Unit 4 (From the Diary of Anne Frank)
Diaries of war: Lena Mukhina
Describe life in Leningrad during the siege.
What war leaves behind. War leaves survivors, especially women and children, with trauma: memories that do not go away. Anne Frank felt cut off and alone while her family was hiding. A simple way to see it: with your family beside you, you can face a lot; being cut off is the worst part.
Lena Mukhina's diary. Lena was a schoolgirl in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) when the German army laid siege to the city: surrounded it and cut off its food and supplies. The siege began in September 1941 and lasted 872 days and nights.
From curiosity to fear to apathy. Air raids came every day and people ran to the shelters. At first they were curious, then afraid. Then, weak from hunger and cold, many stopped caring at all: that is apathy. In just over six months there were only thirty-two days with no shelling.
Weather as a friend. People were glad of bad weather: cloud and fog meant the bombers could not see to aim. Think of driving on a mountain road in thick fog: you cannot see far. For Leningrad that was a blessing. They feared sunny days and moonlit nights, when the city was easy to see from the air. (Cloud did not stop the artillery shells, though, which were fired from guns on the ground.)
Bread. The bread ration was cut five times. On 20 November, children, dependants and office workers got only 125 'blockade grams' a day, and manual workers 250. People faced death by bombs or by hunger, yet they did not lose hope: they held on.
War words from the passage: siege, bombardment, artillery fire, air raids, shells, bomb shelters.
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