Germany recalls victims of Nazi siege of Leningrad on Holocaust Remembrance Day

95-year-old Russian author Daniil Granin speaks during a ceremony marking the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism at the German Parliament, Bundestag, in Berlin, Germany, Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn) (The Associated Press)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, and German President Joachim Gauck, center, applaud to 95-year-old Russian author Daniil Granin, left, during a ceremony marking the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism at the German Parliament, Bundestag, in Berlin, Germany, Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn) (The Associated Press)

Two visitors walk inside the snow covered Holocaust Memorial at the International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Berlin, Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. The German parliament Bundestag will hold a special remembrance session at the Reichstag building in commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp on Jan. 27, 1045. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) (The Associated Press)

German lawmakers have honored the victims of the Nazi army's three-year siege of Leningrad as part of this year's Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Daniil Granin, a 95-year-old Russian survivor, recounted in a speech to the German Parliament on Monday how thousands of people died of starvation each day during harsh winters in Leningrad, now the Russian city of St. Petersburg.

The siege began in September 1941, three months after Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.

About 1 million Russian civilians and a similar number of Russian soldiers died before the blockade was finally broken on Jan. 27, 1944.