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| Lena - third left, back row |
Lena Mukhina was a Russian teen caught in the 872 day Nazi siege of St. Petersberg formerly known as Leningrad, 70 years ago. She was 16 in 1941 when her diary entries were made describing the unfolding horrors, she endured German bombing raids and watched her mother starve as family members were taken away.
The blockade was part of the German Barbarossa blitzkrieg of the Soviet Union.
Her diary stopped mysteriously on 25 May 1942 but it was later confirmed by relatives that she survived the horror and had died in 1991 in Moscow at age 66, never mentioning the diary. It began with romantic loverlorn entries that dramatically changed on 22 June 1941 to horrific depictions.
She wrote an appeal to anyone who uncovered the diary after her death, to deliver it to her family so they may know of her torment - 70 years on, they wept at the knowledge of her sufferring.
Historians hail it as a poignant and vivid tale of hunger, desperation and death. It was recently discovered in a State archive by Russian historian Sergey Yarov of the European University of St. Petersberg, the diary was recieved from an anonymous donor in 1962.
Heartbreaking.
The despair in Leningrad: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-2032706/BEYOND-HORROR-They-ate-cats-sawdust-wallpaper-paste--babies-Leningrads-agony-Nazis-tried-starve-submission-LENINGRAD-TRAGEDY-OF-A-CITY-UNDER-SIEGE-1941-44-BY-ANNA-REID.html
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