By 8th, September 1941 German group of armies "Nord" finally approached Leningrad and besieged the city for the long 900 days.

Utterly difficult was the first year of the siege when food supply stopped and dire famine ravaged Leningrad.

An eye-witness, neurosurgeon I.Kudrin recollects:

"Bombing of Leningrad started. Artillery shelling became worse and worse day after day. Evacuation stopped. Food products disappeared from the shops. Last thing I managed to buy was 6 cans of spinach purée. My wife grumbled at me later when I brought them home. The only hope was for the food cards. But after bombing of Badaev food warehouses, food supply for cards went worse. Daily share of bread shrank to 125 grams (1/4 pound). Every day we lost our medical staff dying of starvation. I was hardly moving and often fainted. In November it started snowing. Nobody was able to clean the streets and soon all the traffic got stacked in the deep snow. Citizens walked  carrying water, firewood, dead bodies on kid sleighs.

Even worse was December and January when severe frosts (-41ºC/-41ºF) broke out. The streets were soon filled with frozen dead bodies left by relatives who had lost the strengths to carry them away. I calculated I would have died by February 1942.

Every day my wife and I made long way to work on foot. I was afraid of checking my weight. I hadn't been so skinny since my student years. Everyone around got easily irritated, feelings between men and women disappeared. As to hygiene, we only washed faces and hands. But we didn't have either flees or angina, or flue, or appendicitis. Many suffered from constant urinating because of constant drinking  warm water.

It was cold in our flat because of the broken glass in windows. Home temperature hardly ever reached 3ºC (37ºF). We celebrated New Year party with dishes of fried cat, boiled leather and oatmeal waste.

I kept on working in the hospital making 5-6 surgery operations per day. But I soon couldn't walk myself and got to hospital till June."

Leningrad survived due to the "Road of Life", the way laid on the ice of Lake Ladoga . Under severe bombing trucks loaded with bread made their way to besieged Leningrad. Few of them managed to reach the city. But even those gave life to thousands.

In January 1943 Leningrad siege was broken and railway connected the city with the rest of the country.

A year later, on 27th January 1944, Leningrad siege was totally lifted and the city was liberated.

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