September 1941. The Wehrmacht stands at the gates of Leningrad. Cut off from the world, the city awaits 29 months of struggle for survival. Nearly one million civilians will lose it.
Winter is coming. Everything is missing in the besieged Leningrad. German bombs and artillery shells are falling from the sky. They'll kill less than two percent of the defenders. The rest will die of hunger and disease. This will be one of the bloodiest and longest sieges in modern history.
Alexis Peri allows us to look at this tragedy through the eyes of people trapped in the city. It tells about the tragic struggle for life in a world that collapses. He has 125 unpublished journals written by people of all backgrounds. In this terrible time, for many inhabitants, writing diaries becomes a tool of survival, a tangible reminder of their humanity. The Leningrad authorities themselves encourage it, hoping to commemorate the epic battle.
The horror of the siege of Leningrad through the eyes of its people:in Alexis Peri's book "Leningrad. Journals from the besieged city ” (Horizon 2019 sign).
However, the authors of the memoirs will become victims not only of Hitler, but also of Stalin. The city's fate will prove inconvenient. After the blockade was lifted in 1944, Kremlin officials censored publications describing the torment and arrested hundreds of Leningrad war leaders. Many will be lost. Logs - now dangerous to their authors - will be hidden in homes, kept in archives and forgotten.
Alexis Peri recovers lost stories by shedding light on one of the darkest episodes of World War II.