The first wave of evac­u­a­tion of Leningrad res­i­dents began on June 29, 1941. The lead­ers of the Sovi­et Union believed that the main dan­ger to the city came from Fin­land, so many chil­dren were trans­port­ed to the Nov­gorod region. There were tra­di­tion­al vaca­tion spots, chil­dren’s camps and sum­mer cot­tages. But it turned out that thou­sands of lit­tle Leningraders found them­selves right next to the front line.

The mourn­ful train with Leningrad chil­dren depart­ed from the North­ern Cap­i­tal on July 4. They gath­ered boys and girls of both school and preschool age, put them in box­cars and 2 thou­sand kids left the city full of hope. On July 7, the train was already in Demyan­sk, mov­ing slow­ly, stop­ping at every stop and let­ting mil­i­tary trains pass. As it went, the num­ber of chil­dren increased. Many par­ents ran up to the car­riages and asked the teach­ers: “Save my child.” They took every­one with­out excep­tion, soon the train grew to 12 cars, inside were chil­dren, edu­ca­tors and med­ical work­ers.

On the evening of July 17, the train arrived at Lychko­vo sta­tion. All night and morn­ing, more and more chil­dren were brought from pop­u­lat­ed areas by bus­es and cars. In the after­noon of July 18, a hos­pi­tal train with wound­ed sol­diers arrived on a par­al­lel track.

And then the mad­ness began. Shells tore apart the box­cars, in which there were hun­dreds of chil­dren. After the shelling, a ter­ri­ble pic­ture opened up to the few sur­vivors. Frag­ments of chil­dren’s bod­ies, sev­ered arms and legs were lying around, hang­ing on tele­graph wires, trees, bush­es. The sur­viv­ing sol­diers began to col­lect the dead and wound­ed chil­dren.

Sev­er­al dozen chil­dren were lucky enough to sur­vive the shelling. They ran across the pota­to field and pressed them­selves into the ground in hor­ror. The approach­ing planes with black cross­es flew low over the ash­es and shot every­one who jumped up and ran in fear. In the hus­tle and bus­tle of the retreat, the num­ber of the dead, their names and sur­names were nev­er deter­mined. The remains were hasti­ly col­lect­ed and buried in a civil­ian ceme­tery in the vil­lage of Lychko­vo. The adults accom­pa­ny­ing the chil­dren also lie there.

A cou­ple of days lat­er, moth­ers, dis­traught with grief, began arriv­ing at the sta­tion, try­ing to find their beloved chil­dren. But in vain, it was impos­si­ble to make out any­thing in that hor­ror. The moth­ers went crazy, wan­dered around the area, blew them­selves up in mine­fields.

Offi­cial­ly, prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing was said about the ter­ri­ble inci­dent. The news­pa­pers only spar­ing­ly report­ed that a train with chil­dren in Lychko­vo was sub­ject­ed to an unex­pect­ed air strike. Two car­riages were destroyed, 41 peo­ple were killed, includ­ing 28 Leningrad chil­dren. How­ev­er, numer­ous eye­wit­ness­es, local res­i­dents, and the chil­dren them­selves saw a much more ter­ri­ble pic­ture. Accord­ing to some esti­mates, more than 2,000 chil­dren died under fas­cist fire on that sum­mer day of July 18.