Photo credit: spbdnevnik.ru
Days of St. Petersburg in Israel start on Monday, November 11, according to RIA Novosti. For the first time, they will take place in seven cities at once. In addition to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, festival venues will open in Haifa, Ashdod, Rishon Lezion, Netanya and Ashkelon.
The St. Petersburg delegation is led by the Deputy Governor Vladimir Knyaginin. It consists of representatives of city authorities, cultural figures, entrepreneurs, heads of medical and educational institutions.
The St. Petersburg – Israel business forum is included in the business program, several documents on cooperation between enterprises will be signed there. During business meetings, representatives of both sides will discuss issues in the transport, educational, medical and many other fields. One of the main topics will be the development of interaction between schools, hospitals, cultural institutions of St. Petersburg and the cities of Israel.
The Moroshka (Cloudberry in Russian) song and dance theater will perform before the Israeli public. The creative team will show the Vivat, St. Petersburg program.
One of the main events will be laying a capsule with the soil from the Piskarevsky cemetery at the base of the Candle of Remembrance monument.
An eight meters high bronze stele will be crowned with a cast part, which symbolizes the flame of a candle. The monument will contain a text about the Leningrad siege in Russian, English and Hebrew. It is planned that the monument will be opened early next year in Jerusalem.
The Day of the lifting of the blockade and the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust are celebrated in January. The honored guest of the ceremony will be Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Israeli leadership.
The monument will be decorated with the symbol of the “siege swallow”. In the spring of 1942, many Leningraders wore a small tin badge on their chest. It depicted a swallow with a letter in its beak. This symbol has become a symbol of the response to the statements of Nazi propaganda that claimed that even a bird would not fly into the city.
Guests from the city on the Neva will meet with war veterans and siege survivors living in Israel. An exhibition of documentary photographs about the blockade is scheduled to take place as well as the presentation of Candle of Remembrance anthology.
Russkiy Mir
