My father - Yakov Melenevsky

During the siege my father was in Leningrad together with me. My father lost 25 kgs. We slept very close to each other, and at night it often seemed to me that he was already dead. He was not enrolled because of contagious tuberculosis. He worked at the "Krasny Napilnik" factory in Obvodny embankment and left me alone in our municipal apartment, as he did not leave the factory for weeks. This photograph was taken on the 7th of May 1941 especially for the Board of Honour  at his factory (one month and a half before the war burst out).