Our house was a place of communication between lost friends and relatives. Many people found each other with our help. My husband’s friend Vladimir Konokotin, a sapper, was injured during the Synyavinskiy Heights Battle and was sent to a hospital on Poklonnaya Hill. After his recovery he came and left us his details, because his house was destroyed, and he didn’t know where his wife and his daughter were.

I was still waiting for my mother and didn’t want to go away with strangers. But after all, as an orphan, I was given to an elderly and childless couple – Fyodor Bogdanov and Evdokia Bogdanova. They adopted me as their daughter and treated me kindly. But times were very hard and hungry. We ate only frozen potatoes and roots. Once a horse was killed by a shell on the street. So many people came at once that after a minute only a patch of blood was left.