Tanya Savicheva
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Among the documents presented at the Nuremberg trials by the prosecutors was a small notebook that once belonged to a Leningrad schoolgirl Tanya Savicheva. There are dates on six pages, with a death behind each one. Six pages — six deaths. Nothing else, only brief and concise records and a final remark:
Grandma died on 25th Jan., 3 PM 1942
Leka died on 17th March at 5 AM 1942
Uncle Vasya died on 13th Apr. at 2 o'clock after midnight 1942
Uncle Lesha on 10th May at 4 PM 1942
Mother on 13th May at 7.30 AM 1942
Savichevs died. All died. Only Tanya is left.Tanya_Savicheva.jpg
Tanya Savicheva
Tanya Savicheva was born on January 25 1930. She was the youngest child in the family of a baker Nikolay Rodionovich Savichev and a seamstress Mariya Ignatievna Savicheva. Her father died early, when Tanya was only six, leaving Mariya Savicheva with five children — three girls, Tanya, Jenya and Nina and two boys, Mikhail and Leka. The family planned to spend the summer of 1941 in the countryside, but the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany on June 22 ruined their plans. All of them, except Mikhail, who already left, decided to stay in Leningrad. Everyone of them worked to support the army. Mariya Ignatievna sewed the uniforms, Leka worked as a planer at the Admiralty Plant, Jenya worked at the munitions factory, Nina worked at the construction of city defences. Uncle Vasya and uncle Lesha served in the anti-aircraft defence. Tanya, then only eleven years old, was digging the trenches and putting out the firebombs.
One day Nina went to work and never came back. She was sent to Lake Ladoga and then urgently evacuated. The family was unaware of this and thought her dead. After a few days in memory of Nina, Mariya Ignatievna gave to Tanya a small notebook that belonged to her sister and that would later become Tanya's diary. Tanya had a real diary once, a thick notebook where she recorded everything important in her life. She burned it when nothing was left to heat the stove in winter, but she spared her sister's notebook.
Tanya_Savicheva_Diary.jpg
In August 1942 140 children were rescued from Leningrad and brought to Krasny Bor village. All of them survived... except Tanya. Anastasiya Karpova, a teacher in the Krasny Bor orphanage, wrote to Tanya's brother Mikhail, who was lucky to be outside of Leningrad in 1941: "Tanya is now alive, but she doesn't look healthy. A doctor, who visited her recently, says she is very ill. She needs rest, special care, nutrition, better climate and, most of all, tender motherly care". On May 1944 Tanya was sent to Shatkovsky hospital, where she died only a month later, on July 1, 1944.
Nina Savicheva and Mikhail Savichev returned to Leningrad after the war. The diary of Tanya Savicheva is now displayed at the Museum of Leningrad History and a copy is displayed at the Piskarevsky Memorial Cemetery.