On January 1942, the siege of Leningrad was underway, and bodies were thrown into hospitals, clinics, stairways, yards, and streets, and dumped in streets, ditches, bushes, and garbage dumps. Bodies were dumped in the Volkovsky Mass Cemetery and other places and in the streets.

From September 18, 1941, during the siege of Leningrad by the German invasion, Russian civilians died one by one from bombing, starvation, and war. The first mass graves appeared in the Volkovskoye cemetery in Leningrad's Frunzensky district. The bodies were light, skin-covered skeletons. The bodies were transported in piles on four-wheeled wagons. The bodies were picked up on the streets and doorsteps of Leningrad, wrapped in sheets, and their relatives did not have the strength to carry them to the cemetery. A sledge with the bodies tied up was left on Rastanaya Street on the way to the cemetery. Many bodies lay at the entrance to the cemetery and were carried to the mass grave for burial; in January 1942, bodies were thrown into hospitals, clinics, stairways, yards, and streets, and bodies were dumped in cemeteries and streets. Abandoned bodies were laid in streets, ditches, bushes, and even dumped in garbage dumps.

　By November 1941, about 280 ditches measuring approximately 20 x 2.5 x 1.7 m were dug in allotment plots by the Funeral Service for the morgue. In the morgue, corpses of victims of German bombardment were transported from the defeated areas by detachments. Mutilated and disfigured human bodies, heads, legs, arms, skulls, infant corpses, and female corpses were also transported. In the morgue, relatives searched for the bodies.

　Constant German shelling tore apart the lives of Leningradians, and in December, famine struck the city and its inhabitants; by early December, the city was filled with emaciated, malnourished people with swollen faces and feet and unsteady gait. People of all ages collapsed onto sidewalks and panels. They died instantly in the streets, and their bodies were left on the streets; by the end of December, hospitals were crowded, and bodies refused to be admitted were dumped at night in hospitals, clinics, streets, and squares; in the December quarter of 1941, the death rate among Leningrad residents due to hunger, bitter cold, and lack of firewood jumped 247%, reaching about 42,050.

　Lacking the necessary tools and physical strength, some dug holes, covered them with layers of dirt and snow, and left, throwing their corpses into the cemetery as they left. In front of the cemetery gates facing the street, near offices and churches, in cemeteries, on paths, ditches, graves, bodies and coffins were dumped; in December the bodies were still carried to the cemeteries by the residents; in January 1942 the number decreased sharply and the bodies were thrown into hospitals, clinics, stairways, gardens and streets. Bodies were dumped in cemeteries and streets to avoid surveillance. Every day, bodies were dumped haphazardly, and in the morning they were thrown over the gates and stairways of houses. Around the cemetery, discarded bodies were found lying in the streets, ditches, bushes, and even in garbage dumps In January 1942, a cannibalism case occurred in the city of Leningrad. Due to a lack of security at the cemetery, some of the bodies were stolen from the cemetery, and bodies left in the city were mutilated and stolen.