The Red Army broke the encirclement of Leningrad. Zhukov was accordingly promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union on the same day.
The relief came with the capture of the city of the somewhat ironically named, given its very German character, Shlisselburg (Шлиссельбу́рг,) or, in German: Schlüsselburg. Given the nature of the region, we'll note its name in Finnish: Pähkinälinna and Swedish: Nöteborg. The city dates to 1323 when a fort was built at the location by Grand Prince Yury of Moscow, in his capacity as Prince of Novgorod on behalf of the Novgorod Republic in 1323. In 1348 Swedish King Magnus Eriksson took the fortress. It was retaken by the Novgorodians in 1351. In 1478 the Novgorod Republic was absorbed by Muscovy and a new fortress was constructed there. In 1611 the fortress was taken by the Swedes again. The Russians took it back in 1702, at which time Peter the Great renamed it Shlisselburg, a Russian aliteration of the German word "key fortress", which is what Peter was trying to name it, in German.
It's just to the west of St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad, on Lake Lagoda.
Zhukov was lucky, and the Soviet Union accordingly lucky, to have been stationed in the Soviet East during the purges, or he likely would have been killed with so many others. He was well liked by his superior and protected by him, with his superior likewise remaining in Stalin's fickle favor while so many else were killed in a sea of blood that remains almost incapable of being grasped.
The first Warsaw Ghetto Uprising occurred when the Germans began their second deportation from the ghetto. Members of the Jewish resistance organization Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB) took on the SS with pistols and disrupted the deportation sufficiently to halt it after four days of fighting. ZOB was lead by Mordechai Anielewicz who was only about 24 at the time.
In the U.S. War Food Order No. 1 went into effect requiring white bread be enriched with niacin, riboflavin, thiamin and iron, something that became standard by law in some states, and simply by custom generally, thereafter.
Also:
