80 years ago: Estonia commemorates the March 1944 bombings
On 9 March 1944, the Soviet Air Forces started to bomb the Estonian capital, Tallinn, that, at the time, was occupied by Nazi Germany; some 600-700 civilians died, over 600 were wounded and some 20,000 people were left homeless; Estonian World publishes an excerpt from the book, “Darkness in Tallinn: World War in Europe’s Forgotten City”, by Ian Thomson, an English writer and a senior creative non-fiction lecturer at the University of East Anglia, the UK.
On 9 March 1944, early in the evening, Soviet Russia began to bomb Tallinn. The skyline turned dark; clouds of cinders, lit red by the blaze, floated down over churches, medieval towers and stone-flagged streets. The mile-high roar of magnesium incendiary flames created a firestorm in which 600-700 civilians died (the final count is uncertain), some 20,000 were made homeless and over 600 left wounded.
