Class hour "children of besieged Leningrad". Methodological development (preparatory group) on the topic: For children about the Siege of Leningrad

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Target: instilling patriotism, a sense of pride in one’s country, one’s people, respect for the older generation and war monuments.

There is a mortal threat over Leningrad...
Sleepless nights, hard days.
But we have forgotten what tears are,
What was called fear and prayer.
I say: us, citizens of Leningrad,
The roar of cannonades will not shake,
And if tomorrow there are barricades, -
We will not leave our barricades.
And women and fighters will stand next to each other,
And the children will bring us cartridges,
And they will bloom over all of us
Ancient banners of Petrograd.
(Olga Berggolts)

Have you ever thought about how many happy and at the same time tragic dates can be counted in the history of our country? January 27 - Day of lifting the blockade is one of them. Hell for the residents began on September 8, 1941, when Hitler’s troops closed the ring, and then Leningrad became a battlefield, and all its residents, even teenagers, became fighters on the front of the Great Patriotic War. It is impossible to convey in words the tragedy of those who lived without light, warmth and food. It awakens in the minds of millions terrible pictures of general hunger, the horror of bombings... and, at the same time, a picture of universal joy, the jubilation of exhausted people when, after 900 days of hopeless existence, they found hope for life. Wounded, exhausted, but not giving up, Leningrad lived, fought, worked and created.

Day and night, frontline soldiers, with the help of the population, created a deeply layered, multi-line defense. A widely branched network of trenches and communication passages was created in the main line of defense; Numerous steel and reinforced concrete pillboxes made by workers of Leningrad factories, bunkers and well-equipped open firing points made it possible to shoot through all approaches to the front line. The enemy's defenses were visible from thousands of hidden and camouflaged observation posts.

Leningrad and its suburbs turned into a powerful fortified area. Barricades crossed many streets. Pillboxes towered menacingly at intersections and squares. Anti-tank hedgehogs and gouges blocked all entrances to the city. The city was exposed to enemy artillery and air strikes around the clock (The sound of a siren sounds).

Days and nights of stubborn struggle passed. The situation in the besieged city became increasingly difficult. As of September 12, 1941, supplies of basic types of food for troops and city residents were no more than 30-60 days. Potatoes and vegetables were almost absent. And in Leningrad, in addition to the indigenous population, there were tens of thousands of refugees; it was defended by troops. From October 1, workers and engineering workers began to receive 400g of low-quality bread per day on cards, and everyone else - 200g of low-quality bread per day. The supply of other products has sharply decreased. For a decade, 50 grams of sugar, 100 grams of sweets, 200 grams of cereal, 100 grams of vegetable oil, 100 grams of fish and 100 grams of meat were allotted.

Famine began in Leningrad. On November 13, 1941, the norm for the distribution of bread to the population was again reduced. Now workers and engineers received 300 g of bread, and everyone else - 150 g. The Germans bombed the main food warehouses. A week later, when navigation on Lake Ladoga stopped, food supplies almost completely stopped coming to Leningrad, and this meager ration had to be cut. The population began to receive the lowest rate for the entire period of the blockade - 250 g for a work card and 125 g for all others.

Other disasters came. At the end of November frosts hit. The mercury in the thermometer was approaching 40 degrees. Water and sewer pipes froze, leaving residents without water. Soon the fuel ran out. Power plants stopped working, lights went out in houses, and the interior walls of apartments were covered with frost. Entire families died from cold and hunger.

“It was painful to see the children at the table. They ate the soup in two doses, first the broth, and then the entire contents of the soup. They spread porridge or jelly on bread. The bread was crumbled into microscopic pieces and hidden in matchboxes. The children could leave the bread as the most delicious food and eat after the third course. They enjoyed eating a piece of bread for hours, looking at this piece as if it were some kind of curiosity" (from the memories of the orphanage teachers).

By December 1941, the city was trapped in ice. The streets and squares were covered with snow, covering the first floors of houses. The trams and trolleybuses stopped on the streets looked like huge snowdrifts. White threads of broken wires hung lifelessly.

But the city lived and fought. Factories continued to produce military products, classes were held in schools, and music was played in the Philharmonic.

In 1942 symphony orchestra The Philharmonic under the direction of conductor K.I. Eliasberg performed for the first time in besieged Leningrad the heroic Seventh Symphony of Dmitry Shostakovich. The roar of artillery cannonade could be heard in the hall, and the symphony concert continued and ended amid a storm of applause. (An excerpt from the Seventh Symphony is played)

What music there was!
Which music was playing,
When both souls and bodies
The damned war has trampled.
What kind of music
in everything
To everyone and for everyone -
not by ranking.
We will overcome... We will endure... We will save...
Oh, I don’t care about fat - I wish I was alive...
The soldiers' heads are spinning,
Three-row
under the rolling logs
It was more necessary for the dugout,
What Beethoven is for Germany.
And across the country
string
The tense trembled
When the damn war
She trampled on both souls and bodies.
Moaned furiously
sobbing
One - one passion for the sake of
At the stop - a disabled person
And Shostakovich is in Leningrad.

Before the war, the ensemble of the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers was one of the most popular and beloved groups in the city. It was created in 1938 by the wonderful composer Isaac Dunaevsky. Dance studio was led by Arkady Obrant and his faithful assistant R. Varshavskaya. The children studied stage movement and musical literacy. They studied, danced and did not think at all that they might someday end up in the fiery inferno. In the spring of '41, about three hundred boys and girls from the artistic movement studio were preparing at the Tauride Garden stadium to participate in the Physical Culture Parade in Moscow. The next rehearsal was scheduled for June 22... This day is forever etched in the memory of the guys. The war has begun. Arkady Efimovich went to the front as a militiaman, commanded a platoon of skiers, fighting on the southern approaches to Leningrad. In February 1942, Obrant was transferred to one of the strongholds - Ust-Izhora, where, according to the order, as a musician and professional choreographer, he was supposed to prepare concert program propaganda platoon at the 55th Army.

ALYANSKY YU. DANCE IN FIRE (excerpts)

Arriving in the city, Senior Lieutenant Obrant went to the palace... In the beautiful halls of the former Anichkov Palace, where young poets and astronomers, physicists and dancers had recently made noise, now only the dull echo of footsteps sounded. However, how long ago it was “recently”! In the political department of the 55th Army, which was defending Leningrad, Senior Lieutenant Obrant, the commander of a propaganda platoon, was ordered to find soldiers howling to dance. Arkady Efimovich found his former pets already weakened: they could barely move. They could barely move their tongues. One of them could no longer walk. In this state, Obrant took them to the army’s location, in the village of Rybatskoye, almost to the front. Here his former students formed an unprecedented creative team - a children's military dance ensemble.

The still extremely weak boys and girls began rehearsals. The propaganda platoon commander hoped that the movement would help the guys get in shape. The day of the first front-line concert arrived - March 30, 1942. Just before leaving, Obrant looked at his dancers with excitement. Their pale faces made a depressing impression. "Does anyone have any lipstick?" - asked Obrant. The lipstick was found. A slight blush appeared on the girls' sunken cheeks. The hopak sounded. Nelly Raudsepp, Valya Ludinova, Gennady Korenevsky and Felix Morel ran onto the stage of a crowded hall at a local school. There were smiles in the hall. But suddenly the unexpected happened: having started to squat, Gennady could not get up. He made desperate efforts - and could not! Nellie quickly gave him her hand and helped him stand up. This happened several times. The women sitting in the hall - doctors, nurses, orderlies - more than once saw blood, wounds, suffering. But, constantly being on the front line, they had not yet seen the children of besieged Leningrad. And now, looking at this hopak, they cried. They shouted “bravo,” wiping away tears and smiling.

But then brigade commissar Kirill Pankratievich Kulik rose from the first row and turned to the audience:

I forbid repeating the dance! These are children under siege, you have to understand! The hall fell silent. The concert is over.

We need your young dancers, Comrade Obrant,” the commissar told the military choreographer. - Only, of course, they look bad. They need to be treated and fed.

All the guys were sent to the hospital...

Soon dance group propaganda platoon began to be called a dance ensemble under the artistic management A, E. Obranta. The ensemble now had to perform in an environment that in the old days, before the war, they could not even dream of. They danced in the tents of the medical battalions. It happened more than once that the dances were interrupted and the artists helped carry and bandage the wounded. Wearing backpacks filled with costumes and simple props, we set out on foot along the roads of the front line. Night concerts in cramped huts - they were given by candlelight. The movement of the dancers made the candles go out. Sometimes they danced even without music - on the most advanced sections of the front, where every sound easily reached enemy fortifications. Then the accordionist did not play, the fighters did not applaud. The sound of heels could not be heard - the ground was covered with hay. They also danced on the armored train platform. The soldiers perceived these concerts under fire as the best confirmation of all the political conversations they had listened to. Even children fearlessly carry out their service under the very noses of the fascists!.. ...Their repertoire was wide: “Yablochko” and “Dance of the Tatar Boys”, Georgian “Baghdaduri” and Uzbek dance. Already at the front, “Tachanka” was born. The famous song now struck the new enemy with old, proven weapons.

Despite the heroism and courage of the population, the situation in besieged Leningrad worsened every day. By the twentieth of November 1941, food supplies had come to an end. The Military Council of the Leningrad Front began preparations for the construction of an ice road across Lake Ladoga, its protection and defense. The ice was still thin, but hungry Leningrad did not wait. And on November 20, a sleigh train set out across Ladoga. The carts moved in a line, at large intervals. Thus, the first 63 tons of flour were delivered to the besieged city. On November 22, sixty vehicles set out on their first ice voyage. The next day, the convoy delivered 33 tons of food to the west coast on its return flight.

The work of the ice road was made very difficult by enemy aircraft. In the first weeks, fascist pilots almost with impunity shot at cars, heating and sanitary tents from low-level flights, and broke the ice on the highway with high-explosive bombs. To cover the Road of Life, the command of the Leningrad Front installed anti-aircraft guns and a large number of anti-aircraft machine guns on the ice of Ladoga. Already on January 16, 1942, instead of the planned 2000 tons, 2506 tons of cargo were delivered to the western shore of Ladoga. From that day on, the pace of transportation began to increase continuously.

Already at the end of November 1941, the evacuation of residents into the interior of the country began across Ladoga. But the evacuation became widespread only in January 1942, when the ice strengthened. Children, women with children, the sick, wounded and disabled were the first to leave the blockaded city.

During the war years, in the working-class village of Shatki, Gorky Region, there was an orphanage where children taken from besieged Leningrad lived. Among them was Tanya Savicheva, whose name is known throughout the world. The diary of Tanya Savicheva, an eleven-year-old Leningrad girl, was accidentally discovered in Leningrad in an empty, completely extinct apartment. It is kept in the Piskarevsky Cemetery Museum.

The Savichevs died. Everyone died."

Then that's not all. Tanya was taken along with other children from Leningrad in 1942 to the interior of the country to an orphanage. Here the children were fed, treated, taught. Here they were brought back to life. This was often successful. Sometimes the blockade was stronger. And then they were buried. Tanya died on July 1, 1944. She never found out that not all the Savichevs died, their family continues. Sister Nina was rescued and taken to the rear. In 1945, she returned to her hometown, to her home, and among the bare walls, fragments and plaster she found a notebook with Tanya’s notes. Brother Misha also recovered from a serious wound at the front.

Smirnov Sergey "Tanya Savicheva" (reading an excerpt from the poem "Diary and Heart")

Tanya Savicheva's diary appeared at the Nuremberg trials as one of the indictment documents against fascist criminals.

A memorial plaque in memory of Tanya was unveiled in St. Petersburg. “In this house Tanya Savicheva wrote her blockade diary. 1941-1942,” is written on the board in memory of the Leningrad girl. Also inscribed on it are lines from her diary: “Only Tanya remains.”

Leningraders, and above all Leningrad women, can be proud that they saved their children during the blockade. We are talking about those little Leningraders who went through all the hardships and hardships together with their city. Orphanages were created in Leningrad, to which the hungry city gave the best of what it had. Leningrad women showed so much motherly love and dedication that one can admire the greatness of their feat. Leningraders know examples of exceptional courage and heroism shown by women workers in orphanages during times of danger. “In the morning in the Krasnogvardeisky district, intensive shelling began at the site where nursery No. 165 was located. The manager, along with the teacher and the nurse, began to carry the children to the shelter under fire. The shelling was so strong and the danger threatening the children was so great that the women, in order to make it in time, to take all the children to the shelter, they put several children in a blanket and carried them out in groups. An artillery shell knocked out all the frames and internal partitions of the houses in which the nurseries were located. But all the children - there were one hundred and seventy of them - were saved."

War, in its cruel blindness, unites the incompatible: children and blood, children and death. During the years of battle, our country did everything to protect children from suffering. But sometimes these efforts remained in vain. And when children, by the merciless will of fate, found themselves in the heat of suffering and adversity, they behaved like heroes, overcame, endured what, it would seem, even an adult could not always overcome.

Boys - scouts, turners, plowmen, poets, thinkers, artists, guardians of cities, healers of wounds - they withstood the war and won together with the adults.

Young firefighters guarded the Tauride Palace, the Hermitage, they helped preserve Smolny. Teenagers stood at the factory machine, replacing their fathers and older brothers who had gone to the front. They extinguished lighter bombs, helped the wounded and continued to study.

During the harshest days of the siege of the winter of 1941-1942, 39 schools operated in the besieged city, later there were more than 80.

Young Leningraders, two or three kilometers from the Nazis, were cutting down forests and carrying heavy logs to forest roads. They died from enemy shells, worked from dark to dark, waist-deep in snow, in freezing rain. The city needed fuel...

In the first months of the war, two girls, ten-year-old Lida Polozhenskaya and Tamara Nemygina, who studied in a ballet club, became the chiefs of the warship "Strict". He stood on the Neva. Every Sunday at the same time, not paying attention to the bombing and shelling, they made the long journey to the other side of the river. The signalman on the bridge, as soon as he saw the “ballerinas,” greeted them with flags, and the sailors ran out to meet them. The command was heard: “Ovcharenko, feed the chefs!” Then there was a concert in the wardroom.

In Leningrad, 15 thousand boys and girls received the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad."

In the days of siege
We never found out:
Between youth and childhood
Where is the line?.. We are in forty-three
Medals were given out
And only in forty-fifth
Passports.
And there is no problem in that.
But adults,
Having already lived for many years,
Suddenly it's scary
That we won't
Neither older nor more mature,
Than then."
Yu. Voronov.

Monument "Flower of Life" (a concrete monument rises on the high bank of the small Lubya River, it is dedicated to the young Leningraders who died during the siege).

Monument "Diary of Tanya Savicheva"

Monument "Broken Ring"
"Descendant know! In harsh years
Loyal to the people, duty and Fatherland.
Through the hummocks Ladoga ice,
From here we led the Road of Life.
So that life never dies."

Piskarevskoe memorial cemetery(more than 400 thousand Leningraders are buried there)

Leningraders lie here.
Here the townspeople are men, women, children.
Next to them are Red Army soldiers.
With all my life
They defended you, Leningrad:

"Again war, Again a blockade.
Or maybe we should forget about them?
I sometimes hear:
"No need,
There is no need to reopen wounds.
It's true that you're tired
We are from stories of war
And they scrolled through about the blockade
Poems are quite enough."
And it may seem:
You're right
And the words are convincing.
But even if it's true,
This is true -
Wrong!
So that again
On the terrestrial planet
That winter never happened again
We need
So that our children
They remembered this
Like us!
I have no reason to worry
So that that war is not forgotten:
After all, this memory is our conscience.
She
How much strength we need..."
(Yuri Voronov)

Vereiskaya Elena Nikolaevna

Elena Nikolaevna was born in 1886 and by the beginning of the war she was already a famous children's writer (published since 1910). Vereiskaya’s book “Three Girls” is considered one of best books about the war. Three teenage girls live together in a communal apartment in Leningrad, the war begins, the blockade...

From review: “The book is written a little in an old-fashioned style, but the TRUTH is written about the blockade! How they starved, in what conditions they worked, how they died... etc. Written delicately, for children, about mutual assistance, about the fortitude and courage of people and much more. This book is a must read!”.

The book “Three Girls” was first published in 1948 in Lenizdat, last time republished in 2016

Tsinberg Tamara Sergeevna

Tamara Sergeevna was born in St. Petersburg in 1908. In Leningrad in 1929, Tamara Tsinberg graduated from the Art and Industrial College. Higher education she received in Moscow, where she studied at the Higher Art and Technical Institute. In 1936, Tsinberg returned to Leningrad, during the menacing days of the Leningrad blockade she was a fighter in the local air defense and continued to design books. Since 1941, Zinberg became a member of the graphic section of the Leningrad organization of the Union Soviet artists and worked actively in it all subsequent years.

The public was able to meet Zinberg the writer in 1964, when her story was published "Seventh Symphony", one of the most heartfelt books about the life and feat of Leningraders during the Great Patriotic War. Zinberg wrote about what she knew, suffered and overcame, she dedicated it to the memory of her father.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Tamara Sergeevna took the manuscript to Yuri Pavlovich German for review. He advised me to publish the story. The book was a success. The Lenfilm film studio became interested in the story; in 1966, based on the story “The Seventh Symphony,” the film “Winter Morning” was shot.

In the book, the author talks about people with a pure soul and conscience, about how, while fulfilling their duty, they performed unnoticed but heroic deeds every day. And the saleswomen from the bakery, and the manager, and the doctor from the hospital, and the girl Katya, who takes a three-year-old boy under her wing, saving him from death. And thanks to this, she gains the strength to live on.

German Yuri Pavlovich

Yuri Pavlovich was born in 1910, with his father, an artillery officer, he passed Civil War. In Leningrad since 1929, he studied at the College of Performing Arts. He has been published since 1928, and at the age of 17 he wrote the novel “Raphael from the Barber Shop.” However, he began to consider himself a professional writer after the publication of the novel “Introduction” (1931), approved by M. Gorky.

During the Great Patriotic War, Yu. German served as a writer in the Northern Fleet and in the White Sea Military Flotilla as a war correspondent. He spent the entire war in the North. During the war years, he wrote several stories (“Be Happy!”, “Certificate”, “Icy Sea”, “Far in the North”) and plays (“For the health of those on the road”, “White Sea”).

Book by Yuri German "That's how it was" about the siege of Leningrad is written from the perspective of a boy who is 7 years old at the beginning of the book. A story about the war and the blockade as little Misha saw them. A child remains a child even in the most difficult times - with childish spontaneity, the boy talks about his heroic parents, about the wounded sailors and pilots whom Misha met. There is also a place for children's fun here.

But, despite the light and even playful tone of the story, the reader still understands what a terrible ordeal the blockade was for the city and its inhabitants. It is written very gently, the author is aimed at young children and clearly takes care of the children's psyche. But Herman is Herman, the impression is strong. First published in 1978, last reprint in 2017.

Adamovich Ales (Alexander) Mikhailovich and Daniil Granin

Ales Mikhailovich born in 1927. During the occupation, he fought in a partisan detachment in Belarus. Graduated Faculty of Philology Belarusian University, Doctor of Philology. Graduated from the Moscow Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors. Recent years Life was the director of the All-Union Research Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. Published as a critic, prose writer and publicist. Adamovich's works have been translated into 21 languages.

He wrote a novel-dulogy “Partisans” about his partisan youth (part 1 - “War under the roofs”, part 2 - “Sons go into battle”). He wrote the book “I am from the village of fire” . He and his co-authors interviewed people who survived the war in Belarus and managed to escape from destroyed villages, and recorded their stories. These are hard, scary stories. The book was a success in Belarus and was translated into Russian and abroad.

But Ales Adamovich is best known to the reader "Blockade Book", which he created together with the famous Leningrad writer D. Granin in the period 1977-1981. He suggested that Granin do what he did in Belarus using material from the Leningrad siege.

Daniil Granin Born in 1919, by the beginning of the war he had already graduated from college and was working as an engineer at a factory (he began publishing in 1949). He spent the entire war at the front. When the Leningrad blockade began, Granin served in units located near the city. The soldiers saw how the city was bombed and shelled, but had little idea of ​​what was happening in the city itself, although they felt the hunger firsthand. When concert teams from the Radio Committee came to the front line, and the artists were treated to millet porridge, the degree of their hunger was clear - it was a different kind of hunger, not trench hunger, although it was enough to send dystrophic and swollen people to the hospital from time to time.

Granin believed that he knew what a blockade was. When Ales Adamovich came to him in 1974 and offered to write a book about the siege and record the stories of the siege survivors, he refused. I thought that everything about the blockade was already known. Negotiations went on for several days. Finally, since they had long-standing friendly relations, Adamovich persuaded Granin to at least go and listen to the story of his friend who lived in the siege. Then we went to another blockade survivor. And Granin saw that During the blockade, the intra-family and inner-spiritual life of people, unknown to anyone, existed; it consisted of details, details, touching and terrible, unusual.

Eventually, the work began. The fact that Adamovich is not a Leningrader, but a Belarusian and went through the partisan war, and the authors had a big difference in ideas about the war, about the front, had its advantages. Adamovich's fresh look at Leningrad, at Leningrad life, in general, for life big city, helped him see what had long been erased for Granin - there was no surprise, no special signs of that wartime.

Then, in the mid-to-late seventies, there were still many siege survivors. The siege survivors handed the authors over to each other. They walked from house to house, from apartment to apartment, listening and recording stories.

It turned out, each has its own story, each has its own tragedy, its own drama, its own history, its own deaths. People starved in different ways and died in different ways. 200 stories were collected and nothing was repeated.

When the authors came, the blockade survivors for the most part did not want to tell anything. They did not want to return to that winter, to those years of siege, to hunger, to death, to their humiliating state. But then they agreed. People had a need to tell in order to free themselves. When the children of the siege survivors listened to these stories, it turned out that they were hearing for the first time about what was happening in this apartment, in this family.

Many stories, usually from women, contained details of everyday life, what was happening in a small area - a queue, a bakery, an apartment, neighbors, a staircase, a cemetery. Out of about ten stories, one was brilliant; two or three stories - talented, very interesting. But even from the sometimes vague stories, impressive details and details always emerged.

And then a book was created from these stories for a long time and painfully. About what?

Firstly, about the intelligentsia and the intelligentsia. Leningrad is a city that was different high culture, intellect, intelligentsia, your spiritual life. The authors wanted to show how people who were raised by this culture were able to remain human and survive.

The second thing they wanted was to show the limits of man. Few could imagine human capabilities. A person who not only defends his life, but feels like a part of the front. People understood that as long as the city was alive, it could defend itself.

Publishing the “Siege Book” in Leningrad was prohibited as long as the city was led by the first secretary of the regional committee, G. Romanov. The first, magazine, publication took place in Moscow. And only in 1984 the book was first published by the Lenizdat publishing house. The preface to the book tells the story of its creation and first publications. Republished again in 2017.

Krestinsky Alexander Alekseevich

Alexander Alekseevich was born in 1928 in Leningrad. Writer and poet who survived the siege as a teenager. In the 1950s, he taught history and literature at school, worked as a senior pioneer leader, “staged plays with the guys, took them on hikes.” In 1960 he worked in the Leningrad children's magazine "Koster" and published under the pseudonym Tim Dobry.

The first publications (poems for children) appeared in 1958. After the publication of the book “Tusya” (1969), he became known as the author of children's stories and stories for middle and older ages (he published more than 10 books). He also translated poetry, compiled collections and almanacs for children, an album was published under his editorship “Children of the siege draw”(1969).

In stories from the series "Boys from the Siege"(1983) Krestinsky talks about that time through the eyes of children whom the War deprived of the most important thing - childhood. Several stories and a novella in Krestinsky's autobiographical collection depict the life of Leningrad children before the war and during the siege. They were children - they played, dreamed of victorious battles, until the fascists under the city walls turned their fantasies into reality. The book “Boys from the Siege” was republished by the Samokat publishing house in 2015.

Sukhachev Mikhail Pavlovich

Mikhail Pavlovich was born in 1929, his mother fed and raised nine children alone. Having survived the siege of Leningrad and taking an active part in the defense of the city, teenager Mikhail Sukhachev was awarded a medal for the defense of Leningrad. He chose the path of a fighter pilot and became a 1st class pilot. After graduating from the Air Force Academy, he remained there as a teacher and became a candidate of military sciences and an associate professor at the academy.

Then a book appeared “There, beyond the blockade”. The heroes of the story are Leningrad teenagers Viktor Stogov, Valerka Spichkin, Elza Pozharova, familiar to the reader from the book “Children of the Siege.” In the new story, which reads like independent work, tells about their future fate. Left without parents during the siege, they found a second family in a preschool orphanage set up in their former school, and together with him they were evacuated near Tomsk, to a Siberian village.

Sukhachev's book was published in 2008 “Either Caesar or nothing!” about development in fascist Germany in 1930-1945 a completely new rocket weapon for that time, with the help of which Hitler hoped to change the course of the Second World War at its final stage. Mikhail Pavlovich gave this book to many war veterans and schoolchildren.

Sementsova Valentina Nikolaevna

“Ficus leaf. Stories about war", 2005

The author of the book belongs to that no longer numerous generation of people who are called « Children of the siege » . In his stories, from the perspective of a five-year-old heroine, the author addresses her peers living in the 21st century, and tells about her wartime childhood, about the life of the little girl Valya, who was in her fourth year, and her mother in besieged Leningrad.

The book is addressed to readers of senior preschool and junior school age. This publication is just right for talking about the war and the blockade with young readers. Without terrible details, even somewhat dispassionately, there are more facts than experiences, but this is enough to feel the full horror of those days. The book was republished in 2014.

Pozhedaeva Lyudmila Vasilievna

Lyudmila Pozhedaeva did not become a writer (she worked as a philologist and hydrologist - she went on expeditions), and these memoirs are the diary of a 16-year-old girl. The story is told from the perspective of the girl Mila, who was only 7 years old when the war began. At 16, she decided to write everything down in a notebook while everything was fresh in her memory, although something like this would never be forgotten.

All the events that happened to her, with her friends and what she saw around her are described. About the fear and pain that I experienced. In just over a month, the 16-year-old girl poured out all the pain and bitterness of the child who found herself at the epicenter of those terrible events onto the pages of her diary of memories.

Mila wrote for herself, she wrote only the truth - you can’t fool yourself, and she didn’t imagine that anyone would ever read her memoirs. Perhaps they would have gotten lost - girls at this age often keep diaries, songbooks, and questionnaires. “If my father had not torn up the notebook then, had not torn it into small pieces - “They can go to prison for such art,” - I am more than sure that this manuscript would have disappeared, like everything else. And so I collected the torn pages, glued them together, ironed them, rewrote something - memories interspersed with drawings and poems. I wanted to save them out of principle,” said Lyudmila Vasilyevna. The woman did not immediately decide to publish her diary.

Nikolskaya Lyubov Dmitrievnav

Lyubov Dmitrievna graduated from school in 1941. Her graduation took place on June 21, and the next day the War began, from the first days of which Leningrad was subjected to massive bombing. Despite this, Nikolskaya decided to stay in the city and entered the medical institute, and during the blockade she was enrolled in the fire defense regiment, whose fighters were assigned to families whose parents worked at the factory and whose children were at home. Nikolskaya had 14 families in her care. After the war, Lyudmila Nikolskaya became a writer.

Some of the most difficult months of the blockade occurred in the winter of 1941-42. It is this time that Lyudmila Nikolskaya describes in the story "Must Stay Alive", published in 2010

Before us are the residents of a communal apartment, but we find out what their relationships were like with each other before the war in parallel with the events of the siege. The book often contains references to peacetime, memories or dreams. Main character— Maya, she managed to finish 3rd grade before the war. But how quickly you had to grow up at that time! Despite all the tragedy of the story, it is still filled with bright optimism and hope that the War will someday end.

Diaries of Siege Children

Save my sad story. Siege diary of Lena Mukhina

Elena Mukhina was born in Ufa. At the beginning of the 1930s, she moved to Leningrad with her mother. When her mother fell ill and died, the girl was adopted by her aunt, Elena Nikolaevna Bernatskaya, who at that time worked as a ballerina in the Leningrad Maly opera house, then an artist in the same theater.

In May 1941, in Bernatskaya's notebook, Lena began keeping a diary. With the beginning of the war, the entries in the diary were of a cheerful nature, but later, especially in connection with the siege of Leningrad, their character changed. They frankly and in detail described life in a besieged city: shelling and bombing, tiny rations of bread, jellied meat made from wood glue, the death of loved ones.

Lena carefully records the signs of life under the siege and tries to comprehend her actions and emotional movements. On February 7, 1942, the adoptive mother also died. The last entry in the diary is dated May 25, 1942. At the beginning of June 1942, in an exhausted state, Lena Mukhina was evacuated to the city of Gorky. Then she studied, worked, and died in Moscow on August 5, 1991.

Lena Mukhina's diary is kept in the Central State Archive of Historical and Political Documents of St. Petersburg. With the help of historian S.V. Yarov, in 2011, Lena Mukhina’s diary was published by the Azbuka publishing house with his introductory article.

A documentary story about Tanya Savicheva and Leningraders in the besieged city. Ilya Mixon “Once upon a time there was”

About Kapa Voznesenskaya

The siege diary of a 14-year-old schoolgirl from Leningrad, Anne Frank, found by residents of one of the communal apartments in 2010, was published on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Victory.

About Anya Biryukova

Siege diary of a fourteen-year-old Leningrad schoolgirl. June 1941 - May 1943 Like Capa Voznesenskaya, Anya was born in November 1927, a few days apart. They are different - the militant Capa and the calm, with inner dignity (“but we haven’t eaten cats yet, since our nature is completely different...”) Anya. But their common experience makes them close... The diary was published at the end of 2015.

School of life. Memories of children of besieged Leningrad

A collection of first-person stories from those whose childhood was during the difficult time of the siege. The painful memories of the heroes, their perseverance and courage once again reminds readers of the difficult price they got Great victory. Published 2014

This book is a unique war diary of the Leningrad schoolgirl Tanya Vassoevich, who was among those who survived the worst winter of the siege of 1941-1942. In January 1942, she buried her 16-year-old brother Vladimir, and in February her mother Ksenia Platonovna.

From the very first day of the war until the victorious May 1945, Tanya kept records, which are also remarkable because they contain many color drawings. They are the ones who turn Tanya's diary into a genuine work of children's fine arts during the Great Patriotic War. Today, this historical document is carefully preserved by her son, Professor Andrei Leonidovich Vassoevich, who prefaced the 2015 publication of the war diary with an introductory article.

Children of besieged Leningrad Svetlana Magaeva and Lyudmila Ternonen

The book was prepared for the 70th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the fascist blockade during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 with the participation of the Moscow public organization veterans - residents of besieged Leningrad."

The authors, as children, experienced bombing and shelling, severe hunger and the chilly cold of the first winter of the siege. The book presents psychological portraits of 126 besieged children of different ages, data is provided on the contribution of Leningrad children to the defense of the city and on the rescue of orphaned children.

The authors, professional doctors with more than half a century of experience, systematized the character traits of blockade survivors that contributed to survival in extreme conditions: endurance, a heightened sense of civic and family duty, responsibility, self-control in critical situations.

All the children who survived the siege went on to become extraordinary personalities. Victims of the siege, including Leningrad children, are buried in the Piskarevsky, Smolensky, Serafimovsky and Volkovo cemeteries. Nobody knows how many children died from hunger, how many were killed by bombs and shells. According to some estimates, of the 400 thousand children remaining in the city by November 1941, at least 200 thousand died.

The book contains documentary evidence and memories of former children who survived the siege, information about what they experienced, how they managed to survive, persevere and help loved ones, and how life turned out after the war.

Review prepared by Anna

Yes, the blockade remained in my memory as a time when it was dark, as if there was no day, but only one very long, dark and icy night. But among this darkness there was life, the struggle for life, persistent, hourly work, overcoming. Every day we had to carry water. Lots of water to wash diapers (that's diapers now). This work could not be postponed until later. Laundry was an everyday task. First we went by water to the Fontanka. It wasn't close. The descent onto the ice was to the left of the Belinsky Bridge - opposite the Sheremetyev Palace. Before the girl was born, my mother and I went together. Then my mother brought the required amount of water over several trips. The water from the Fontanka was not suitable for drinking; at that time, sewage flowed there. People said that they saw corpses in the ice hole. The water had to be boiled. Then, on our Nekrasova Street, near house number one, a pipe was taken out of the manhole. Water flowed from this pipe all the time, day and night, so as not to freeze. A huge ice formed, but the water became close. We could see this place from our window. On the frozen glass you could warm up a round hole with your breath and look out into the street. People took water and slowly carried it - some in a teapot, some in a can. If it's in a bucket, it's far from full. A full bucket was too much to bear.

On Nepokorennykh Avenue, on the wall of one of the new houses, there is a memorial medallion depicting a woman with a child in her hand and a bucket in the other. Below, a concrete half-bowl is attached to the wall of the house, and a piece of water pipe sticks out of the wall. Apparently, this was supposed to symbolize the well that existed here during the siege. It was removed during the construction of the new avenue. Comrades who did this memorial sign, of course, did not experience the blockade. The memorial plaque is a symbol. It must incorporate the most characteristic things, convey the main feeling, mood, and make a person think. The image on the relief is uninteresting and atypical. During the siege years, such a picture was simply impossible. Carrying a child, dressed in a coat and felt boots, on one hand, and even water, even if only an incomplete bucket... And it was necessary to carry him not along cleared asphalt, but along uneven paths trampled among huge snowdrifts. Nobody cleared the snow then. It is sad that our children and grandchildren, looking at this inexpressive relief, will not see in it what it should reflect. They won’t see, feel or understand anything. Just think, take water not from the tap in the apartment, but on the street - like in the village! Even now, when people who survived the siege are still alive, this medallion does not touch anyone.

To get bread you had to go to the corner of Ryleev and Mayakovsky streets and stand for a very long time. I remember this even before the girl was born. Bread cards were issued only in the store to which the person was “attached.” Inside the store it is dark, a smokehouse, a candle or a kerosene lamp is burning. On scales with weights, the kind you see now, maybe in a museum, the saleswoman weighs the piece very carefully and slowly until the scales freeze at the same level. 125 grams must be measured accurately. People stand and wait patiently, every gram is valuable, no one wants to lose even a fraction of that gram. What is a gram of bread? Those who received blockade grams know this. What a small thing - a gram, according to many living today. Now you can eat two or three pieces like the only one that was given out for a day with just soup, and even spread them with butter. Then, one for a day, which in the canteen they take for a penny and throw away without regret. I remember how, after the war, in a bakery, a woman tried a loaf of bread with a fork and loudly exclaimed with displeasure: “Stale bread!” I was very upset. It’s clear that she doesn’t know what 125 or 150 grams per day is. I wanted to shout: “But there’s a lot of bread!” As much as you want! I don’t remember exactly when, but there was a period in Leningrad when sliced ​​bread was on the tables for free in the canteen. In a bakery you could take bread without a salesperson and go pay at the cash register. Few people remember this small fabulous period of such trust in people.

It was a shame if there was a rope in 125 grams. One day I came across something suspicious, it seemed to me - a mouse tail. That’s when we tried to fry our piece in drying oil, placing a toy frying pan on the coals in the stove. Suddenly the drying oil flared up and, although a rag was thrown over the fire, the bread turned almost into coal. Much has been written about the composition of siege bread. The most interesting thing in the recipe seems to me to be “wallpaper dust”. It's hard to imagine what it is.

While my mother was away and my Svetik was sleeping, I read. Wrapping myself in a blanket over my coat, I sat down at the table. In front of the smokehouse she opened a huge volume of Pushkin. I read everything in a row, didn’t understand much, but was captivated by the rhythm and melodies of Pushkin’s lines. While reading, I wanted to eat less, and the fear of loneliness and danger went away. It was as if there was no empty frozen apartment, no high dark room where my shapeless shadow moved frighteningly on the walls. If she was really cold or her eyes were tired, she walked around the room, removed the dust, plucked a splinter for the stove, and ground food in a bowl for her sister. When my mother was away, the thought always stirred: what would I do if she didn’t come back at all? And I looked out the window, hoping to see my mother. Part of Nekrasova Street and part of Korolenko Street were visible. Everything is covered with snow, there are narrow paths among the snowdrifts. I didn’t talk to my mother about what I saw, just as she didn’t tell me what she saw outside the walls of our apartment. I must say that even after the war this part of the street remained cold and unpleasant for me. Some deep sensations, impressions of the past still force me to avoid this section of the street.

Rare passers-by. Often with a sled. Half-dead people carry dead people on children's sleds. At first it was scary, then nothing. I saw a man dump a corpse wrapped in white into the snow. He stood, stood, and then walked back with the sled. The snow covered everything. I tried to remember where the dead man was under the snow, so that later, someday later, I would not step on scary place. I saw through the window how a horse, dragging some kind of sleigh, fell on the corner of Korolenko (this was somewhere in December 1941). She couldn’t get up, even though two guys tried to help her. They even unhooked the sled. But the horse, like them, no longer had the strength. It became dark. And in the morning there was no horse. The snow covered dark spots where the horse was.

Everything was fine while the child was sleeping. Every time there was a roar of explosions, I looked at my sister - if only I could sleep longer. Still, the moment would come, and she would wake up, start squeaking and stirring in her blanket. I could entertain her, rock her, invent anything, as long as she didn’t cry in a cold room. What I was strictly forbidden to do was unwrap the thick blanket in which she was packed. But who likes to lie in wet diapers for many hours? I had to make sure that Svetka didn’t pull her arm or leg out of the blanket - it was cold. Often my efforts did not help. Piteous crying began. Although she had little strength, it happened that she managed to pull her little hand out of the blanket. Then we cried together, and I covered and wrapped Svetka as best I could. And she also had to be fed at the appointed hours. We didn't have pacifiers. From the first day the girl was spoon-fed. It is a whole art to pour food drop by drop into a mouth that can only suck, without spilling a single drop of precious food. Mom left food for my sister, but it was all cold. It was not allowed to light the stove while my mother was away. I warmed the milk left in a small glass in my palms or, which was very unpleasant, I hid the cold glass under my clothes, closer to my body, so that the food would become at least a little warmer. Then, trying to keep warm, she squeezed the glass in one palm and fed her sister from a spoon with the other. Having scooped up a drop, she breathed on the spoon, hoping that this would make the food warmer.

Sometimes, if Svetka could not be calmed down, I would still light the stove to warm up the food as quickly as possible. She placed the glass directly on the stove. She used her pre-war drawings as fuel. I always loved to draw, and my mother folded the drawings and kept them. The pack was big. All of them were slowly used up. Every time I sent another piece of paper into the fire, I made a promise to myself: when the war ends, I will have a lot of paper, and I will again draw everything that is now burning in the stove. Most of all, I felt sorry for the sheet where Grandma’s spreading birch tree, thick grass, flowers, and a lot of mushrooms and berries were drawn.

Now it seems to me a mystery how I didn’t eat the food left for Sveta. I admit that while I was feeding her, I touched the tasty spoon with my tongue two or three times. I also remember the terrible shame that I felt at the same time, as if everyone could see my bad deed. By the way, for the rest of my life, no matter where I was, it always seemed to me that my mother saw me and knew that I should always act according to my conscience.

When my mother returned, no matter how tired she was, she hurried me to light the stove so that she could quickly change the baby’s clothes. Mom performed this operation very quickly, one might say masterfully. Mom had everything thought out; she laid out what was needed in a certain sequence. When they unwrapped the blanket and oilcloth in which the child was completely wrapped, thick steam rose up in a column. The girl was wet, as they say, up to her ears. Not a single dry thread. They took her out as if from a huge wet compress. Throwing everything wet into the basin, covering Svetik with a dry diaper heated by the stove, mom surprisingly quickly coated her entire body with this sunflower oil so that there is no diaper rash from constantly lying in the wet and without air.

Svetochka was not able to move freely. There was freedom to move only when she was bathed. We washed the girl well, if only once a week. At that time it was a complex and difficult undertaking that took away from my mother last strength. A lot of water was needed, which had to not only be brought, but then also carried out into the yard. When my mother managed to get firewood somewhere, she kept the iron stove on for a longer period of time, on which pots of water were heated. They set up a canopy of blankets - like a tent, so that the heat did not escape upward. A large basin was placed on a stool, and Svetka was bathed in it. Here they wiped dry under the canopy. If there was no shelling or alarm, they let me flounder in freedom for a little while longer; my mother gave my sister massages and gymnastics. Before being wrapped again in diapers, oilcloths and a blanket, the girl was again carefully coated with the treasured sunflower oil. We could fry something in drying oil, dilute wood glue, boil pieces of some leather, but this oil was inviolable.

Then I fed my sister, and my mother had to do all the hard work again. Everything had to be cleaned up, everything had to be washed, and the dirty water had to be taken out. How did mom wash diapers? Her hands will say more about this than words. I know what she washed in cold water, more often than in warm. I added potassium permanganate to the water. Having hung all the rags to freeze in the frozen kitchen, my mother spent a long time warming up her numb red hands and told how in the winter in the villages they rinse clothes in an ice hole, as if she was consoling herself. When most of the water froze, the diapers dried in the room. We ourselves rarely washed, and only in parts. Mom didn’t want to cut my thick braids and after washing she rinsed my hair in water with a few drops of kerosene. I was afraid of lice and at every opportunity I heated up a heavy iron to iron our linen. How simple everything seems now, but then for any task you had to gather strength and will, you had to force yourself not to give up, every day to do everything possible to survive and at the same time remain human.

Mom had a strict schedule for everything. Morning and evening she took out the garbage can. When the sewage system stopped working, people took out buckets and poured everything onto the sewer manhole cover. A mountain of sewage formed there. The steps of the back door staircase were icy in places and it was difficult to walk. Every morning my mother made me get up. She forced me by example. I had to get dressed quickly. Mom demanded, if not to wash, then at least to run wet hands over my face. You had to brush your teeth while the water was warming up on the stove. We slept in our clothes, taking off only warm clothes. If in the evening it was possible to warm the iron on the stove, then they put it in bed at night. Getting out from under all the blankets in the cold in the morning, when the water in the bucket froze overnight, was terrible. Mom demanded that in the evening all things be in order. The order helped not to lose the warmth of the night and quickly get dressed. Not once during the entire war did my mother allow me to stay in bed longer. It was probably important. It’s hard for all of us, we’re all equally cold, we’re all equally hungry. Mom treated me as an equal in everything, as a friend you could rely on. And it remains forever.

Despite the exhaustion and constant danger, I never saw my mother get scared or cry, give up her hands and say: “I can’t do it anymore!” She stubbornly did everything she could every day, whatever was necessary to get through the day. Every day with the hope that tomorrow will be easier. Mom often repeated: “We have to move, whoever lies in bed, whoever is idle, has died. There will always be something to do, and you can always find a reason not to do it. To live, you have to work." What I don’t remember at all is what we ate during the first winter of the siege. Sometimes it seems like you haven’t eaten at all. It seems that my wise mother deliberately did not focus on food. But food for my sister was clearly separated from what we ourselves ate.

In her green notebook, my mother wrote down that all her peels and dried potato peelings had already run out in December. We passed over the topic of food in silence. There is no food for everyone who remained in Leningrad. Why ask for something that doesn't exist? I need to read, do something, help my mother. I remember after the war, in a conversation with someone, my mother said: “Thanks to Linochka, she never asked me for food!” No, once I really asked to exchange my father’s chrome boots for a glass of unshelled walnuts, which some man was loudly praising at a flea market. How many were there in a faceted glass? Five or six pieces? But my mother said: “No, this is too shameless.” She hated crowded markets and could neither sell nor buy. And she probably took me with her for courage. You could buy a lot of things at the flea market, even fried cutlets. But when you see corpses in the snowdrifts, different thoughts come to mind. Nobody has seen dogs, cats and pigeons for a long time.

In December 1941, someone came to our apartment and suggested that my mother leave Leningrad, saying that staying with two children was certain death. Maybe mom thought about this. She saw and knew more about what was happening than me. One evening, my mother folded and tied into three bags what she might need in case of evacuation. I went somewhere this morning. She returned and was silent. Then she said firmly: “We’re not going anywhere, we’re staying at home.”

After the war, my mother told her brother how at the evacuation point they explained to her in detail that she had to go through Ladoga, possibly in an open car. The path is dangerous. Sometimes you have to walk. No one can say in advance how many hours or kilometers. To be honest, she will lose one of the children (that is, one will die). Mom didn’t want to lose anyone; she didn’t know how to live later. She refused to go.

Mom became a donor. It probably took courage to decide to donate blood in such a weakened state. After donating blood, donors were not immediately allowed to go home, but were given something to eat. Despite the strict prohibition, my mother kept something from the food and brought it home. She donated blood very regularly, sometimes more often than allowed. She said that her blood itself best group and is suitable for all wounded. Mom was a donor until the end of the war.

I remember how in one of the last registrations of blockade survivors (on Nevsky 102 or 104), a middle-aged woman was holding our documents in her hands, which contained a certificate of the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” and a document of an honorary donor, but upon hearing that my mother became a donor in December 1941 or January 1942, accused me of lying: “What a donor! She has the same small child! Why are you lying! I took the papers. We survived the blockade, we will survive now. After the blockade I am not afraid of anything.

Who asked then? A man came. Blood was needed. Food was also needed. Donors were given a work card.

When my mother was not at home and the responsibility for everything fell on me, fear settled in me. Many may be imaginary, but one is quite real. It was knocks on the door. I was especially afraid when they knocked from the back door. There the door was closed with a long huge hook. For density, a log was inserted into the door handle. If you shook the door, the log would fall out and the hook could be opened through the crack. When I heard the knock, I didn’t immediately leave the room, I first listened - maybe they would knock and leave. If they continued to knock, she would go out into the icy corridor in horror and silently creep up to the door. Figuring out how I could portray that there were a lot of people in the apartment. If I asked, I tried – in a bass voice. She didn’t open it when they were silent, she didn’t open it when they asked to open it, she didn’t even open it for the guards on duty who were going around the “living” apartments after particularly heavy shelling. I only opened it to one Aunt Tanya, my mother’s younger sister. She came rarely, was very weak and scary to look at. Just recently young, beautiful and cheerful, she was now like a shadow, black, with protruding cheekbones, all in something gray. Tanya very slowly entered the room and stood there for a while. She couldn’t take her eyes off the small gauze bag in which the pieces of sugar that she had once bought for her grandfather hung near the stove: “Linochka, give me one piece!” Just one and I'll leave."

Tanya is a second mother for me. I felt like a traitor on the one hand, a benefactor on the other, or, more simply, a deceiver, because I didn’t dare tell my mother that I was giving Tanya sugar. I still haven't said it. I didn’t know whether my mother counted these pieces or not... I still blush at the thought that my mother might have thought that I was the only one who ate this sugar in her absence. It's sickening that I couldn't tell the truth. Surely my mother would not reproach me for a good deed.

One day the building manager knocked on our apartment. Mom opened and let in a dark man in a coat and earflaps for some reason with a towel around his neck instead of a scarf. The house manager asked how many of us there are and how many rooms we have? There were three of us now, and there was always one room.

- You’re cramped! Come on, I'll book another room or two for you. I just need one kilogram of bread!

- How is this possible? People will come back!

- No one will return, I assure you, no one will return. I only need one kilogram of bread!

- We have no bread. If we die, why do we need a room? If we survive, we will be ashamed to look people in the eyes. Better leave.

When after the war there were six of us in the room and it was really cramped and uncomfortable, we recalled with a smile the proposal of the house manager. How easy it was for us to get a room or two! If only there was a kilogram of bread, and conscience would not interfere (by the way, after the war there was a norm of three square meters of housing per person). When we installed central heating in our house, we removed our tiled stove, and each of us had three meters and twenty centimeters. But we were immediately removed from the queue for housing improvements.

Of all the years of the siege, only one is remembered New Year- this is the very first one. Probably precisely because he was the first without beautiful Christmas tree with candies, nuts, tangerines and shiny lights. The Christmas tree was replaced by a dried chrysanthemum, which I decorated with paper chains and scraps of cotton wool.

Olga Berggolts spoke on the radio. I didn’t know then that this was our Leningrad poetess, but her voice, with its characteristic intonation, somehow touched me and made me listen carefully to what she said. Her voice sounded slowly and calmly: “I need to tell you what this year is like...”. Then I remembered the poems. It seems like this: “Comrade, we have had bitter things, difficult days, both years and troubles threaten us. But we are not forgotten, we are not alone, and this is already a victory!” After the death of Olga Feodorovna, a memorial stele was erected on Italianskaya Street at the entrance to the radio committee building, on the right. It's a pity that few people know about this monument. Now there is a grate there, and the monument seems to be different.

In my mother’s notebooks there is this piece: “Despite the horrors of the blockade, constant shelling and bombing, the theater and cinema halls were not empty.” It turns out that mom is in this terrible life I managed to go to the Philharmonic. “I can’t say exactly when it was. Violinist Barinova gave a solo concert in Great hall. I was lucky to get there. The hall was not heated, we sat in coats. It was dark, only the figure of the artist in beautiful dress. You could see how she breathed on her fingers to warm them up at least a little.”

There were four families left in our house during the siege, single-parent families, of course. In the first apartment on the second floor lived two old men - the Levkovichs, in the second apartment - a noisy, plump woman, Augustinovich. She worked at one of the factories and was rarely at home. My mother, sister and I stayed in the third apartment. Upstairs in apartment 8 lived a family of three – the Priputnevichs. They had a magnificent dog - a pinscher. There was nothing to feed the dog, and to look at the hungry animal... The owner himself shot his dog in our yard with a hunting rifle. They ate it down to the last piece with tears. Then they apparently left after all.

The Levkovichs from the first apartment seemed old to me. Their children were probably in the army. They had lived in this apartment since time immemorial, and now they occupied two rooms there. One overlooked the south side, onto Nekrasova Street - the most dangerous during shelling. The other was dark and looked through the windows into our courtyard-well, where, according to the general belief, a shell or bomb could only fly if they were lowered vertically from above. The Levkovichs had a samovar. I don’t know how they heated it, but they always had it warm and somewhat replaced the stove in the main bright room, furnished with massive carved furniture. On one wall hung a mirror in a dark oval frame, and opposite, in the same frame, was a large old photo, where the owners were young and very beautiful.

The samovar often gathered around the few inhabitants of our house. Associated with it are memories of warmth, cozy old people, and the fact that their dark room often served as a bomb shelter for everyone. If they came to drink boiling water, everyone brought with them what they had to eat.

After the war, when I was studying at the secondary school, returning home one day, I saw a truck in front of the front door of our house. Some people take out old things and throw them in the back. I go up the stairs and see that it’s from the first apartment. It flashed through my head: “So the Levkovichs have died, and people are throwing away everything.” The loader holds a familiar samovar in his hands. I ask:

-Where are you taking everything?

- We're taking it to the landfill!

- Give me this samovar!

- Give me three rubles!

- I'm coming now!

I run upstairs and shout:

- I’ll have three rubles, quickly!

Then I fly down, and the samovar is in my hands. And now I have this memory of the blockade and kind old people in my house.

When the blockade ring closed, in addition to the adult population, 400 thousand children remained in Leningrad - from infants to schoolchildren and teenagers. Naturally, they wanted to save them first of all, they tried to protect them from shelling and bombing. Comprehensive care for children in those conditions was characteristic feature Leningraders. And she gave special strength to adults, inspired them to work and fight, because children could only be saved by defending the city...

Alexander Fadeev in travel notes " During the days of the blockade" he wrote:

“Children of school age can be proud that they defended Leningrad together with their fathers, mothers, older brothers and sisters.

The great work of protecting and saving the city, serving and saving the family fell to the lot of Leningrad boys and girls. They put out tens of thousands of lighters dropped from airplanes, they put out more than one fire in the city, they were on duty on frosty nights on towers, they carried water from an ice hole on the Neva, they stood in lines for bread...

And they were equal in that duel of nobility, when the elders tried to quietly give their share to the younger ones, and the younger ones did the same in relation to the elders. And it’s hard to understand who died more in this fight".

The whole world was shocked by the diary of the little Leningrad girl Tanya Savicheva: “Grandma died on January 25...”, “Uncle Alyosha on May 10...”, “Mom on May 13 at 7.30 in the morning...”, “Everyone died. Tanya is the only one left." The notes of this girl, who died in evacuation in 1945, became one of the formidable accusations against fascism, one of the symbols of the blockade.

They had a special childhood, scorched by the war, during the siege. They grew up in conditions of hunger and cold, under the whistling and explosions of shells and bombs. It was its own world, with special difficulties and joys, with its own scale of values. Open today the monograph “Children of the Siege Draw.”

Shurik Ignatiev, three and a half years old, May 23, 1942 in kindergarten covered his paper with random pencil scribbles with a small oval in the center. “What did you draw!” – asked the teacher. He replied: “This is war, that’s all, and there’s a bun in the middle. I don’t know anything else.” They were the same blockade runners as adults.” And they died the same way.

The only transport route connecting the city with the rear regions of the country was the “Road of Life”, laid through Lake Ladoga. During the days of the blockade along this road from September 1941 to November 1943, it was possible to evacuate 1 million 376 thousand Leningraders, mostly women, children and the elderly. The war scattered them around different corners Union, their destinies turned out differently, many did not return back.

Existence in a besieged city was unthinkable without hard, everyday work. Children were also workers. They managed to distribute their forces in such a way that they were enough not only for family, but also for public affairs. Pioneers delivered mail to homes. When the bugle sounded in the yard, we had to go down to get the letter. They sawed wood and carried water to the families of the Red Army soldiers. They mended linen for the wounded and performed for them in hospitals. The city could not protect children from malnutrition and exhaustion, but nevertheless, everything possible was done for them.

Despite the harsh situation of the front-line city, the Leningrad City Party Committee and the City Council of Workers' Deputies decided to continue educating children. At the end of October 1941, 60 thousand schoolchildren in grades 1-4 began training sessions in bomb shelters of schools and households, and since November 3, in 103 schools in Leningrad, more than 30 thousand students in grades 1-4 sat down at their desks.

In the conditions of besieged Leningrad, it was necessary to connect education with the defense of the city, to teach students to overcome difficulties and hardships that arose at every step and grew every day. And the Leningrad school coped with this difficult task with honor. The classes took place in an unusual environment. Often during a lesson, a siren would sound, signaling another bombing or shelling.

The students quickly and orderly descended into the bomb shelter, where classes continued. Teachers had two lesson plans for the day: one for working under normal conditions, the other in case of shelling or bombing. The training was conducted in an abbreviated manner curriculum, which included only the basic items. Each teacher strived to conduct classes with students as accessible, interesting, and meaningful as possible.

"“I’m preparing for lessons in a new way,” K.V., a history teacher at School No. 239, wrote in her diary in the fall of 1941. Polzikova - Nothing superfluous, a spare, clear story. It is difficult for children to prepare homework; This means you need to help them in class. We don’t keep any notes in notebooks: it’s hard. But the story must be interesting. Oh, how necessary it is! Children have so much trouble in their souls, so much anxiety, that they will not listen to dull speech. And you can’t show them how difficult it is for you either.”.

Studying in the harsh winter conditions was a feat. Teachers and students produced fuel themselves, carried water on sleds, and monitored the cleanliness of the school. The schools became unusually quiet, the children stopped running and making noise during breaks, their pale and emaciated faces spoke of grave suffering. The lesson lasted 20-25 minutes: neither the teachers nor the students could stand it any longer. No records were kept, since in unheated classrooms not only the children’s thin hands froze, but also the ink froze.

Talking about this unforgettable time, students of the 7th grade of school 148 wrote in their collective diary:

"The temperature is 2-3 degrees below zero. Dim winter, the light timidly breaks through the only small glass in the only window. The students huddle close to the open stove door, shivering from the cold, which bursts out from under the cracks of the doors like a sharp frosty stream and runs through their entire bodies. A persistent and angry wind drives the smoke back from the street through a primitive chimney straight into the room... My eyes water, it’s hard to read, and it’s completely impossible to write. We sit in coats, galoshes, gloves and even hats... "

Students who continued to study during the harsh winter of 1941-1942 were respectfully called “winter workers.”

In addition to their meager bread ration, children received soup at school without cutting out coupons from their ration cards. With the launch of the Ladoga Ice Route, tens of thousands of schoolchildren were evacuated from the city. The year 1942 arrived. In schools, where classes did not stop, holidays were declared. And in the unforgettable January days, when the entire adult population of the city was starving, in schools, theaters, concert halls New Year parties with gifts and a hearty lunch were organized for children. For the little Leningraders it was a real big holiday.

One of the students wrote about this New Year tree: “January 6. Today there was a Christmas tree, and how magnificent! True, I almost didn’t listen to the plays: I kept thinking about lunch. Lunch was wonderful. The children ate slowly and intently, without losing a crumb. They they knew the value of bread, they gave us noodle soup, porridge, bread and jelly for lunch, everyone was very happy. This tree will remain in their memory for a long time.”

There were also New Year's gifts, this is how participant in the siege P.P. recalled them. Danilov: “From the contents of the gift, I remember candies made from flaxseed cake, gingerbread and 2 tangerines. For that time it was a very good treat.”

For students in grades 7-10, Christmas trees were arranged in the premises of the Drama Theater named after. Pushkin, Bolshoi Drama and Maly Opera Theaters. The surprise was that all the theaters had electric lighting. Brass bands played. At the Drama Theater. Pushkin's performance was given " Noble nest", at the Bolshoi Drama Theater - "The Three Musketeers". At the Maly Opera Theater, the holiday opened with the play "The Gadfly".

And in the spring, schoolchildren began their “garden life.” In the spring of 1942, thousands of children and teenagers came to the empty, depopulated workshops of enterprises. At the age of 12-15 they became machine operators and assemblers, producing machine guns and machine guns, artillery and rocket shells.

So that they could work at machines and assembly workbenches, wooden stands were made for them. When, on the eve of breaking the blockade, delegations from front-line units began to arrive at enterprises, experienced soldiers swallowed tears, looking at the posters above the workplaces of boys and girls. It was written there with their own hands: “I won’t leave until I fulfill my quota!”

Hundreds of young Leningraders were awarded orders, thousands were awarded medals “For the Defense of Leningrad.” They went through the entire months-long epic of the heroic defense of the city as worthy comrades of adults. There were no events, campaigns or cases in which they did not participate.

Clearing attics, fighting "lighters", putting out fires, clearing rubble, clearing the city of snow, caring for the wounded, growing vegetables and potatoes, working on producing weapons and ammunition - children's hands were everywhere. On equal terms, with a sense of fulfilled duty, Leningrad boys and girls met with their peers - the “sons of the regiments” who received awards on the battlefields.

Photos of children who survived the siege

Toys of Leningrad children

125 grams of blockade bread...

Classes in a bomb shelter...

This year, January 27, marks 70 years since the siege of Leningrad was lifted. It lasted 872 long days and claimed the lives of one and a half million people. Surrounded by adults during these most difficult days for the city were 400 thousand children.

Start

The capture of Leningrad was one of the points of the German Barbarossa plan. The Nazis believed that during the summer and autumn Soviet Union will be defeated and the city on the Neva will be taken. But their plans did not come true. The defenders of Leningrad managed to stop enemy troops 4-7 kilometers from the city. The city was not captured, but its inhabitants found themselves surrounded by a blockade, cut off from the outside world.

Hitler decided to wipe Leningrad off the face of the earth. To do this, fire at it from artillery and continuously bomb it, strangling it with hunger. On German maps, objects such as schools, hospitals, pioneer palaces, and museums were marked for bombing. In the fall of 1941 alone, about 100 raids were carried out on Leningrad and 65 thousand incendiary and 3055 high-explosive bombs were dropped.

The picture shows the toys of Leningrad children who were evacuated from Leningrad to mainland on a barge. The transport with children was subjected to enemy bombing and was flooded. Tens of years later, these toys were found at the bottom of Lake Ladoga. None of the little owners of these dolls, bears, and rattles survived.

During the air raid, when city residents were hiding in bomb shelters, air defense fighters were on duty on the roofs of houses and schools. Children helped them. The “lighter,” which hissed and splashed, was quickly grabbed with long tongs and extinguished by putting it in a box of sand or throwing it down to the ground. We couldn’t miss a second, so we had to move quickly along the sloping and slippery roof. The nimble guys did it well. There could have been hundreds of times more fires if the children had not lubricated the wooden attic floors with a special anti-fire mixture developed by Leningrad scientists.

Blockade

But the death of civilians during shelling was only the beginning of the disasters that befell the city. The power plants stopped working and the city plunged into darkness.

The most difficult time began: the winter of 1941-1942. Leningrad was covered with snow and 40 degree frosts hit. The fuel ran out and the interior walls of the apartments were covered in frost. Leningraders began installing iron temporary stoves in their rooms. They burned tables, chairs, cabinets, and sofas. And then books.

Water and sewer pipes froze, leaving people without water. Now it could only be taken from the Neva and Fontanka.

“I was ten years old,” recalls one of the residents of the besieged city, A. Molchanov. - I went for water with a kettle. I was so weak that while I was fetching water, I rested several times. Previously, when climbing the stairs, I ran, jumping over the steps. And now, going up the stairs, he often sat down and rested. What I was most afraid of was that I might not be able to carry the kettle of water, I would fall and spill it.

We were so exhausted that when we went out to get bread or water, we didn’t know if we would have enough strength to return home. My school friend went for bread, fell and froze. It was covered with snow."

Hunger

Only three percent of lives were claimed by bombing and shelling. 97 percent of the inhabitants of the besieged city died of starvation.

The winter of 1941 was the hardest. Bread standards were constantly decreasing and reached their minimum in November. Workers received 250 grams, employees, dependents and children - 125 grams of bread. And this bread was very different from the current one. Only half of it consisted of flour, which was in very short supply at that time. Cake, cellulose, and wallpaper glue were added to it.

But for this small piece it was necessary to stand in a queue for many hours in the cold, which was occupied early in the morning. There were days when, due to constant bombing, bakeries did not work and mothers returned home with nothing, where hungry children were waiting for them.

There were practically no other products. People were tearing off the wallpaper, back side of which the remains of the paste were preserved, soup was prepared from them. Jelly was made from wood glue. To fill empty stomachs, they took everything that could be eaten from home medicine cabinets: castor oil, Vaseline, glycerin. Leather boots and shoes were cut into pieces and boiled.

“We live very poorly here,” a seven-year-old boy writes in a letter in block letters. - Hungry like wolves in winter. And my appetite is such that it seems that if they gave me three loaves of bread, I would eat everything.”

Children of that time did not dream of something tasty. The unattainable desire was that food, which they may have capriciously refused in times of peace.

Here is a note from Valya Chepko, which she called “the menu after the hunger strike, if I stay alive.” 1st course: potato, oatmeal soup...2nd. porridge: oatmeal, wheat, pearl barley, buckwheat...Cutlet with mashed potatoes, sausage with mashed potatoes. And a sad signature: I don’t even dream about this.

This modest menu remains a pipe dream. The girl died of starvation in 1942. During that first terrible winter of the siege, 2-3 thousand people died of hunger in the city every day.

Grief

During the siege, children had it much worse than adults. How to explain to kids why their lives have changed so terribly? Why does the siren howl and you have to run to a bomb shelter? Why is there no food? Why can't omnipotent adults fix anything?

The number of orphanages has increased sharply. If at the end of 41 there were 17 of them, then in the spring of 1942 there were 98. More than 40 thousand orphans were accepted into them.

Each such child - your peer - has his own scary story life in a besieged city. Often, remembering the blockade, they talk about Tanya Savicheva’s diary, and her famous phrase “there is only Tanya left.” But Tanya’s fate is one of the fates of many Leningrad boys and girls.

How much enormous grief is hidden in these children's lines, the authors of which are unknown. Today their letters are exhibits in the Museum of the Defenders of Leningrad.

"Greetings from Leningrad. Hello, dear aunt. You write that you do not receive news from us. Here it is.

And I was left alone".

Most of the children under the siege had parents who died before their eyes. These guys were used to shelling, and the sight of people dying on the streets was a common sight for them. But they all dreamed of a future, a future without war. And so, overcoming weakness, in the bitter cold, under shelling, they went to school.

SCHOOL

During the harshest days of the blockade in the winter of 1941-1942, 39 schools operated in the besieged city.

The classes took place in an unusual environment. Often during a lesson, a siren would sound, signaling another bombing or shelling. The students quickly descended into the bomb shelter, where classes continued.

To avoid running around with students primary school from the classroom to the bomb shelter and back, lessons for them were held only there. Here is an amazing copy of a textbook from that time. Written on it by a child's hand is not a school, but the serial number of a bomb shelter. This was only possible in Leningrad!

Studying in the harsh winter conditions was a feat. Teachers and students produced fuel themselves, carried water on sleds, and monitored the cleanliness of the school. The lesson lasted no more than 25 minutes; neither the teachers nor the students could stand it any longer. No records were kept, since in unheated classrooms not only hands froze, but also ink froze. Lessons were learned by heart. An excerpt from a schoolboy’s diary: “The temperature is 2-3 degrees below zero. It’s dim winter, the light timidly breaks through the only window. We sit in coats, galoshes, gloves and even hats...”

But, despite all the difficulties, the guys passed the exams, received grades and moved from class to class!

In September 1942, schools reopened in the city. There were fewer students in each class, many died from shelling and starvation. The schools became unusually quiet; exhausted, hungry children stopped running around and making noise during breaks. And the first time, when two boys fought during recess, the teachers did not scold them, but were happy. “So our children are coming to life.”

New Year

Although the situation in besieged Leningrad was very difficult, nevertheless, a decision was made to hold school Christmas trees in the winter of 1942. Music sounded in the frozen dark city, and artists performed for the children. But the main thing is that the invitation cards said that they would have lunch. The guys received a small portion of soup and porridge - luxurious food for that time. They also brought tangerines to the city and distributed them to children. It was the most best gift from Santa Claus. They pressed him under their clothes and took him home - to his mother, younger brothers and sisters.

Little heroes

Suffering from hunger and cold, the residents - adults and children - did not sit idly by, did not wait for them to be freed, but fought as best they could for their hometown.

There were no such events in the besieged city in which young Leningraders did not participate. They stood at the factory machines, replacing adults who died or went to the front. At the age of 12-15, children made parts for machine guns, machine guns, and artillery shells. So that the guys could work at the machines, wooden stands were made for them. No one counted how long the working day would last.

Children, together with adults, extinguished fires and destroyed tens of thousands of incendiary bombs. They cleared away the rubble of destroyed buildings, clearing roads and tram tracks.

From spring to late autumn in 1942-44, schoolchildren worked in state farm fields to provide the city with vegetables. Vegetable gardens were also bombed. When the raid began, the teachers shouted and took off their panama hats and lay face down on the ground. There was everything: heat, rain, frost, and dirt. The guys exceeded the norm by two or three times and collected record harvests.

Schoolchildren came to the hospital to see the wounded. They cleaned the wards and fed the seriously wounded. They sang songs to them, read poems to them, and wrote letters under dictation. We prepared firewood for the hospital.

Since 1943, Timur teams were organized in the city. They visited the elderly, the sick, and delivered mail.

In the besieged city there was a conservatory, theaters gave performances, and films were shown. The city lived and survived, despite the main goal of the Germans to destroy it by shelling and starvation. And together with the adults, its young residents, who had matured so much during the 872 days of the siege, rejoiced at the lifting of the blockade in 1944. But they not only survived the blockade, but they, like their parents, helped the great city survive. They studied, fought, worked: 15 thousand schoolchildren were awarded the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad.”

Chronicle of the blockade

September 8: The encirclement around Leningrad closed when German troops reached the shores of Lake Ladoga.