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