1-9 stories Alexander Kabishev Moscow

 

Stories about the Blockade

(dedicated to my grandfather)

1

Since early childhood, I remembered St. Petersburg as an amazingly beautiful, almost fabulous

city. These memories were full of joyful and hilarious events. Me, father, mother, brothers and

sisters – we were all healthy, full of strength, but most importantly, we were together!

Everything changed in the summer of 1941.

The blockade began for us suddenly and unexpectedly, even the adults did not seem ready to

accept it and did not really explain to us what would happen and how our lives would change

further. Of course, we had heard disturbing news about the German offensive, but the fact that

we could be locked up in our hometown for almost two years was unthinkable!

At that time, we lived in a large communal apartment in the Petrogradsky district. Our family

occupied three rooms. I went to school with my older sister and three brothers. Nikolai, the

oldest of us, just finished it this year, and the younger ones haven't started yet. My father worked

as a master at the university (St. Petersburg State University), and my mother was a nurse at the

hospital (I don't remember which one), later she was transferred to a military hospital.

My father and older brother Nikolai were the first to go to the front. It was like this, Nikolai

received a summons from the military enlistment office, after learning about it, his father

decided to volunteer with him. It all happened literally in one day. In the evening, we saw them

off with the whole apartment, and in the morning, when I woke up, they were gone.

My mother was having a hard time breaking up, at that time she was missing at work all day, and

in the evenings she usually came and cried quietly for hours in her corner. My two other older

brothers, 17-year-old Ivan and 16-year-old Leonid, were already secretly planning to escape to

the front as volunteers, but they wanted to hide it from their mother and sisters in every possible

way, so they made Alexey and me promise never to tell anyone about it. And we were silent.

Autumn was quite difficult for us. There were problems with food supplies, but the worst thing

was that we started to get sick, especially my younger brother Sasha and sister Lena. They lay

for days with a high fever, almost motionless. A couple of times, my mother invited doctors she

knew from the hospital. They examined them, gave them some medications, which, as it seemed

to me, did not help them much.

My younger sister died first. I didn't see how it happened, I just found out about it one warm

November day from Masha. Alexey, I, and another of my school friends were returning from

school when she met us at the entrance.

- Lena died, Mom went to bury her, - was all she managed to say.