Besieged Leningrad... 872 days.

One of the most terrible pages of the Great Patriotic War. There are very few living witnesses of those days left.

On the eve of May 9, we visited Nadezhda Nikolaevna Kravchenko to congratulate her on Victory Day. In a couple of months, Nadezhda Nikolaevna will celebrate her 87th birthday.

She was almost 5 years old when the war found her in Leningrad, where she lived with her aunt Nyusha, Anna Ivanovna Kirilova, who took her in after her mother's death. It would seem that a 5-year-old girl can remember those days. But memory cherishes all memories.

Nadezhda Nikolaevna begins her story again and it becomes clear that this is never forgotten. The terrible days of the blockade remained forever in her memory. Horror and cold. People were dying every minute and not at all from shells. A total of 125 grams of bread has been given out per child since November 41st. Anna Ivanovna used her ration to feed Nadya as best she could, but these are still the same 125 grams for employees.
Aunt Nyusha died quietly in May 1942, before the Victory there were still long and difficult 3 years. Little Nadia ended up in an orphanage organized in the besieged city, and then in an orphanage in Ivanovo, after evacuation became possible.

Nadezhda Nikolaevna recalls how she was tormented by terrible headaches, these are the echoes of howling sirens and incessant bomb explosions. Thin, exhausted, they said about her "not a tenant." But she survived, in spite of all the deaths.

In Ivanovo, her adoptive parents Sofia Fedorovna and Vasily Petrovich met her. "Mom" is the word that every child dreamed of calling an aunt who came to their orphanage.
Nadya grew up, graduated from a textile technical school and came to practice at plant No. 511, later renamed the Artificial Fiber Plant named after A.I. V. V. Kuibyshev", where in 1955 the second stage of the production of viscose silk was launched.

Here in Mogilev she met her husband Andrey Ivanovich Kravchenko. Having connected his fate with the city on the Dnieper for the rest of his life. And looking at this woman, you understand her stamina, fortitude and optimism cannot be broken by any troubles.

On the occasion of the celebration of the Great Victory, we wish Nadezhda Ivanovna good health, long life, a peaceful sky and all the best.