The March 9, 1944 bombings killed over 500 Estonian citizens. The commemorative ceremony took place at the Siselinna Cemetery at noon.

Ninety-year-old Juta Tõnson travels from her home town of Viljandi to Tallinn every year on March 9. She still remembers the night of the bombing vividly.

"It was terrifying. The older you get, the more you think about it and start to grasp the ordeal. Mother had a terrible time of it with a four-year-old in tow," she said.

The attack targeted civilians. The St. Nicholas' Church, City Archives building, schools and hospitals burned. Harju tänav was the most severely damaged in the Old Town. The Estonia Theater where the ballet "Kratt" was being performed that night also caught on fire.

Two waves of bombers destroyed over 1,500 buildings and left 20,000 people homeless. The second wave also set fire to the building on Koidu tänav where Juta Tõnson's family lived.

"The second wave ended, we returned and saw that our house was on fire too. We warmed ourselves as we watched it burn. The entire street was gone. There were no houses left."

Peep Pillak, chairman of the Estonian Heritage Society, said that the March bombings must not be forgotten even as there are increasingly few people who still remember it.

"We were forced to forget what happened for almost half a century. There was a lot grand talk about how Tallinn was restored, while not a word on how it was destroyed," Pillak noted.

A poster made by the society this year depicts the ruins of Tallinn from 80 years ago and those of Kharkiv today next to one another.

"There is a link between the two, and the aggressor is one and the same," Pillak remarked.

A set of posters depicting what such destruction would look like today were recently put up in Tallinn. Aleksander Sarapik, high priest of the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church, has helped build a war chaplaincy in Ukraine and said that the posters reminded people who have experience from being in a war zone that nothing like that can be allowed to happen again.

"Seeing such destruction brings out something very human in us. Compassion and the realization that nothing like that should ever happen here," Sarapik said.

A commemorative concert was held at the St. Nicholas' Church Saturday.

On the evening of March 9, 1944 and the night that followed, the Soviet Air Force carried out two bombing raids on Tallinn in which 554 Estonian citizens, 50 German soldiers and 121 prisoners of war were killed. Two waves destroyed 1,549 buildings and 3,350 were damaged for a third of all residential real estate in the city.

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