'Russian Anne Frank' diary published
Historians and literary experts have hailed the publication of Lena Mukhina's diary, published in Russian under the title 'Keep my Sad Story', as a sensation in both its vividness and the quality of the writing.
Unlike Anne Frank who died in a Nazi concentration camp, Lena Mukhina lived through the Second World War surviving the entire almost 900-day Nazi blockade of Leningrad which started in September 1941.
Aged 16 when she started recording her thoughts, she witnessed the death of her mother, suffered starvation, and survived countless bombing raids while cataloguing the normal growing pains of a teenage girl at the same time.
"In the beginning, the diary reads like a love story," said Marina Rymynskaya, who typed up the original manuscript. "But on June 22 1941 (When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union) the handwriting changed dramatically. At first I thought that somebody else was writing. It was psychologically and physically difficult to work on this project. After typing up two or three pages I often felt physically sick and had to get some air."...