Vera and Toma.
I've seen people who were hungry and emaciated. I was emaciated myself. It was terrible to look at the old nuns or Heinsha dying of malnutrition. But the nuns were old and Heinsha's tuberculosis evidently became active... But those girls, Toma and Vera? Was it a crime to leave blockaded Leningrad and, under lethal conditions, to use the lifeline across the Lake Ladoga and then fall into the Death's arms here, in prison? I couldn't see their fault at that time. It dawned on me much later how dangerous it was to listen to their stories. And to what kind of brainwash all Leningraders who were leaving the city in an organised way must have been subjected.