Vera Inber-Johnson

Vera Inber-Johnson survived the 872-day Siege of Leningrad as a nurse at City Hospital No. 6. During the siege, she cared for hundreds of wounded soldiers and starving civilians, often working 20-hour shifts with virtually no food or heating. She witnessed the worst winter of the siege in 1941-42, when temperatures dropped below -30°C and daily bread rations fell to 125 grams. After the war, she married a British academic she met at a conference in Moscow and moved to Oxford in 1956, where she spent the rest of her life quietly teaching Russian and sharing her memories of the siege.