heart failure, having lost a third of her body weight. Yevdokiya Grigorievna refused to go to hospital as she felt the hospitals were overrun enough already. She was buried in a mass grave in what is today's Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery where there is a memorial complex to the victims of the siege. Savicheva recorded her death under the page heading for the letter Б with the words, "Grandma died on the 25th of January at 3 o'clock, 1942." Tanya later admitted that at the behest of their grandmother they postponed the burial and kept grandmother's ration card until the end of the month, thus the official date of her death was recorded as February 1, 1942. On 28 February Nina disappeared. On the day of her disappearance Leningrad had come under heavy artillery fire and the remaining family presumed her to be dead. In fact Nina Savicheva had been evacuated without warning across Lake Ladoga on the dangerous Road of Life ice route. Nina had no opportunity to send word to any of her relatives, the ice route being reserved only for essential food, fuel, medicine and evacuation purposes. She remained ill for several months and was not able to return to Leningrad to find out what had happened to her family until 1945. Savicheva made no reference to Nina in the notebook. It was Nina who eventually found the diary on returning to Leningrad. Grandmother's death was followed by Savicheva's brother Leka in March 1942. He had tried earlier in the war to enlist in the military but had been turned down because of nearsightedness. Leka had become a promising engineer, and was also a talented musician. He worked long shifts at the Admiralty Shipyard, often working a second shift into the night. He died in the shipyard's hospital on March 17, Savicheva hurriedly recording this in her diary under the letter Л, "Leka died March 17th, 1942, at 5 o'clock in the morning, 1942." On April 13, Uncle Vasya (one of her father's brothers) died at the age of 56. Before the war three of Savicheva's uncles lived together in a nearby apartment but when the siege began the family moved in together. Uncle Vasya had served in the First World War but had been refused this time around on account of his age. Vasya and Tanya were said to be very close and Tanya spent many hours