secretary The UN sent its condolences to the government and people of Iran. Kofi Annan also said that the United Nations is ready to help the victims.

A government commission left for the crash site in the very first hours. Authorities and experts were going to establish the true causes of the accident. The very first version put forward by them was not original and assumed that another terrorist act would be carried out at the station - alas, at present this topic is perhaps the most painful for society. Naturally, under such a combination of circumstances, such an explanation of what happened seems the most likely, and the authorities begin to wait which of the groups will take responsibility for the explosion. However, the Iranians quickly figured out the situation and did not look for a black cat in a dark room: there was clearly no one to “hang” the catastrophe on. On February 23, the governor of Khorasan province, Hassan Rasuli, issued an official statement that investigators rejected the version of a terrorist attack. "The commissions specially appointed to investigate, which included specialists from the Iranian railway department and law enforcement agencies, rejected the possibility of sabotage," the speech said. And the version that appeared in the media that the ill-fated train could set in motion an earthquake, the commission did not consider at all noteworthy and therefore did not consider: the tremors in the station area were so weak that they were practically not felt. Moreover, they could not cause spontaneous movement of a multi-ton train. The only plausible cause of the tragedy, according to experts, is ... the ordinary negligence of responsible persons, “successfully” supplemented by a technical failure of the brake system and a possible mistake of the personnel.

Malicious intent, indifference and incompetence... How often they find themselves on the same scale! And although the unscrupulous performance of one's own duties is not legally terrorism, the deplorable results of both often cost each other. And if terrorism can still be somehow fought, then what can be done with the eternal confidence of each of us in our own impunity? Any person at least once in his life goes on about ... circumstances, lack of time, poor health - what's the difference? And he prefers to “not notice” the negligence committed in his work, allows himself to superficially fulfill professional duties. At the same time, everyone - regardless of age, character and worldview - hopes for the same eternal “maybe”. This applies not only to the Slavic brothers, who in all ages have been reproached for some carelessness - in this respect, people show enviable unanimity. Examples are accidents nuclear power plants in different countries of the world, tanker disasters, houses that were not designed for seismic activity and, nevertheless, erected in earthquake zones ... Negligence is what, in all likelihood, unites all representatives human race. It would be nice to find other, more optimistic, points of contact ..