The Russian Embassy in Vienna awarded blockade runner Gerda Pekni

The Russian Embassy in Vienna awarded the badge of honor "In honor of the 80th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi blockade" to the participant of the Izvestia project "The Great Victory", Austrian Gerda Peckni. This was reported on April 13 by a correspondent of Izvestia.

The woman was born in Leningrad in 1936 in a family of Austrian anti-fascists. First, her father emigrated to the Soviet Union, and then her mother.

Pekni still often remembers how she hid from Nazi raids in the basements of Leningrad and how impatiently she waited for her father to return from the grocery store during the Great Patriotic War.

The blockade survivor met the victory in Ivanovo, in an orphanage, where she was evacuated along the Road of Life. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, Pekni returned to Austria with her parents. Upon her return, her father was awarded the order for his work in Leningrad during the siege, and her mother worked as a translator from Russian throughout the post-war years.

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WWII veterans told Izvestia about their journey during the war years, as well as about meeting the joyful news of the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945. One of the sections of the Izvestia News Center's special project "The Great Victory" dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the end of the war is dedicated to the stories of the winners of Nazism.

Thus, Galina Pavlovna Yakimchuk, a resident of Kursk, suffered severe trials: at the age of three, she and her extended family found themselves in besieged Leningrad, her father went to the front, from which he returned disabled in 1942. According to the woman, the children were able to survive the blockade only thanks to the efforts of their mother, who desperately got food for them.