Bombs, hunger, cold: how the city survived the blockade during WWII
Irina was only 3 years old when her mother, a worker at the Kirov Plant, decided to evacuate her from Leningrad. Working tirelessly at the tank production plant for weeks without a day off, her mother had no one to help care for her child. However, the train Irina was commuting in came under Nazi shelling. She was under the rubble for a day before she was rescued. Thus, the girl remained with her mother, enduring the most terrifying months in a city besieged by the Nazis. This is just one story among thousands of heroic Leningrad citizens. Despite hunger and constant shelling, they managed to donate 144 tons of blood over the years of the blockade to aid injured soldiers on the front lines, and never ceased the production of guns, which the soldiers of the Soviet Army desperately needed against the Nazis. In our new documentary, commemorating 80 years since the liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi blockade, witness the unwavering resilience of Leningraders like Irina and her mother.