"Father came home just once and told us, "We will stay and die in our city'," remembered Mrs Savelyeva. She would never see him again. In September 1942, her two-year old brother Gennady died of diphtheria as the intensity of the battle increased, and hunger and disease began to take hold of the thousands of civilians who remained in the city. She and her mother and grandmother abandoned their home a month later – it was soon swept from its foundations and left in a crumpled heap by the force of an explosion.