The family album is a huge, immense album of all our stories, captured, collected together, and therefore true and unchanging in time. The tradition of collecting and keeping a family album has become a part of our life. Every family has photographs that leave the memory of dear people. Perhaps every family has a family album. Leafing through our family album. It contains photographs that have turned yellow with age. Native faces look at me from them: these are my mom and dad, grandmothers and grandfathers, great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers. Today I want to tell you about my great-grandmother - Dina Ivanovna Ivashchenko, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Each past year separates us from the events of the Great Patriotic War. And how valuable it is to hear the voices of the few witnesses of heroic deeds and great battles. Their stories, their words are like echoes of the past. On June 2, 1941, my great-grandmother Dina was only 14 years old. Quite a girl, she graduated from only 7 classes. Carefree childhood and youth were provided for her: her parents, four older sisters and two brothers loved and pampered her. June 22, 1941 in Grozny, where she was born, grew up and lived almost all her life, great-grandmother Dina, was a wonderful sunny day. Together with a girlfriend, they decided to go to the center, to the cinema. But suddenly the tram stopped, panic began. Not understanding anything, they returned home. The neighbors all gathered in the common kitchen at home and discussed the latest news - Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. How? Why? What will happen now? No one knew. But the foreboding of a terrible misfortune united everyone at once. In the same summer, 1941, Dina and high school students were first sent to the village of Asinovskaya, then to Chechen-Aul, to pick cotton. When a hospital was opened in the city, and the first wounded began to arrive, the whole class went to help make dressings, write letters to the soldiers' relatives. They worked almost round the clock and no one grumbled. The slogan “Everything for the front! Everything for Victory! " - was not an empty sound. Then, as part of labor brigades, Dina took part in the construction of defensive fortifications in the Argun direction: the Nazis rushed to the oil storage facilities of the Caucasus. Dina's native Zavodskoy district of Grozny was a strategic target for them, since there were the main reserves of the Red Army's oil products. Air raids began literally from the first days of the war. There were no bomb shelters, only dugouts were hastily dug and wooden logs were thrown - that's all. Once Dina did not have time to reach the shelter, and before her eyes a well-aimed German ace hit the tank with fuel - deafening explosions were heard, fiery oil poured along the ground. “At that moment, I stood rooted to the spot and, without looking up, watched the roof of the container fly straight at me. What force turned me around and made me run - I don't know. Legs felt as if they were full of lead. I had the feeling that I was standing still, that I would never get to the dugout ... It was very scary! " - said the great-grandmother. In 1942, factories were hastily evacuated from Grozny. The elder sister of Alexander, working as the chief engineer of the Lenin plant and participating in the evacuation of the plant, took Dina with her to the city of Guryev. Guryev was a major railway station in Kazakhstan. There for some time I had to live and study and work. In 1943, the opportunity arose to return to the hometown of childhood - Grozny. She worked as a switchboard operator. The work is exhausting. But nobody complained. With what impatience everyone was waiting for the Victory. How they rejoiced and passed on to each other this joyful news of Germany's surrender, our Victory! "I so wanted to live to see Victory!" - said great-grandmother Dina. In the future, her fate was quite successful: family, husband and three children, six grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and one great-granddaughter - the main wealth of her life. Talking about that time is hard and painful, so veterans are more silent and sparingly wipe away a tear. Patriotism and the desire to win were companions of those years. Our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers gave us a great example of perseverance and love for the Motherland. And already we - grandchildren and great-grandchildren - say thanks to all veterans and home front workers for the opportunity to live, love and create under this gentle blue sky. On March 30, 2013, my great-grandmother passed away. But she will forever remain in our hearts. And her photos are in our family album.