A collection of diaries of children who survived the war

MOSCOW. In honor of the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory, the Argumenty i Fakty publishing house has published a unique book that contains diaries of children who lived during World War II. Presentation of the collection “Children’s book of war. Diaries 1941-1945 ”was held in Moscow on April 14. For all the time since the Great Victory, for the first time, all the diaries of the children of the Great Patriotic War, which were found in home libraries, archives and museums, are collected in one large volume. More than half of the found 35 children’s diaries were published for the first time.

At a press conference during the presentation of the book, Ilya Glazunov, national artist, full member of the Russian Academy of Arts, who was 11 years old at the time of the occupation of Leningrad, noted that this work is a document of history. He said that in his life it was the worst time. “The years of the blockade took away relatives, first grandmother, then dad. The Germans could not take away only one thing - unconditional faith in the victory of our great country and Russian soldiers, ”he said.

According to Glazunov, the special value and uniqueness of this book is in the priceless memories of children. Thanks to this collection, everyone will be able to see a terrible inhuman war through the eyes of a child, feel all the pain and fear transmitted in mournful lines from concentration camps and ghettos, from besieged Leningrad, from the front line and from the rear, from Germany, where children were sent to forced labor.

“We are the last generation to truly remember the war. I started keeping my diary at age 9, and the first entry is dated January 1, 1942. She wrote down 10 notebooks and mostly wrote about food. The food was the most important. The cards were taken away and killed for them, ”said the Leningrad blockade Tatyana Grigorova-Rudykovskaya.

The work "Children’s book of war. Diaries 1941-1945 ”was released in a total circulation of 10 thousand copies, most of which have already been transferred to the UN headquarters, major museums, archives and libraries of the Russian Federation, to the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, to headquarters UNICEF, as well as the museums of Dachau, Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

The editor-in-chief of the Argumenty i Fakty publishing house Nikolay Zyatkov noted that the project is non-profit. He hopes that the published work will allow the younger generation to take a fresh look at the events of World War II. And most importantly, it will remind you through what horrors and with what sacrifices the Russian people went through to victory over fascist Germany.

Svetlana Korableva © Gallerix.ru