Leningrad_x000D_ 14.09.1931 - 24.07.2003_x000D_ Lydia Polozhenskaya - my mother. During the siege of Leningrad, she studied at the choreographic school (there was one group, the others were evacuated) with a friend, Tamara Remigino. They went there 12 km on foot. The girls were members of the concert team, performed in hospitals, in military units. In the brigade, they were the youngest, they came up with ballet numbers themselves, sang front-line songs._x000D_ Once they were sent to perform on the destroyer "Strogiy", frozen in the ice of the Neva River near the Volodarsky Bridge. The ship's commander was Captain 3rd rank Vladimir Novak. He ordered the sailor Ovcharenko to feed the young artists, but the girls refused, saying that they had not earned yet. They sang "Dugout", "Blue handkerchief", "Evening on the sea raid", danced polka, "Waltz - Caprice". Novak suggested to the girls to become patrons of the destroyer. Bilge machinist Ivan Hnyp said: "It is OK, girls, we will deduct blood for you from that fascist!"_x000D_ The girls came to the destroyer on Sundays. They knew the entire ship by heart, admired the cleanliness of the mechanisms - the pride of the chief mechanic Viktor Abramov._x000D_ During the September assault, when the Nazis wanted to capture Leningrad, the commander of the first gun Makovsky was killed, and the commander of the fourth gun Sukhorukov was seriously wounded. Dive bombers darted across the sky, but they could not hit the destroyer, and this was a great merit of the fire control commander Pyotr Pavlovsky._x000D_ Once Tamara and Lida came to the place where the destroyer stayed and did not see it. After the war, life separated the girlfriends. Tamara stayed in Leningrad, Lida went to Moscow. "Strogiy" reminded of itself again in the late 1950th. The soloist of the dance group of the Red Banner Ensemble together with the entire team went on tour in England. The ship was leaving the Leningrad port. And suddenly at the pier Lida saw "Strogiy"._x000D_ The years went by. And now Lydia’s eye caught a note in the "Red Star" newspaper about the Museum "And the muses were not silent", created in one of the Leningrad schools. And she wrote to the Director E. Lind: "Help to find Tamara Nemygina and the surviving team members of "Strogiy". Soon the answer came: the Museum invited Lidia to a meeting of participants of the Leningrad front-line brigades. The evening was led by Eugene Lind: "I want to tell you about two girls," and he told us a familiar story. "Let me introduce them to you. Teacher, choreographer Lydia Polozhenskaya and a music teacher of the kindergarten Tamara Nemygina." Two women in different rows simultaneously gasped and rushed to each other. And then Lind came up on stage and the former commander of "Strogiy" V. Novak, crew members Mikhail Litvinov, Victor Abramov, Peter Pavlovsky, Sergey Butenko, Ivan Khnupa, David Chalyk. The sailors greeted their patrons with tears._x000D_ They were photographed, but they did not see anyone, they were crying, hugging, they had something to remember.