Maria Sergeevna Volkova

Maria Sergeevna Volkova was a child survivor of the Siege of Leningrad, one of the most devastating events of the entire war. She was seven years old when the siege began in September 1941 and endured 872 days of starvation, shelling, and bitter cold. Her father died of hunger in the first winter; her mother survived by working in a bread factory. Maria was evacuated across frozen Lake Ladoga on the "Road of Life" in March 1942. After the war she became a historian specialising in the siege. She emigrated to Oxford in the 1990s and gave lectures at the university about her childhood experience.