Living Witnesses to Victory: Touching Memories of Leningrad Blockade Survivor and Home-Front Worker

It is impossible to measure in numbers the feat of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War

It is impossible to measure in numbers the feat of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War. But to remain grateful is our shared and sacred duty. When your very first childhood memory is one of devastation, unbearable hunger and the constant wail of air-raid sirens, even decades later the tears rise unbidden. It was 1941. Natasha was just over three years old — the firstborn in her family. They lived in Leningrad. Her father was called to the front, and her mother stayed behind to defend the city. Like so many Leningrad children, Natalya Medvedeva was saved by evacuation. She met Victory Day already in Minsk. When she speaks of those years, Natalya Ivanovna often slips into poetry.

Natalya Medvedeva, survivor of the Leningrad Blockade: “They would leave you alone in a locked apartment and go away. And the planes kept flying and flying, droning and droning. Everything was filled with alarm. And you were alone in the apartment, locked in by your mother. You would hide under the table, clutching your toy bear. And the table would shake and tremble, while outside the shards of shrapnel rattled against it like hail.

”When the war began, Veniamin Gennatulin was eleven. His family lived in Turkmenistan. His father went off to defend the Motherland, and his mother was often ill, so the burden of caring for his two-year-old sister and providing for the family fell on the boy’s young shoulders. He worked at a cotton-cleaning plant.

Veniamin Gennatulin, home-front worker: “The cotton plant had a small subsidiary farm. I helped graze the sheep and cows, and that’s how I fed the family. By the age of thirteen I had already begun working as an apprentice toolmaker and fitter. From 1943 to 1945 I worked at that plant. For my conscientious labour I was awarded a medal.

”Veniamin Hekmatulaevich is now 96. Yet his voice still rings with youthful clarity. In the postwar years he was a soloist in his regiment’s choir. He has lived in many places — Turkmenistan, Russia, Uzbekistan and the open expanses of Belarus, where he still lives not only with song but with discipline: early rising, gymnastics, a cold shower. He still finds time to cook for his grandchildren.

In Belarus the average age of war participants is 99. The youngest is 92, the oldest 106. In the entire country just over 570 veterans of the Great Patriotic War remain — participants and invalids of the war, home-front workers, and survivors of the Leningrad Blockade. Their number grows smaller with every year. That is why it is the sacred duty of the younger generation to say a heartfelt “thank you” for the peaceful sky above our heads.