Nina Savicheva Blockade survivor, sister of Tanya Savicheva, an 11-year-old Leningrader, who wrote in her diary: “The Savichevs died. They all died. Only Tanya remained...” Country: Russia

The Life of Nina Savicheva

Nina Savicheva, the younger sister of Tanya Savicheva, was known as a survivor of the Siege of Leningrad during World War II. Tanya, an 11-year-old girl, recorded in her diary the words, "Savichevs died. Everyone died. Only Tanya is left..." This tragic entry became one of the tangible evidences of the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Nuremberg Trials, and Tanya herself became a symbol of courage in besieged Leningrad.

However, few people know that Tanya was mistaken in her belief that all the Savichevs had perished. Nina Savicheva, Tanya's sister, still resides near St. Petersburg. A correspondent from "Nedelya" had the opportunity to visit her. Every year, former survivors of the Siege of Leningrad receive greeting cards from the President of Russia. On the back of these cards is always a photograph of Tanya with her short hair and black ribbon. Alongside the photo are pages from her haunting diary, in which she recorded the dates of death of her closest loved ones. Like other pensioners, Nina carefully keeps these presidential cards in an album, next to the original photograph of Tanya.

Nina recalls, "These sheets were from my notebook. At the beginning of the war, I worked at the design office of the Neva Machine-Building Plant. It was a homemade manual on mechanics. I remember the pencil, a mechanical one, I used it to line my lips."

Nina Nikolaevna lives in a house that was inherited from her mother's sister, Kapitolina. Her husband, a paramedic, actually attended to Tanya. Nina's mother wanted Tanya to be born in the countryside, so she left Leningrad in her eighth month of pregnancy. Nina reminisces about those times when the family would gather around the dining table. Her mother would place a small basket in the center, where Tanya would sleep, and they would all watch, afraid to make a sound and wake the baby. Out of the eight children born to Maria and Nikolay Savichev, only Mikhail and Nina survived until peacetime. However, when Tanya wrote with her pencil, "Only Tanya is left," she was convinced that all her relatives had disappeared in the hellish siege.

Tanya's brother, Mikhail Savichev, was the only one in the family who did not experience the war in Leningrad. On June 22nd, he found himself in Pskov. On the occupied territory, he joined a partisan detachment, where he spent several years. His family, who remained in their apartment on Vasilyevsky Island, believed he was dead. Tanya's diary first appeared at the end of December 1941.

In 1964, "Pioneer Pravda" appealed to the young residents of Leningrad to search for Tanya Savicheva. Documents describing the last days of her life were found in the then Gorky region. "Savicheva Tatyana Nikolaevna passed away on July 1, 1944," the entry in the local hospital's journal read. "Diagnosis: intestinal tuberculosis." The pioneers also discovered Tanya's grave. In 1972, a tombstone was erected there, followed by a monument in the form of a wall destroyed by bombs, with pages from her diary attached to it.

The authorities in St. Petersburg wanted to ceremonially reburial Tanya Savicheva, but Nina Nikolaevna and her son Valery (Tanya's nephew) were against it. "Disturbing the remains of my sister is immoral, and it is simply unfair to the people of Shatki," Nina Nikolaevna reasoned. "The burial place of my sister was determined thanks to the kindness of the residents of this town. One can pay tribute to Tanya's memory at any monument to the blockade in St. Petersburg... In our city, by the way, there is a woman who looks exactly like Tanya - my granddaughter, Svetlana. We noticed the resemblance when they were children. Even family members confused the photos of Tanya and her granddaughter when they stood side by side in an album. Svetlana now has her own daughter, Nastenka. If not for the war, Tanya would have looked just as beautiful with her child in her arms..."