juneboba reblogged
Remembering the Kyrgyz Woman Who Adopted 150 Children During the Siege of Leningrad
“A legend”: this is how Kyrgyz and Russian media are referring to Toktogon Altybasarova, 91, who sheltered 150 children evacuated from Leningrad over the course of a two-and-a-half-year blockade during World War Two that cost up to a million lives.
In 1942, as Nazi Germany bombarded Russia’s second city, now called St. Petersburg, 16-year-old Altybasarova, who died last week on June 11, spared the evacuees from hunger and hosted them in a dormitory for local factory staff in her remote home village of Kurmenty, northeastern Kyrgyzstan.
She had just been elected head of her village council at the time.
Altybasarova determined the children’s age and gave them first names. Supervising a team of carers, she saw the children through to adulthood as they left to work and study in different parts of the Soviet Union.
According to Kyrgyzstan’s state broadcaster, Altybasarova kept and treasured letters from her adopted children until her death.
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