The Leningrad doctor during the winter of the siege

On 8 December 1941, Leningrad has been cut off from the rest of the country for three months. About 2.5 million civilians remain trapped (including half a million children). Since 20 November, the bread ration has fallen to 125 grams a day for non-workers, a bread cut with 50–60% sawdust and ersatz. The Road of Life, over the ice of Lake Ladoga, has just opened but brings in only a trickle of supplies. Mortality would peak at nearly 100,000 deaths a month in January–February 1942.

In the hospitals, frost coats the walls, the ink freezes in the inkwell, and water, heating and electricity are lacking. To the casualties of the bombardments is added a tide of patients suffering from alimentary dystrophy, then from scurvy, typhus and dysentery. Medicines, dressings and blood run out: lint is replaced with Iceland moss and a vitamin drink drawn from pine needles is distributed.

The medical staff themselves suffer from dystrophy and die at work. Treating becomes a constant arbitration: with a derisory number of calories and heated beds, should they be reserved for the most recoverable cases and for children, or should everyone be treated equally at the risk of saving almost none?