In June, 1941, Hitler once again betrayed his own word and attacked one of his allies, the Soviet Union. When Hitler invaded his German troops surrounded the city of Leningrad and put it under a 900 day siege. Leningrad was cut off from the rest of the Soviet Union, and unable to get constant resources for a while. Men, women, and children died of starvation, some were said to have turned to cannibalism. The limited amount of food that was available was distributed with ration cards, but there was not enough for everyone.
If I were to have been distributing the ration cards I would have a lot of difficulty choosing who to value first and last. I think that in order to save the city, the only way would be to prioritise some people over others, like the military. Next would come doctors, and following women and children. Unfortunately the elderly will have to come last as the earlier generations could make a greater impact on the society.
Some factors to take into consideration is how much food to give to each category of people, like should military people receive more food per meal than others like women and children and ordinary men.
Over the time of the siege more and more people died and the population kept decreasing making it very difficult to know how many people were still alive. People were dying or just going missing, leaving people not knowing whether they were dead or alive.
I believe that policemen and hospital workers should get more ration cards as they require more food for more energy to sufficiently work in order to keep the city built up and protected from the Nazi Germany.
Although it seems inhumane to not prioritise children, they do not have much impact on the society, and the young adults and men are most valuable at this moment to help the blockade. Women would be next in order to be able to carry out children after the time has passed. In order to continue human reproduction with the children, the community would have to wait until those children grew old enough to do so.
On my opinion these choices were really hard, and if I was actually put into the situation, I do not know if I would have put my words into action, as feelings and guilt would then take over, rather than rationality and mindfulness.
