siege, 1941-1944

In Leningrad in 1941, when Russia and Germany are at war, fourteen-year-old Georgi vows to help his family and his city during the terrible siege.

Seventeen-year-old Lev Beniov, having been arrested for looting the corpse of a German paratrooper, is given the opportunity to be released from jail if he, along with a soldier imprisoned for desertion, can secure twelve eggs to be used in the colonel's daughter's wedding cake by traversing the dangerous streets of Leningrad.

Describes life in the Russian city of Leningrad during World War II.

Describes the nearly 900-day siege of the Baltic port city of Leningrad, during which more than one million Russian civilians died from stravation, cold, and German shells.

In Leningrad in 1941, when Russia and Germany are at war, fourteen-year-old Georgi vows to help his family and his city during the terrible siege.

Eighty-two-year-old Marina Buriakov, preparing for her granddaughter's wedding in Seattle, finds it more and more difficult to hold onto memories in the present, retreating often to the 1940s when, living in the basement of the Hermitage Museum with other employees during the German siege of Leningrad, she created a memory room in her mind furnished with the museum's priceless masterpieces.