in the best summer of my life. i am a student now and i'm going to the village with mom we will have strawberries on the terrace and taking my favorite guitar. what a beautiful summer what a wonderful life is waiting for me. chinese friends made me a guitar on the theme is this so i started playing the seven string guitar i played quite well he played it well to some level that i started when i was about ten years old. he saw me in the park it was a sunny day she was too shy to approach me i saw him in the corner of my eye there was some sentimental song playing in my mind i'm trying to remember it now but i can't something sad for some reason maybe it's because i'm leaving the city for the whole summer and won't see him until

a lot of people. started drawing the picture. nobody expected it to in that way through a good note. raised

up a dozen using methods and there were no passenger trains so we walked to let a grat. we couldn't recognize it though tape was crisscrossed over all the windows all the shop windows are blocked with sandbags one step down but they left some of the statues like the bronze horseman that is is that even that was also covered with saddle bags will last. so we could recognize our own city in a day the whole city was locked down. this street seventy eight my last friend left leningrad. at least mom and dad are with me we're not going anywhere we will stay until the end. i know this war will be over soon they said on

the radio that it won't be for long. we are a big and strong country. i know it will be over soon i will see him. he will be back and we will be happy. to get over there by the bush but the love and the first bombs hit house number one hundred night on netsky prospect because the and my dad's factory took the germans wanted to bomb everything the most costly railway station and the train tracks leading to moscow. they were dropping bombs everywhere there were so many casualties when i heard about it i rushed to my dad's factory and met my geography teacher the head of the gaddafi. he knew my dad well video they had served in the imperial army together he told me of your father's alive don't worry about him that's yet to get. told me there was no place to escape to till he just had to carry all. those bombay exams but lost their

legs or arms or just more little. he's somewhere on the front no fighting the fascists he must be really close the germans are already in the outskirts of leningrad and i haven't got a single letter from him because he is the wounded i still dream about. three of them when there was a fishmonger next to us on the rubenstein street for word while you are free to take up several times of study a tank fair three or above with a shoe pyramid server caviar crabber on display what are the use the shops were always full of goods the rule of only two for the food when we pay you one day mom went on which sold out all the shelves were empty all your. things disappeared like that in a flash. but after that they started the food rationing. this

is terrible were threatened with starvation we only have one hundred twenty five grams of bread but soon will only have bread crumbs a famine is coming a real one. there hasn't been a single day that i felt full you leave the table still feeling as though you want to eat. mom asks me are you full i say of course i am. because i don't want to upset or. i don't think we can survive we will never eat properly again. at least we still have run mom makes flat bread from it it's not very filling but at least you feel as though you have something in your stomach for a little while at least. dad brought us to run that it's what's

left over from making some flour. used to feed it to cattle. it was very difficult to chew but mom tried to make it enable. she boiled it as much as she could even adding trying. to eat but there was nothing else so that's what we had. bottles of syrup they called it was sort of like sweetened water with real cool would reveal well someone dropped the bottle you threw up out of the awful no it smashed i'm also too into the ground was very unsure when i swear this happened i saw it with my own eyes lured the people were crawling around trying to lick what they could off the ground with the words used to warm this is what the seeds did to

people feel the ship of the. divine media in the vampire they bombed the but die of ski warehouses the fire lasted for a few days it was awful the fire was huge the whole of letting grad could see it if it was the main storage place for all the food in the city. they bombed it so much that the entire storage facility was leveled to the ground zero good people were eating the earth because it had small traces of sugar in it i tried to eat it as well but i couldn't it was nothing else to eat so many people ate that dad brought home some glue were afraid at first but then mambo that and it turned into jelly we ate it with vinegar that's what saved us.

i just want to cry cry and cry some more i have such a heavy heart i'm sick of everything. even of life. starvation and famine everywhere and people keep dying sleds carry the dead through the streets from morning to night leningrad population has decreased dramatically almost two million people have already died. i visited our neighbor today her father died yesterday she was wrapped in a sheet and taken away in a sled. my only distraction now is my books. but we delivered books that the wards had quite often i would read to the wounded soldiers. used to. there's

a bill once i went to one ward and said what should i read which they said anything but nothing about war yet he still but so i decided to read pushkin's if getting any get into them at that was a good he writes about a duel and that luckily one of the soldiers said already you promised to read nothing about war but these two have just shot each other up well that was quite awkward. and the hospital today i wanted soldier told me that if you had died they would have told me by now. neither food nor letters can get through this siege just be sure to survive i will wait for you i have all your pictures my most treasured possessions. in the sky did my first royal from a window with care of me and this is where the sphinx is can be same. here in my sketch pad which. we had to cover the sphinx as with wooden boards. to

a sketch about that but then we had called the view from the arctic out of the window. today is my birthday today i felt full dad brought two small frozen any ends and a hundred grams of raisins his whole ration. mom cooked noodles and mixed oil and bull down eons with. the noodles were lovely and grease. the ne and completely had the taste of grease the first course was jelly made from. mom brought home one hundred fifty grams of meat today what a pleasure it was to eat just a little meat i tried to make it last as long as i possibly could it was such bliss i just want to eat eat and eat but most importantly we are still all together and

honor my mom dad and me. another spring in leningrad i used to love it and now i hate it so much it brings no love anymore only death. starlit nights just look like a mass grave. another summer without you. for a whole year i haven't received a single letter from you. i know you cannot be alive anymore i will never be happy again. in the spring is my last. in april all the people of leningrad went out to clean the city streets we were expecting an epidemic because the dead were everywhere and there was a roll sewage flowing past houses because the sewage system was not working. so

they told everybody to go out and clean up the city and everybody did. that even those who could barely hold a tool in their hands went out to break up the ice. leningrad became so clean it was a real joy to see it. in may the trans started working again. i will never forget this day i can't believe dad is gone. news of his death was too sad and. even today this morning we talked about him thinking he was alive remembering different things about him and we were happy that he looked relatively well. it turned out though that by then he was already gone. i

cannot believe he's gone it can't be how i wanted to be a mistake it's hard it's terrible we didn't even say goodbye. a few days ago i broke my mare into pieces i was waiting for a disaster and my fears came true in the most horrible way. i cry all the time. there was nobody with it was buried in a mass grave. china for example they're growing exactly the way the west grew they creating more credit in the system they creating more debt in the system the rich are getting richer and the poor poor eight hundred million people live less than fifteen dollars a day in china and that doesn't seem to be changing it's the number one problem the

chinese government has right now you know it seems to me that what the rich have done is that you know they made themselves so comfortable but in the process of destroying the entire process of where they got their wealth from in the first place the government stood me to look at people as well for me to worry about these sort of into generational doggedness things that. i think if you're a billionaire as i say this is a real danger to society that these people were going to be sort of like sitting there at the top of the telling both majority want to do. right see. first street. and i think the true. on our reporters with their. instrument. to be in the.

but. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution and. that's because a free and open process is critical to our democracy albums. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and our press we've been a hydrogen lying handful of friends dash all corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once told us i'm tom hartman and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on will we go beyond identifying the problem trucks rational debate and real discussion critical issues facing up to five different go ready to join the movement and walk a bit like. my

mom was very ill. that one day your dad said we were not going to the bomb shelter. that night there was incredibly heavy bombing. it was a direct hit on that very shelter and everyone was buried underneath here nobody survived more than. two people were too exhausted to even to remove the rubble and it was so cold. the temperature was still certain degrees below zero. and it didn't get any better but if you read the mud the entire month of january february and march it was so cold thirty to forty degrees below zero she knew she could never even at the fire go out no water would freeze instantly. we took the slats over to

but couldn't prospect. we put little buckets on to the slats there was a hole in the ice close to the riverbank. although sometimes we went there to get water. it was easy to lose the buckets when we climbed back up the embankment but i gather the water would splash over the rim of the buckets or. pulling those sleds was very difficult because the ground was completely frozen yellow a lot but still we kept going and taking those two buckets back home now we drag that water and use it to wash there was nowhere else to get it and. the bombing is not as bad as the starvation and. i'm so then starvation has caused mom stomach to swell she's in the hospital. i will not

see her again. the doctors say she won't survive. my dear mom i can't leave you i don't want to live without you i'm all alone. mommy. childless i spent new year's eve of nine hundred forty three alone he was very difficult. we had three separate apartments joined by a long corridor but all of them were empty because everyone had been evacuated so i was alone in three apartments you sit with all boards e.l.o. as it was dark because we had no electricity. no electricity no water. there was no heat. and we had no firewood either. the worst has happened i am sick i can't stand up and i'm freezing and they're breaking up wooden

houses and leningrad that's. but it is thirty degrees below inside it's only minus ten. water freezes in doors every day go by tram to the demolished houses i just have the energy to carry a single small plank i'm not using the firewood just in case mom suddenly comes back. to use of course they let me see her in hospital yet when i went expecting to see her round puffy face which they saw you but i just saw a skinny woman saying she will my mama wish my dear mom that she looked so thin like there. i'm so happy i have recovered i've been back on my feet for two days when i saw myself in the mirror i was scared i saw a completely unfamiliar old and skeletal face i now look at least thirty but that

doesn't matter even if i do look like a skeleton the most important thing is i'm not sick. comrades people of letting grads this siege of leningrad has been broken by the heroic red army soldiers have built a railway across our liberated country the vul destroyers the railway workers will be arriving today with the first train from the heartlands. january seventeenth one thousand nine hundred forty three the focus of the day the siege finally ended when we heard the noise from our soldiers guns we were so happy . the scenes took millions of lives. even now we know exactly how many. was.

when the. ok it was over people started sending in food from bush all over the country. i'm feeling better now i go to the alexander nevsky monastery to pick grass my make soup with it it's a pity there are no nettles in leningrad they're quite tasty we have bread now the only thing that upsets me still is the bombing it's more frequent now. will we stay alive. i even want to play my guitar again i just wish the bombing of leningrad would stop. it on the chin i was really scared by the air raid sirens isn't it that there were lots of them but you should be anti aircraft guns fired planes were flying and there was a lot who are all over the sea or it was terrifying and the sirens carried on and

one after the other i have no idea how our soldiers and officers cope with all that . when the bombing is over a look to the sky i don't know if god does exist but i feel he's up there some. they say he doesn't exist but if you do please let my love come back down here to. look why i spent most of the seats on the rooftops. bus one like nobody told us to do that. but they were always dropping fire bombs though so we had no choice but to get up there to save our hosts fergus would go. mom says i'm crying in my sleep i said that i was scared of the bombings i saw him in a dream wounded and then dead i saw his pale face and his blue eyes looking at me.

his lips were white he's begging help me save me i'm waiting for him the genius cut short by a bomb. did it when you go the germans were shelling the city that way you see us they knew the location of every tram stop you deal with so we had to move them every single day and yes they did as you well don't they in the last battle and you know they were firing at the trance tops in the field people who were going to work when the attack started there was no way to escape but it is different is that the shelling was quite far from the buildings around in the border and a son. but that the view there was no cover to hide under the wall so there were plenty of casualties. they were firing at maturity homesick he was. trying to target crowded places. they did that it were quite a long time. from leningrad today is the twenty seventh of

january nineteen forty four our moment of triumph because there are. three the blockade is over we won we have survived i want to cry to cry of joy. mama survive to i miss my dad so much my dear dad we are alive how great it is to feel like i think and. today there will be fireworks people are exhausted but they will still take to the streets my dear dear diary he's alive has returned from the front he's lost weight i have not been this happy since before the war for the first time in my life i want to cry because i am so happy. we will walk along the river spring will come to leningrad again. now i know that

we will have a long and happy life. i am certain. you

know my guitar is here i can get it i see anybody in please might even help me with my guitar. thank you your welcome. oh sorry well you know how to treat it better than i do sorry i can play.

gentlemen i get all the way. to give you even a few hundred a day coming across the gunners believe it. i'm going to soak it up for the members of the fair we've got people coming in littered with criminals we've got people from who knows where in the world this is a united states i'm very tough by the way you go to sure i was worried that

they may not know life they live on mars you know mars. so we pick up things like. turbans prayer rugs so when we know they do they're coming from the middle east a concentration camp. concentration camp. we've got it hasn't the white house is not even want to disclose the fact it is a stranger. put

it on your home and watch a bank holiday face at the same time you know. good to have you with us today.

live pictures now from central kiev where protesters are holding strong rioters take over the justice ministry in kiev and refuse to obey the opposition leadership who are trying to oust the country's government and refuse to take no for an answer . syria peace talks in geneva give hope to the residents of aleppo as they return to their devastated homes the city has seen some of the heaviest fighting during the civil conflict. and young voters in the u.k. become increasingly disenchanted with politics and politicians sparking concerns of a low turnout for next year's general election.