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00:00In Sicily, a ghost town steeped in corruption.
00:05Government troops were brought in to patrol the city in what had become really an all-out war.
00:13The secretive Pennsylvanian institution that shocked America.
00:19They had 80 cages, metal cages, with people in it.
00:23And an aristocratic mansion in Ireland, embroiled in a bizarre terrorist plot.
00:32The kidnappers took to driving around, using a book about Irish stately homes as their guide.
00:39In Sicily, skeletons of hundreds of structures loom over the capital's most sought-after area.
00:54You see this vast collection of monolithic ruins, perched precariously on the hillside,
01:07that seems completely out of place with this picturesque spot.
01:13Vestiges of luxury suggest that these cavernous shelves were intended to house the city's elite.
01:19Inside, you find bathtubs and unfinished rooms.
01:26And roof terraces, all with that sweeping view.
01:31The logistical challenge to build this must have been phenomenal.
01:36Why would you pour so much money into it and then just walk away?
01:42It's a stark symbol of the greed and brutality of those who once dominated Sicily.
01:49They ran violent extortion rackets and started taking control of entire industries.
01:56One of the things that gave them so much power was their willingness to murder anyone who got in their way.
02:03Police, prosecutors, judges, politicians, nobody was safe.
02:09The killings made front page news and sent shock waves across Europe.
02:16It would take the action of two brave judges to finally rid the city from this evil.
02:22But they would pay the ultimate price.
02:24The first time I went inside one of these houses, it felt like the aftermath of a bombing.
02:37As if these abandoned houses had been destroyed by something apocalyptic.
02:45Local documentary maker Andrea de Ganji runs an organization that aims to put a spotlight on what happened here.
02:52In the 1960s, this mountain was untouched.
03:02There were no houses.
03:03It was just earth and greenery and lots of vegetation.
03:07This greenbelt was famous across Europe for its beauty.
03:15But being so close to the capital Palermo, this prime real estate soon attracted the attention of Sicily's lawless underworld.
03:23This half-finished neighborhood is a legacy of the time when Palermo was completely ruled by mobsters.
03:36This is Pizzosella, a ghost town of more than 200 buildings.
03:41It's got mafia fingerprints all over it.
03:46Pizzosella symbolizes corruption, mafia, malfeasance and illicit construction.
03:56Sicily is the birthplace of the mafia.
03:59It emerged here in the 1800s, a time of political unrest.
04:03Lawlessness was running rampant.
04:08You know, smuggling, banditry, all of that was kind of taking over Sicily.
04:13Eventually, criminal brotherhoods formed, known as families or clans.
04:18By the early 1900s, politicians would support them, help them out in exchange for their kind of persuasive tactics.
04:30But in 1922, when the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini took control of Italy,
04:37he vowed to wipe out Sicily's notorious mobsters and imprison them by the thousands.
04:42The mafia lay low until Mussolini himself was ousted in 1943 as allied forces advanced, leaving Italy in turmoil.
04:56Sicily was left in a power vacuum and in this chaos, many inmates escaped from prison.
05:03After breaking out of jail, Sicily's mafia families were reunited
05:08and determined to regain their unscrupulous control of the capital's business,
05:13especially the construction industry.
05:17The war had done enormous damage to Palermo.
05:20150,000 residents were without homes, but the process of rebuilding was open to immense corruption.
05:29Mafia-connected construction companies began to build apartment blocks wherever they could.
05:34Eventually, one mobster kingpin turned his attention to the city's green belt.
05:42In the 1970s, a 250-acre parcel of the mountainside
05:47was sold to a company owned by the sister of a notorious Mafia boss, Michele the Pope Greco.
05:57Sometimes seen carrying a Bible, Pope Greco was the head of the Greco Mafia clan.
06:02He controlled much of Palermo's business, including the drug trade.
06:07At his country villa, he hosted not only influential Sicilian politicians,
06:13but also a heroin refinery.
06:16To give an idea of the money involved, at this time, around a third of all of the
06:24heroin in the United States was produced in Sicily.
06:27The Pope needed an outlet to launder his ill-gotten gains,
06:33so he bribed a Mafia-supporting politician to sort it for him.
06:38Vito Ciancimino, Palermo's head of public works, was the Mafia's inside man.
06:45Together, they laundered millions, and Pizzocela was one of their biggest projects.
06:51Construction began in 1978 with plans for over 200 homes, ranging from vast multi-level villas
07:01with pools to two-story houses.
07:03They finished building some of the villas and sold them to buyers.
07:08Did they know that they were built by the Mafia?
07:13Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but it was hard to escape things that were controlled by the Mafia
07:20in that society at that time.
07:22It was like a fish trying to avoid water.
07:24But before Pizzocela was complete, vicious rivalries began to rupture Sicily's powerful Mafia families.
07:34Totorina, head of the Corleonezi faction, wanted to rule Palermo,
07:39and get a piece of the Greco family's heroin trade.
07:45A war broke out thanks to the bloodthirsty ambitions of the clan boss Totorina.
07:52He wanted to dominate and started a vicious campaign which left around a thousand people dead.
07:59After two years of violence, the Mafia war was over.
08:04The conflict had involved the entire Palermo Mafia,
08:08and on the face of it, it looked like Totorina had won.
08:12But ordinary Sicilians were tired of the violence and corruption.
08:18And in 1985, they voted in a new mayor who promised to break the Mafia.
08:24One of his first jobs was to clean up the construction industry,
08:29which included the activities of Pope Greco.
08:32He halted all construction contracts approved by the previous administration, and work at Pizzocela stopped.
08:43They conducted a big investigation into the Pizzocela project.
08:49What they found was, not surprisingly, it was deeply connected to the mob.
08:53The court also ruled that every single property should be confiscated by the city of Palermo,
09:01and the whole development completely demolished.
09:05It was devastating news for those who had already moved in.
09:11Meanwhile, Pope Greco had lost the front for his drug profits.
09:15The heat on Palermo's ruling Mafiosi was far from over.
09:27In the 1980s, in Palermo, Sicily, a notorious Mafia boss, Pope Greco,
09:33was using a hillside development to launder the vast proceeds of his illegal drug trafficking.
09:39But an extraordinary move by a high-ranking mobster was about to blow his cover.
09:49A gang member decided to cooperate with police and reveal the inner workings of the organization.
09:56Tommaso Buscetta entered a witness protection program and became an informant.
10:03He was the Sicilian Mafia's first supergrass, and his evidence helped build cases against 475 Mafiosi.
10:13It became known as the Maxi Trial.
10:16Among the accused were none other than the architects of Pizzocela,
10:22and the urban planner, Vito Ciancimino, and Michele the Pope Greco.
10:29Pope Greco was given multiple life sentences.
10:32He would end up dying in jail.
10:35In retaliation, the Mafia would mete out its own deadly brand of justice.
10:42Corleonezzi boss Toto Rina, who in the end had been secretly aligned with Pope Greco,
10:48ordered the assassination of two judges who had presided over the case.
10:53It was a step too far.
10:56Government troops were brought in to patrol the city in what had become
11:01really an all-out war between the Mafia and the government.
11:07The government won, but the battle is still ongoing, as are their dealings with Pizzocela.
11:13The idea that they could just take over and demolish these houses was easier said than done.
11:21The legal battles went on for years.
11:26Eventually, the people who had already bought houses were allowed to keep them,
11:31but it was too expensive to tear the rest down.
11:34The question of what to do with the villas remains unsolved.
11:46But in the meantime, Andrea keeps Pizzocela in the public eye.
11:54We organise guided tours, and we organise events inside the unfinished houses.
12:00In eastern Pennsylvania, is an institution so shocking, it sparked a national revolution.
12:23We're about an hour away from Philadelphia.
12:25There's these buildings with names like Mayflower and Quaker.
12:30So, perhaps we're at some kind of college?
12:33There are resting swing sets, slides, and jungle gyms.
12:38But as soon as you step inside, it's clear that this was no ordinary school.
12:44There are hospital beds with guardrails on the side and abandoned wheelchairs.
12:51Supposedly built to help those in need,
12:54this facility soon became hell on earth.
13:00The horrors that took place inside these walls were hidden from the outside world for years.
13:06It would take a dogged journalist and a tenacious reformer to expose it to the public
13:14and begin a fight to transform thousands of lives across America.
13:18I've been in the news business for 44 years, and it is undoubtedly the best story I ever did.
13:28Because of what happened here, I can say to all the spirits who died here, your lives were not in vain.
13:36Jim Conroy first visited here more than 50 years ago as a young medical researcher.
13:49I was 21 years old, fresh out of college, and I had not a clue that places like this existed in America.
14:00What Jim saw inside these structures changed his life and inspired him to take action.
14:06I saw people lying in cribs all day, open wounds untreated, broken bones, and noise and smell, and naked people, and headbanging.
14:17I felt there has to be a better way.
14:19The devastating scenes Jim witnessed can be traced back to the founding principles of this complex, eugenics.
14:32The eugenics movement became prevalent in the 1880s. It was very big in America. It was a universal belief.
14:39Eugenic reasoning held that genetic traits could be improved through selective breeding, and that inferior qualities could be suppressed.
14:52Leading eugenicists argued that those with certain characteristics should be prevented from reproducing,
14:58so that those conditions could be bred out of the gene pool.
15:02These theories contribute to the mass institutionalization of people with intellectual disabilities.
15:10They're hidden away from the rest of society like some sort of dirty secret.
15:16This is Pennhurst State School and Hospital.
15:21It opened in 1908 to house people with a wide range of physical and intellectual disabilities.
15:28Families had to get help. And so people like me with PhDs and MDs, they would say to parents,
15:36Pennhurst, that's what we have. And that's what parents did, because professionals told them to.
15:43But from the beginning, this institution was a deeply troubled place.
15:48In 1912, Pennhurst is already massively overcrowded, and this would be a huge problem throughout its sordid history.
15:56So what we end up with are these really unsanitary conditions, and that the individuals with the most
16:05complex needs were being left alone, unsupervised, and opportunities for violence and self-harm were rife.
16:16Parents were never allowed to know what the real conditions were.
16:19They saw their sons and daughters in a fixed room, in a special place, not back here. No one knew, not even the families.
16:29Pennhurst continued to operate for decades. By the 1960s, thousands of people were living here,
16:36in appalling conditions. And almost no one on the outside knew it was happening.
16:42But soon, the world would learn the truth in all its excruciating detail.
16:49This revelation would not only spell the downfall of Pennhurst, it would also spur a national revolution.
16:59In the late 1960s, the conditions in a grisly asylum in Pennsylvania were about to be exposed to the
17:07American public. It came about thanks to a chance encounter between news reporter Bill Baldini and a
17:14Pennhurst volunteer.
17:16They told me about it, and I said, if 10% of what you're telling me is true, I'll do a story on it.
17:22And I found out that 300% of what they told me was true. And that's when I decided,
17:27I'm coming up the next day with a camera.
17:29At first, the institution's workers were skeptical that Bill's reporting would have any impact.
17:37But they quickly realized his story could initiate the change that they also wanted to see.
17:43They were helpless. They were government employees. If they complained, they're going to get fired.
17:48So I became their voice, which was great. They would hand me notes in the hallway,
17:55telling me where to look and what to do.
17:57Eventually, even the bosses got behind Bill's work.
18:02And what the staff showed Bill shocked him to his core.
18:05In one ward, they had 80 cages, metal cages, with people in it.
18:12And I said, why are they in the cages? And they said, because we don't have enough people to
18:16take them out of the cages. It was the cruelest thing I've ever seen in my life.
18:20It was the byproduct of poor state funding.
18:24Bill figured out that Pennhurst received less funding than the local zoo.
18:32And over the course of the next five days, his expose shook America.
18:38The initial reaction was stunning. Me, the crew, our bosses were stunned.
18:46The public was stunned. They couldn't believe what they were watching.
18:50Soon, this story was picked up by news outlets all throughout the state and country.
18:58One even described Pennhurst as the shame of Pennsylvania.
19:06With the truth revealed, in the early 1970s, a legal campaign began on behalf of the residents.
19:12Jim Conroy took part in an unprecedented class action lawsuit intended to get Pennhurst shut down.
19:25It's a civil rights movement that nobody knows about.
19:28In America, you have three indelible rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
19:35Pennhurst is failing at all three. They died young. They couldn't leave. And it was absolutely miserable.
19:45Anything that deprives people, citizens, of those rights is a civil rights issue.
19:50And that affected people with physical disabilities and sensory disabilities and
19:55every kind of medical and mental disability.
19:57The violation of the residents' civil rights gave the lawyers a case to argue in court.
20:08Pennhurst was the epicenter of legal activities that changed the world.
20:13But at the time, society deemed the patients unable to testify on their own behalf.
20:19Jim and his team had a fight on their hands to find concrete evidence to support their claim.
20:24We were able to prove through records and individual observation that the average person who came
20:33to Pennhurst had been here for about 28 years, and they had gotten worse. People came in able to speak,
20:40and in a year or two, they didn't speak anymore. They lost skills, and quality of life went down. And that's how the lawsuit was won.
20:47This was the first time that a U.S. federal court indicated that an institution must be closed
20:55for violating the patient's constitutional rights.
20:58The Pennhurst case was a groundbreaker, and about 17 states immediately copied the lawsuit
21:06and started closing institutions all over the country.
21:09These legal victories marked a vital change in how people with disabilities were cared for across the United States.
21:19Overwhelmingly, people were recognizing that essentially warehousing people with disabilities was not the solution.
21:27There was increasing pressure to give people with intellectual disabilities and other illnesses services that they needed within the community.
21:38In 1985, the courts ruled that Pennhurst should be shut down for good.
21:44The federal court said everybody has to go to a small family-like community home.
21:51Many of those leaving Pennhurst had no families to go to.
21:57Others had relatives, but with no means to care for them properly.
22:03There wasn't any such community support system yet. We had to build it.
22:06We really stood out as the first to take this chance, and it was a great success.
22:14With the last person moved to their new home, the doors of Pennhurst closed officially on December 9, 1987.
22:21While much of Pennhurst was left to decay by the state before being sold to private owners,
22:32many former residents came together to speak on their own behalf.
22:39It's a long time since Pennhurst closed, but there's still about 600 people living.
22:44Many get together every year, and they're an active self-advocacy group.
22:51There's still about 500 people living.
22:53Ireland's county of Tipperary is a haven of tranquility.
23:07Ireland is known to many as the Emerald Isle, and when you look at this place, you can really see why.
23:13There's verdant fields, rolling hills, and a majestic river running through it all.
23:20On a prominent hilltop sits one of the largest manor houses in the country.
23:26There are clear signs that this was once very opulent.
23:31Given the size and faded splendor of the place, whoever lived here was clearly of some importance.
23:36But in the 1970s, their dignified world would not escape the bitter conflict that has long divided this nation.
23:46This place would be dragged into a web of international political intrigue.
23:54One dark night, this safe haven became the scene of a terrifying assault.
24:01They were taken, not because of who they were, but because of what they represented.
24:06During the 1960s, in County Tipperary, Ireland, Jackie Aird was raised on this imposing estate.
24:19I have really special memories of here.
24:22I had a lovely upbringing, and I'm sad to see the way it's gone dilapidated so much.
24:28She's returning for the first time in more than 40 years.
24:34This room was the drawing room, and it was a famous fireplace there as well.
24:40As you can see, it had a crest in it.
24:47The crest belongs to the noble family of the Earls of Dunamore.
24:52They had been granted the land by the English, who had conquered Ireland in the mid-1600s.
24:58And the Earl of Dunamore commissioned this grand house to suit his noble status.
25:07He named it Knock Lofty House.
25:11This was clearly once a grand building covering almost 23,000 square feet and 63 acres of parkland and gardens.
25:21By the 1970s, the 7th Earl of Dunamore still lived here.
25:27And Jackie remembers its former grandeur.
25:32This is the library.
25:35They always had beautiful portraits of paintings up there, very high up in the wall.
25:41Jackie was not allowed in these grand rooms.
25:45Her father was the Dunamore's gardener.
25:47Jackie lived with her family in one of the 22 outbuildings scattered around the estate.
25:59This was our kitchen, our sink was here.
26:06And that was our hot press.
26:09And our fire, the same.
26:13My goodness, we used to dry all our clothes up on that.
26:16It was a very different world to the aristocratic mansion.
26:23We were not allowed to cycle on the avenue in front of the house.
26:26And when we'd meet Lady Dunamore, we always addressed her as my lady.
26:30When Jackie lived here in the 1960s, Ireland wasn't only divided along class lines.
26:42The country had been split since 1922.
26:45The South gained independence and would become the Republic of Ireland, while the largely Protestant Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom.
26:56Catholic Irish revolutionaries in both North and South have been trying to overthrow the British ever since the country was divided in two.
27:04The provisional Irish Republican army, the IRA, wanted independence from the British crown, seeing it as an occupying nation.
27:15But in 1969, the British government sent troops to Northern Ireland, but it only served to inflame the conflict further.
27:24Bombings, shootings and assassinations became a common occurrence.
27:29In 1972, the leadership of the IRA decided to plan a series of attacks in England.
27:38The actions of one pair of IRA operatives would soon bring the troubles to the grand doors of Knocklofty House.
27:49The Price sisters grew up in West Belfast.
27:52They'd been involved with the Republican movement for years, but in 1971, they both joined the IRA.
28:00They put together what was called an active service unit.
28:03Their plan was to bomb key locations in London.
28:09On March 8th, 1973, the Price sisters helped plant a bomb at London's central criminal courts.
28:19Over 200 people were wounded in the blasts, and there were scenes of carnage across central London.
28:24This was a strike at the heart of the British establishment.
28:30Ten of the IRA bombers were caught as they tried to flee through Heathrow Airport.
28:35The Price sisters were sentenced to life in prison for the attacks, and were put in English jails.
28:40But their sisters, along with other members of the bombing team, went on hunger strike.
28:46They demanded to be transferred to Northern Ireland.
28:50But returning them home to Northern Ireland would be a symbolic victory for the bombers,
28:54that the British authorities just couldn't allow.
28:59Back in Ireland, certain factions of the IRA had other ideas.
29:04Their plan was to kidnap someone connected to the British establishment
29:09and used them as a bargaining chip to get the Price sisters and other hunger strikers released to a Northern Irish jail.
29:16In June 1974, a rogue unit of the IRA decided to take action.
29:25They went in search of the ultimate prize, an aristocrat with deep links to England.
29:32Unable to find their first two targets, it's reported that the kidnappers took to driving around,
29:38using a book about Irish stately homes as their guide.
29:42It's perhaps just bad luck that they ended up at Knocklofty House.
29:48The kidnappers terrorized Lord Donamore's staff before realizing that the 71-year-old Earl was out to dinner.
29:57As they were looking round, the attackers heard the sound of the Donamores returning home.
30:03They sprang into action, pistol-whipping the Earl and throwing him and his wife into a waiting vehicle.
30:09Lady Donamore's cardigan and an earring still lay in the driveway as evidence of the fight she put up.
30:23In the 1970s, life at a tranquil Irish estate had been turned upside down
30:29when the Earl of Donamore and his wife were kidnapped by the IRA.
30:33Groove marks in the gravel suggest that at least one of them had to be dragged to the kidnapped car.
30:40There were also two pools of blood, both now covered with sheets of cardboard.
30:47The elderly Donamores were taken to a remote house.
30:50They were now prisoners of the IRA.
30:54It was an anxious wait at Knocklofty House.
30:57A few days after the couple had been taken, the Price sisters were told that their conditions
31:17to stop their hunger strike had been agreed by the British government.
31:21Around the same time, as the hunger strikes came to an end, Lord and Lady Donamore were released.
31:27How are you, Neil? How are you feeling?
31:29Father, thank you. Very well, indeed.
31:31The kidnappers had bought Lady Donamore carpet slippers for comfort.
31:34A husband with a bruised eye wore a raincoat soaked in blood with a deep cut over his forehead.
31:39It was fantastic.
31:41They came back to Knocklofty and they just wanted to continue on and they just wanted to be back to normal.
31:47Lord Donamore's kidnappers were never caught.
31:53And the Earl himself spent the rest of his life living quietly at Knocklofty House.
31:59After his death in 1981, the family sold the estate and it became a hotel.
32:07The business eventually failed.
32:09The property changed hands a number of times in the following years, but slowly it fell into ruin.
32:17Today, fortunately, there are plans in the works to halt its decay and return it to its former glory.
32:28One of the suggestions is that it might become part of a retirement community.
32:32And who knows, some of the local people who grew up only looking at it from the outside
32:38may yet be able to live inside the building.
32:48Off the coast of Estonia, a chilly island was once the vital outpost of a superpower.
32:55It's extremely cold and most of it is densely forested with tall pine trees.
33:07And then you come across these large concrete structures and turrets, which look completely out of place.
33:13There's nothing in them. They've been completely stripped of anything that would identify them.
33:18They go many stories underground. So that raises the question, what were they intended to do?
33:26They seem to have been created for war.
33:30Then there's that deeper feeling that maybe somebody spent their last moments down here.
33:36These structures played a pivotal role in the clash between the two most notorious dictators of all time.
33:44The battle for this island formed part of a siege in which almost a million people lost their lives.
33:58Ain Tahiste was born on Hjelma Island, now part of modern-day Estonia.
34:05He's studied the history of the structures hidden in its forests.
34:09It was the border zone. That means the coasts were closed. There was razor wire fences.
34:22There was armoured patrol. There were watch towers.
34:29This island is strategically important. Its position means that it borders Sweden. It borders Finland.
34:35And most of all Russia. St. Petersburg is only 325 miles away. This island is the gateway to attack Russia.
34:48When Hjelma was first fortified in the early 20th century, it was part of the Imperial Russian Empire.
34:55And the Tsar needed to protect his capital, St. Petersburg, from the possibility of enemy warships coming up the Gulf of Finland.
35:05So, this is the basement of one gun place. And here the gun starts. It must be as high as these trees are right now.
35:22The gun has to shoot on the north direction where the Gulf of Finland is open sea, because these guns are designed to destroy the warships.
35:31But construction stopped in 1917, after the Communists deposed the Tsar and took over Russia.
35:41The Soviet Empire was born, and St. Petersburg was later renamed Leningrad.
35:49In the 1930s, Communist leader Joseph Stalin took his own steps to protect Leningrad in the build-up to World War II.
35:58So, in 1939, a Mutual Assistance Act effectively gave Russia control of most of the territorial waters of Estonia.
36:10That included the island.
36:12Stalin could now send troops to occupy Hjelma to expand and update its fortifications.
36:18According to some reports, by 1941, there are over 40 miles of trenches across the island, with 30 miles of barbed wire, and it is now a true fortress.
36:32It was a small part in Stalin's overall defense plan, but it would become a piercing thorn in Hitler's side.
36:40At the start of World War II, the notoriously paranoid Communist leader, Joseph Stalin, had re-fortified Hjelma Island to help defend Leningrad from naval attack.
36:58But he was ill-prepared for Hitler's fanatical determination to conquer the Soviet Union as part of his master plan.
37:06The people of the Soviet Union were going to be exterminated, and their land was going to be used for the Aryan or the German people.
37:18We have a memo from Hitler himself saying the Fuhrer has decided to wipe Leningrad from the map.
37:27In June of 1941, Hitler invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, the greatest land invasion in history.
37:37Both sides, you have 10 million troops locked in combat.
37:41Hitler's army swept across Europe toward Leningrad.
37:47Within weeks, the city would be besieged.
37:52With the siege potentially grinding on for months, the Germans couldn't risk having the Soviet-held Hjelma Island behind their lines,
38:01endangering any crucial reinforcements sailing up the Gulf of Finland.
38:06So in July 1941, they invaded Estonia and headed toward the island.
38:15The Germans launched the attack on Hjelma Island by playing this verse on the radio,
38:22Der Tanz kann beginnen, the dance can begin.
38:26They approached under a barrage of artillery fire.
38:29They land at the south of the island, and after a week's fierce fighting, begin to move further north.
38:37The Soviet garrison, which is pushed back by this German advance, concentrates on the Takuna peninsula for a last stand.
38:45This was the last defense line.
38:48The Soviet soldiers, they had very little training, and they were as well used as a, like, like a cannon meat.
38:59The Soviet military would sacrifice any number of its lower ranks to ensure the survival of Leningrad.
39:07Those Soviet soldiers are ordered to hold the line.
39:11Them being sacrificed on the island was essential for the fate of Leningrad.
39:19At 6 a.m. on the 21st of October, the German troops on the island take the final Soviet position on the Takuna peninsula.
39:26With the island finally under their command, the Germans now had near total control of the Gulf of Finland.
39:36Now their troops could move on from Hjelma to escalate the siege of Leningrad.
39:43The suffering of Leningrad during World War II was epic.
39:46You've got a hundred thousand Russians dying every month, chiefly from starvation.
39:50First, dogs and cats were eaten, then rats. And then, from the dead people, they cut pieces of meat and eat that as well.
40:02It's hard to have an exact number, but historians agree that around one million people died during this siege.
40:09Despite how close the Nazis get to taking Leningrad, they never do.
40:13And eventually, Soviet counterattacks drive them away and free up the city.
40:16The siege of Leningrad has ended. The island of Hjelma is free of the Germans.
40:23But for the people of the island, the nightmare was far from over.
40:29The Soviets went on to retake Hjelma.
40:33They reinstalled a garrison on the island and further defenses across Estonia,
40:39which was now part of the communist buffer zone, which the Soviets claimed they'd put in place to protect themselves.
40:46from the west.
40:49The Soviets maintained control over Estonia until independence is formally declared in August of 1991.
41:00Today, Hjelma's battered fortifications remain a constant reminder of its precarious location.
41:07Liberty has always the price, and we have to protect ourselves, because the nature of our big neighbor has not changed at all.
41:19And this is no less relevant today, where areas that we had regarded as being pacified
41:26in all events are suddenly in play again and very much embattled.
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