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Mysteries of the Abandoned (2017) Season 12 Episode 4- Ghost Town in Palermo
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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.
00:12The secretive Pennsylvanian institution that shocked America.
00:18They 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.
01:12Vestiges of luxury suggest that these cavernous shelves were intended to house the city's elite.
01:19Inside, you find bathtubs and unfinished rooms, and 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.
02:10The killings made front page news and sent shockwaves across Europe.
02:15It would take the action of two brave judges to finally rid the city from this evil,
02:21but 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, it was just earth and greenery and lots of vegetation.
03:09This greenbelt was famous across Europe for its beauty.
03:13But being so close to the capital, Palermo, this prime real estate soon attracted the attention of Sicily's lawless underworld.
03:24This half-finished neighborhood is a legacy of the time when Palermo was completely ruled by mobsters.
03:35This is Pizzosella, a ghost town of more than 200 buildings.
03:41It's got mafia fingerprints all over it.
03:45Pizzosella symbolizes corruption, mafia, malfeasance and illicit construction.
03:53Sicily is the birthplace of the mafia.
03:59It emerged here in the 1800s, a time of political unrest.
04:03Lawlessness was running rampant, you 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.
04:28But in 1922, when the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini took control of Italy,
04:36he 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.
04:54Sicily was left in a power vacuum, and in this chaos, many inmates escaped from prison.
05:01After breaking out of jail, Sicily's mafia families were reunited,
05:07and determined to regain their unscrupulous control of the capital's business, especially 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.
05:36Eventually, one mobster kingpin turned his attention to the city's green belt.
05:43In the 1970s, a 250-acre parcel of the mountainside was sold to a company owned by the sister of a notorious mafia boss,
05:53Michele the Pope Greco.
05:57Sometimes seen carrying a Bible, Pope Greco was the head of the Greco Mafia clan.
06:03He controlled much of Palermo's business, including the drug trade.
06:07At his country villa, he hosted not only influential Sicilian politicians, but also a heroin refinery.
06:16To give an idea of the money involved, at this time, around a third of all of the heroin in the United States was produced in Sicily.
06:27The Pope needed an outlet to launder his ill-gotten gains, so 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 with 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? Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but it was hard to escape things that were controlled by the mafia in that society at that time.
07:21It 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 and 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.
07:51He 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, and on the face of it, it looked like Totorina had won.
08:12But ordinary Sicilians were tired of the violence and corruption.
08:17And 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, which included the activities of Pope Greco.
08:33He halted all construction contracts approved by the previous administration, and work at Pizzocela stopped.
08:41They 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.
09:15In the 1980s, in Palermo, Sicily, a notorious mafia boss, Pope Greco, was using a hillside development to launder the vast proceeds of his illegal drug trafficking.
09:38But 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.
10:02He was the Sicilian Mafia's first supergrass, and his evidence helped build cases against 475 mafiosi.
10:13It became known as the Maxi Trial.
10:17Among the accused were none other than the architects of Pizzocela, and the urban planner, Vito Ciancimino, and Michele the Pope Greco.
10:28Pope Greco was given multiple life sentences. He 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.
10:54The government troops were brought in to patrol the city in what had become really an all-out war
11:02between the mafia and the government.
11:07The government won, but the battle is still ongoing, as are their dealings with Pizzocela.
11:15The idea that they could just take over and demolish these houses was easier said than done.
11:20The 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.
11:51We organize guided tours, and we organize events inside the unfinished houses.
12:00In eastern Pennsylvania, is an institution so shocking, it sparked a national revolution.
12:17We'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.
12:37But 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, this 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.
13:21I've been in the news business for 44 years, and it is undoubtedly the best story I ever did.
13:27Because of what happened here, I can say to all the spirits who died, 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.
14:28The 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,
14:47and 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
16:05most complex 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 percent of what you're telling me is true, I'll do a story on it.
17:22And I found out that 300 percent of what they told me was true. And that's what 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.
17:44They 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. And what the staff showed Bill shocked him to his
18:05core. In one war, they had 80 cages, metal cages with people in it. And I said, why are they in the
18:14cages? And they said, because we don't have enough people to take them out of the cages. It was the
18:19cruelest thing I've ever seen in my life. It was the byproduct of poor state funding.
18:25Bill 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.
18:39The initial reaction was stunning. Me, the crew, our bosses were stunned. The public was stunned.
18:48They couldn't believe what they were watching.
18:52Soon, this story was picked up by news outlets all throughout the state and country.
18:58One even described Pennhurst as the shame of Pennsylvania.
19:02With the truth revealed, in the early 1970s, a legal campaign began on behalf of the residents.
19:14Jim Conroy took part in an unprecedented class action lawsuit intended to get Pennhurst shut down.
19:21It's a civil rights movement that nobody knows about.
19:30In America, you have three indelible rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
19:36Pennhurst is failing at all three. They died young, they couldn't leave, and it was absolutely miserable.
19:42Anything 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.
20:01The violation of the residents' civil rights gave the lawyers a case to argue in court.
20:06Pennhurst 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.
20:27We were able to prove through records and individual observation that the average person who came to
20:33Pennhurst had been here for about 28 years and they had gotten worse.
20:38People came in able to speak, and in a year or two, they didn't speak anymore.
20:42They lost skills and quality of life went down. And that's how the lawsuit was won.
20:49This was the first time that a U.S. federal court indicated that an institution
20:54must be closed for 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.
21:10These legal victories marked a vital change in how people with disabilities were cared for
21:16across the United States.
21:19Overwhelmingly, people were recognizing that essentially warehousing people with disabilities
21:26was not the solution.
21:29There was increasing pressure to give people with intellectual disabilities
21:33and other illnesses services that they needed within the community.
21:39In 1985, the courts ruled that Pennhurst should be shut down for good.
21:47The 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.
22:12When the last person moved to their new home, the doors of Pennhurst closed officially on December 9, 1987.
22:26While 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.
22:37It's a long time since Pennhurst closed, but there's still about 600 people living.
22:45Many get together every year, and they're an active self-advocacy group.
22:57Ireland'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.
23:29Given the size and faded splendor of the place, whoever lived here was clearly of some importance.
23:38But in the 1970s, their dignified world would not escape the bitter conflict that has long divided this nation.
23:48This place would be dragged into a web of international political intrigue.
23:53One 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.
24:10During the 1960s, in county Tipperary, Ireland, Jackie Aird was raised on this imposing estate.
24:18I have really special memories of here. I had a lovely upbringing, and I'm sad to see the way it's gone dilapidated so much.
24:30She'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.
24:42The crest belongs to the noble family of the Earls of Donamore.
24:52They had been granted the land by the English, who had conquered Ireland in the mid-1600s.
24:59And the Earl of Donamore commissioned this grand house to suit his noble status.
25:07He named it Knock Lofty House.
25:09This 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 Donamore still lived here.
25:27And Jackie remembers its former grandeur.
25:30Jackie was not allowed in these grand rooms.
25:44Her father was the Donamore's gardener.
25:47He loved gardening. He teaches his life.
25:51Jackie 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.
26:18It was a very different world to the aristocratic mansion.
26:22We were not allowed to cycle on the avenue in front of the house.
26:26And when we'd meet Lady Donamore, we always dressed her as my lady.
26:32When Jackie lived here in the 1960s, Ireland wasn't only divided along class lines.
26:39The country had been split since 1922.
26:46The South gained independence and would become the Republic of Ireland,
26:50while 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
27:02country ever since the country was divided in two.
27:07The provisional Irish Republican army, the IRA, wanted independence from the British Crown,
27:12seeing it as an occupying nation.
27:15But in 1969, the British government sent troops to Northern Ireland, but it only served to inflame the
27:22conflict further. Bombings, 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. They'd been involved with the Republican movement for years,
27:55but in 1971, they both joined the IRA.
27:59They put together what was called an active service unit. Their 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.
28:17Over 200 people were wounded in the blasts, and there were scenes of carnage across central London.
28:25This 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.
28:34The Price sisters were sentenced to life in prison for the attacks and were put in English jails.
28:41But the Price 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 that the British
28:55authorities just couldn't allow. Back in Ireland, certain factions of the IRA had other ideas.
29:04Their plan was to kidnap someone connected to the British establishment and use them as a bargaining
29:10chip to get the Price sisters and other hunger strikers released to a Northern Irish jail.
29:18In 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.
29:46The kidnappers terrorized Lord Donnemore'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 Donnemores returning home.
30:01They sprang into action, pistol whipping the Earl and throwing him and his wife into a waiting vehicle.
30:11Lady Donnemore's cardigan and an earring still lay in the driveway as evidence of the fight she put up.
30:16In the 1970s, life at a tranquil Irish estate had been turned upside down when the Earl of Donnemore and his wife were kidnapped by the IRA.
30:34Groove marks in the gravel suggest that at least one of them had to be dragged to the kidnapped car.
30:39There were also two pools of blood, both now covered with sheets of cardboard.
30:47The elderly Donnemores were taken to a remote house.
30:51They were now prisoners of the IRA.
30:54It was an anxious wait at Knocklofty House.
30:58Family were here in this room.
31:00They sat at the table beside the phone waiting for her to know what was happening.
31:05Everyone just wasted and wasted and wasted.
31:09That's all anyone could do.
31:12A few days after the couple had been taken, the Price sisters were told that their conditions to stop their hunger strike had been agreed by the British government.
31:23Around the same time as the hunger strikes came to an end, Lord and Lady Donnemore were released.
31:27How are you, Neil? How are you feeling?
31:29Father, thank you. Very good day.
31:31The kidnappers had bought Lady Donnemore 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.
31:49Lord Donnemore's kidnappers were never caught.
31:53And the Earl himself spent the rest of his life living quietly at Knocklofty House.
31:58After 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.
32:15Today, 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 may yet be able to live inside the building.
32:40Off 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.
33:14There'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 armored 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.
35:09So, this is the basement of one gun place. And here the gun starts. It must be as high as these trees are right now.
35:21The 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.
35:33But construction stopped in 1917, after the Communists deposed the Tsar and took over Russia.
35:40The Soviet Empire, the 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. That 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 were over 40 miles of trenches across the island, with 30 miles of barbed wire, and it is now a true fortress.
36:33It 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.
37:19We 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.
37:42Hitler's army swept across Europe toward Leningrad.
37:47Within weeks, the city would be besieged.
37:50With the siege potentially grinding on for months, the Germans couldn't risk having the Soviet-held Hjelma Island behind their lines,
38:02endangering any crucial reinforcements sailing up the Gulf of Finland.
38:08So in July 1941, they invaded Estonia and headed toward the island.
38:14The Germans launched the attack on Hjelma Island by playing this verse on the radio,
38:22Der Tanz kann beginnen.
38:24The dance can begin.
38:26They approached under a barrage of artillery fire.
38:30They land at the south of the island, and after weeks' fierce fighting, begin to move further north.
38:36The 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, like, like a cannon meat.
38:59The Soviet military would sacrifice any number of its lower ranks to ensure the survival of Leningrad.
39:08Those Soviet soldiers are ordered to hold the line.
39:11Them being sacrificed on the island was essential for the fate of Leningrad.
39:18At 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.
39:35Now 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 100,000 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 1 million people died during the siege.
40:09Despite how close the Nazis get to taking Leningrad, they never do.
40:12And eventually, Soviet counterattacks drive them away and free up the city.
40:18The siege of Leningrad has ended.
40:20The island of Hjelma is free of the Germans.
40:23But for the people of the island, the nightmare was far from over.
40:28The Soviets went on to retake Hjelma.
40:31They reinstalled a garrison on the island and further defences across Estonia, which was now part of the communist buffer zone,
40:42which the Soviets claimed they'd put in place to protect themselves from the west.
40:48The Soviets maintained control over Estonia until independence is formally declared in August of 1991.
40:55Today, Hjelma's battered fortifications remain a constant reminder of its precarious location.
41:08Liberty has always the price, and we have to protect ourselves, because the nature of our big neighbor has not changed at all.
41:18And this is no less relevant today, where areas that we had regarded as being pacified are suddenly in play again and very much embattled.
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