www.twin60.com | Text
Introduction | Take Part | Tablecloth Story | Credits
Introduction
In 1943, 830 women in Coventry, England, signed their names on a tablecloth. The names were embroidered onto the tablecloth, which was then presented to the people of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) as a symbol of war-time solidarity.
This website marks the twinning of the two cities 60 years ago (in 1944) through the creation of a Virtual Tablecloth, made up of contributions from citizens of Coventry and Volgograd in 2004.
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Take Part
On this website we are creating an art-work inspired by the exchange of the tablecloth between Coventry and Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in 1943. The Virtual Tablecloth is being made up of contributions from citizens of both Coventry and Volgograd.
Did you, or one of your relations, sign or stitch the original tablecloth? If so, do you have a story to tell about it? Would you like to send a message to a twin citizen in Volgograd or Coventry? Do you have a picture, a short piece of text or some sound that you would like to contribute to the Virtual Tablecloth? Do you have an opinion about what twinning means today? If so, we would like to hear from you! All contributions are welcome.
It is your stories, photographs, sounds and messages that we are using to weave our Virtual Tablecloth. We would like you to put your name to the Virtual Tablecloth, and tell us about your past, present or future connection to Volgograd.
Please send us something to represent your connection to your twin city. This might be a photograph of yourself or of a part of your city; a sound clip of your own music or speech; or a message for your twin in Volgograd. (Please don't send anything for which you are not the copyright holder.)
You can e-mail your text, picture or sound to: info@twin60.com
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Tablecloth Story
[sub-menu] Night-time raid on Coventry (1940) | Invasion of Russia (1941) | Message from Coventry to Stalingrad (1941) | Anglo-Soviet Unity Committee (1941) | Message from Stalingrad to Coventry (1942) | Russian soldier visits Coventry (1942) | Battle of Stalingrad begins (1942) | Telegram to Stalingrad (1942) | Message from Stalingrad delivered to Coventry (1943) | The end of the battle for Stalingrad (1943) | A Tablecloth is made (1943) | Sword of Stalingrad displayed in Coventry (1943) | Bond of Friendship formed (1944) | The Tablecloth is presented (1947) | Twins for 60 years (2004) | Sources used to write this article
Night-time raid on Coventry (1940)
In the late afternoon of November 14, 1940, bombers of Kampfgeschwader 100 left their airfield in France carrying large quantities of explosives, and were guided to Coventry by crude on-board computers following direction finding radio beams. The British counter intelligence’s jamming system, which was designed to disrupt these set beams, was broadcasting on the wrong frequency, and at 7.24pm 30 Heinkel bombers, guided by clear radio signals, started bombing Coventry.
Parachute flares lit the city, followed by phosphorus incendiaries which marked the target for the subsequent waves of ordinary bombers which dropped high explosives in a continuous stream for the next eleven hours. Some were aimed at industrial targets around the city but many others concentrated on the centre, creating a devastating firestorm and destroying 4,330 homes and three-quarters of the city’s factories. Numbers of damaged buildings have been put as high as 60,000. Flames from the blaze leapt 100 feet in the sky and the glow was seen by bombers up to 150 miles away. An early casualty was the Cathedral of St Michael, the only English cathedral to be destroyed during the war.
554 men, women and children died and 865 were injured. It marked a new phase of airborne destruction, and the Germans coined the word 'coventrated' to describe it.
The decision to rebuild the cathedral was taken the morning after. Rebuilding would not be an act of defiance, but rather a sign of faith, trust and hope for the future of the world. It was the vision of the Provost at the time, Dick Howard, who took a piece of chalk and wrote on the wall, ‘Father, forgive.’ Not ‘forgive them,’ he stressed, but ‘forgive,’ because we all need to be forgiven. Sentiments which were designed to lead the people of Coventry away from feelings of bitterness and hatred and towards a concept of forgiveness and reconciliation. Subsequent aerial attacks on Hamburg, Hanover and Dresden, each of which killed tens of thousands of civilians, illustrated the challenge presented by this concept of personal forgiveness in the context of an International war situation. Click here if you have any thoughts on this.
There were further heavy raids on Coventry on the 8th and 10th April the following year, and 41 in total, the last being in August ‘42. By the end of the war 1,236 people had been killed in raids on Coventry; of these 808 lie in the mass grave in London Road Cemetery. Of the others, many had come to the city as war workers and were collected by their families and returned home in plain wooden boxes. Some bodies were never identified.
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Invasion of Russia (1941)
Seven months later, on June 22nd, 1941, the Germans launched a surprise invasion, code-named Operation Barbarossa, against the Soviet Union. It was a devastating campaign, which swept east from positions in Poland, Hungary and Romania, until by October 1941, the German army was only seventy miles from Moscow.
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Message from Coventry to Stalingrad (1941)
Many people across the UK, including those in Coventry, felt a wave of sympathy for the Russian people. The women of Coventry sent a message of support to the women of Stalingrad, a city chosen because of its similarity to Coventry in terms of its size and industrial character. If you know how this choice was made, or who made it, click here to tell us.
The message read:
‘From this city, scarred and ravaged by the arch enemy of civilisation, our hearts go out to you, who now face slaughter and suffering even more fearful.’
It has to be assumed that the message refers to the Soviet Union’s suffering generally, rather than Stalingrad’s specifically, as at that point Stalingrad had not been attacked directly.
One thousand sheets, headed by these greetings were circulated to factories, shops, and women’s organisations in Coventry. There was a warm response the gesture, particularly in the factories, and six thousand signatures were collected and compiled into a book which was bound and inscribed with the Coventry coat of arms. Did you sign? Or anyone you know? Click here if so. At the same time a greetings message was cabled to Stalingrad.
‘We, the women of Coventry greet you, the women of Stalingrad, and with you the brave women of the entire Soviet Union, in your splendid resistance to our common enemy, Hitler Fascism. Coventry stands as a symbol to the the world of the ruthless and murderous brutality with which the Nazis wage their war against the civilian population of both our countries. Hitler’s savage bombers have not only claimed scores of innocent human victims, but have destroyed the most priceless and lovely architectural and cultural treasures of Coventry ... In this vital industrial centre, we Coventry women, many of us wives and mothers of armament workers, many factory workers ourselves, undertake to do everything in our power to remove all hindrances to maximum production so that the brave soldiers, sailors and airmen of both our countries will not lack arms in this titanic struggle. Once more we greet you, women of Stalingrad, salute your indefeatable courage and inspiring sacrifice, and pledge ourselves to play our part ot the full until our common victory is won.’
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Anglo-Soviet Unity Committee (1941)
The following month councillors Sidney Stringer and George Hodgkinson led the formation of the Anglo-Soviet Unity Committee, whose membership included the Provost of the Cathedral and the manager of Barclays Bank, and which was constituted on November 2nd, 1941. Doubts as to the wisdom of the choice of title was expressed by Councillor Roberts who took exception to ‘Soviet’. He was wholeheartedly in sympathy with Anglo Russian Unity, but said it was surely generally accepted that the word Soviet represented a form of government with which they were not all in agreement. This point, however, was not pressed. Click here if you have something to add about the particular political environment in the city at that time.
In January 1942, Anglo Soviet Week took place. Dances and street parades were held, and Malcolm Sargent conducted the London Philharmonic. Click here if you know what music was played. Russian films were shown in schools (click here if you know which ones) and money was raised. Public meetings were packed.
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Message from Stalingrad to Coventry (1942)
In Stalingrad, in May 1942, the greetings of the Coventry women were discussed at a women’s rally and later at 285 women’s meetings in the plants and offices of the city. More than 36,000 women attended these meetings, and a reply was drafted.
‘We send our warmest greetings to you, women of Coventry, valiant British patriots. In the days of decisive battles on the fronts of the Great War of Liberation, we, Soviet women, appreciate the feelings of friendship which you, our comrades in the struggle, have expressed.
‘Valiant sisters, daughters of the great English people. Our friendship grows stronger every day. We are united by the feeling of holy hatred for the enemy, we are united in our resolution to destroy the fascist barbarians... Long live the women of Coventry who are playing a valiant part in the struggle against fascism ... the women of Coventry have shown unlimited sympathy with my people.’
The signatures to the greeting were bound in an album. This album was not to reach Coventry for another 8 months.
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Russian soldier visits Coventry (1942)
In November, Lieutenant Lyudmilla Pavlichenko visited Coventry, and at a meeting at the Central Hall a cheque for 4,516 GBP for mobile X-ray units for the Red Army was presented by the Coventry Anglo-Soviet Unity Committee.
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Battle of Stalingrad begins (1942)
Three months after the rally, August 23rd 1942, the loudspeakers in the streets of Stalingrad began to repeat: ‘Comrades, an air raid warning has been sounded in the city. Attention.’ There followed a devastating and indiscriminate bombing raid where 1000 tons of bombs were dropped during 1600 sorties on the first day alone. A week of bombing followed. Petroleum tanks on the Volga bank were hit creating a ball of flame which rose about 1500 feet into the sky, the smoke from which could be seen from over 200 miles away. Families were buried in the rubble and, according to some reports, 40,000 people were killed during that week.
Many citizens and refugees remained on the west bank of the Volga unable to escape because Stalin decided that the city should not be seen to be panicking, and he refused to permit the inhabitants of Stalingrad to be evacuated across the Volga.
While Richtohofen’s bombers pounded Stalingrad, the tanks of 16th Panzer Division had advanced across the steppe. Around Gumrak the resistance became stronger and anti aircraft guns began firing at the armoured vehicles from the north west corner of Stalingrad. The first line of defence came from the batteries operated by young women volunteers. The 16th Panzer Division’s own report states that ‘Right until the late afternoon we had to fight, shot for shot, against 37 enemy anti-aircraft positions, manned by tenacious fighting women, until they were all destroyed.’
There was another major bombing attack on the 25th August to ‘soften up’ the city for the tanks which were to encircle the city on the west bank of the Volga. This they did by the 3rd September.
As winter set in, there was street to street, house to house fighting in the bombed out ruins of Stalingrad. Sometimes in temperatures of minus 20 to 30 degrees. Some sources claim that the Germans executed over 3000 civilians during this time, and that more than 60,000 civilians from Stalingrad were transported back to the Reich as slave labour. Those who weren’t found had to survive as best they could in the rubble of the city. Many died through starvation or food poisoning. Click here to submit other thoughts or information.
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Telegram to Stalingrad (1942)
In a telegram to the people of Stalingrad, dated 14th October 1942, Mayor A.R. Grindlay wrote: ‘The inhabitants of Coventry will never forget the sacrifices which were endured by Stalingrad. They express to you, the people of Stalingrad, their feelings of special sympathy and admiration for your great courage and iron determination to fight until victory.’
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Message from Stalingrad delivered to Coventry (1943)
In Coventry, on Jan 20th 1943, Madame Maisky, wife of the Soviet Ambassador to Britain, presented to Mayor Emily Smith the book of signatories from the rally the previous May. Many of those who had signed had been killed in the battle, including Olga Kovaleva, who lost her life as a member of the home guard at the tractor factory, and Maria Yegunova who was decorated for her bravery in maintaining the supply of munitions and food by boat.
‘The struggle still continues on the streets of Stalingrad,’ said Madame Maisky. ‘But it may be that while I am here talking to you this struggle may have ended and Stalingrad may have been completely liberated.’
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The end of the battle for Stalingrad (1943)
It still had a couple of weeks to run, however, as the Soviet counter attack, Zhukov’s Operation Uranus, which had began on November 19th gradually encircled the German 6th Army, so that on 2nd February, 1943, Stalingrad was finally retaken and General Paulus, commander of the 6th Army, surrendered. The victory was a decisive turning point in the course of World War II.
A census after the battle revealed that 9796 civilians had survived in the city. They included 944 children, of whom only nine were reunited with their parents. Eighty percent of houses and 100 schools were destroyed. In the years to follow the massive process of reconstructing the city would begin. Click here if you have more to say about this.
Clementine Churchill, wife of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, visited Volgograd in 1945 and wrote “What an appalling scene of destruction met our eyes. My first thought was, how like the centre of Coventry or the devastation around St. Paul’s, except that the havoc and obliteration seems to have spread out endlessly. One building that caught my eye was a wreck that had been ingeniously patched and shored up. I learnt that it was the building in whose cellar the Russians had captured Von Paulus, the German commander. It was characteristic of them, I thought, to make every effort to preserve this ruin because of its symbolic value. It represented the final overthrow of the enemy after one of the most savage struggles in all human history. Stalingrad was the turning point in the war, and that will be remembered by the Russians for centuries to come.”
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A tablecloth is made (1943)
Later that month, Emily Smith, Coventry’s Mayor, and 830 other Coventry women (and some men) signed their names onto a tablecloth. Each one paid sixpence to sign and the money raised went towards medical aid for Stalingrad. The names were embroidered by Mrs May Adams over the course of the next two years. Click here if you were one of those signatories and want to tell us how you came to sign.
Mrs Enid Trent (nee Mayell), who was Honorary Secretary to the Coventry Anglo-Soviet Unity Committee 1941-49 and was responsible for organising many of its activities, writes: ‘The Stalingrad tablecloth was the ‘brain child’ of Mrs. May Adams, who was a representative on the Anglo/Soviet Unity Committee from the Lockhurst Lane Co-operative Women’s Guild... She began to embroider it in February 1943 when Stalingrad was relieved, and she took every opportunity to ask people to sign it and to make a donation to Soviet medical aid.’
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Sword of Stalingrad displayed in Coventry (1943)
Over 15,000 people came to see the Sword of Stalingrad displayed beneath the Cathedral tower in Coventry on 9th Nov 1943. It was presented later that month by Churchill to Stalin at the Allied conference in Teheran. The dedication engraved on the sword reads: ‘To the steelhearted citizens of Stalingrad, a gift from King George VI as a token of the homage of the British people.’
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Bond of Friendship formed (1944)
In 1944, Mr Charles Barratt, Coventry’s Town Clerk wrote a series of letters hoping to establish a ‘Bond of Friendship’ between Coventry and Stalingrad which would ‘find its manifestation in such matters as the mutual exchange of visits ... the establishment of pen friendships ... and the exchange of literature and information.’ Lines of communication were difficult and many letters did not receive a response - hardly surprising, given the circumstances. However, the formation of this Bond of Friendship was to become first ‘twinning’ of two cities.
Click here if you have anything to add.
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The tablecloth is presented (1947)
The tablecloth was handed over on the 31st March 1947 at an official dinner attended by Mr I F Zimenkov, (chairman of the Stalingrad Soviet), Babaev (an Azerbaijan playwright) and Colonel Ivanov from the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture. Click here if you know anything else about the people at this dinner.
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Twins for 60 years (2004)
Coventry and Volgograd (as Stalingrad was renamed in 1961) have been twinned for 60 years. It is a friendship that persisted even during the darkest days of the Cold War, and has led to many exchanges between the two cities -whether civic, cultural, educational or personal. It is interesting to ask whether the twinning has made any permanent difference to the thinking and actions of its citizens. And if so, what are they? What do we have in common?
There are issues of regeneration and image that might be explored, as well as the issue of a city’s relationship with its past. We should be careful not to try to make too many direct comparisons between the experiences of the two cities during the war; but we might be inspired by a concept of twinning which cannot be controlled by national governments, and might not even reflect national relations, yet persists and flourishes and has the potential to encourage change on a national level.
What does it mean to be a city of peace and reconciliation?
What does it mean to be a twin?
Please join in the conversation. Click here.
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Sources
This article has been put together by Talking Birds using information from the following sources:
Night-time raid on Coventry (1940)
www.bbc.co.uk and www.icCoventry.co.uk
Invasion of Russia (1941)
Stalingrad by Antony Beevor (Penguin Books 1999)
Message from Coventry to Stalingrad (1941)
Midland Daily Telegraph, 6th Oct 1941
Anglo-Soviet Unity Committee (1941)
Midland Daily Telegraph, 3rd November 1941
Coventry Evening Telegraph, 16th Jan 1942
Records of John Moore, Coventry Association for International Friendship
Message from Stalingrad to Coventry (1942)
Coventry Evening Telegraph, January 20th 1943
Russian soldier visits Coventry (1942)
Coventry Evening Telegraph, 21st November 1942.
Battle of Stalingrad begins (1942)
Stalingrad by Antony Beevor (Penguin Books 1999)
Telegram to Stalingrad (1942)
Stalingrad Coventry by Yury Tumanov (Stalingrad Book Production 1958), with
translation by David Iliffe of Coventry in Coventry City Archives (Item:
CCA/TC/2/69)
Message from Stalingrad delivered to Coventry (1943)
Coventry Evening Telegraph, January 20th 1943
The end of the battle for Stalingrad (1943)
Stalingrad by Antony Beevor (Penguin Books 1999)
Stalingrad Coventry by Yury Tumanov (Stalingrad Book Production 1958)
My Visit to Russia by Clementine Churchill (Hutchinson & Co. 1945)
A tablecloth is made (1943)
Coventry Evening Telegraph, 1st April 1947
Letter from Mrs Enid Trent (nee Mayell), Honorary Secretary to the Coventry Anglo-Soviet Unity Committee 1941-49, to the Mayor of Coventry, written in 1975 (courtesy of State Panorama Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad, Volgograd)
Sword of Stalingrad displayed in Coventry (1946)
Coventry Evening Telegraph, 9th & 10th November 1943
Records of Coventry Association for International Friendship
Stalingrad by Antony Beevor (Penguin Books 1999)
Bond of Friendship formed (1944)
Sent from Coventry: A Mission of International Reconciliation
by Dr W.E. Rose (Oswald Woolf 1980)
The tablecloth is presented (1947)
Coventry Evening Telegraph, 1st April 1947
Thanks to: Local Studies Dept at Coventry Central Library and Coventry City
Archives for their assistance.
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Credits
The twin60 project is being run by Talking Birds and has been commissioned by Coventry City Council for Coventry Peace Month 2004.
Talking Birds is a company of artists engaged in the transformation of spaces - both real and imagined. The Coventry-based company’s work is created, and experienced by audiences, in many different places, including theatres, cinemas, concert halls, on television, the internet and radio, as well as in unusual sites, whether a seaside town’s seafront promenade, a 14th Century monastery or an underground car-park.
The company has a national reputation in the UK for producing 'stylish and compelling' work (Independent on Sunday) across a number of disciplines - including theatre, music, film/video, digital and visual art - and specialises in mixed-media and site-specific work.
Talking Birds has toured its productions to Ireland, the USA and Slovakia and is funded by Arts Council England, West Midlands as a Key Regional Organisation.
Click here to visit Talking Birds website.
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