Residents at a Ukrainian nursing home recall how they helped the Russian army as it fought Nazi Germany in eastern city
As a volunteer working alongside the Red army as they fought their bloody battles against Nazi Germany in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, Livdmyla Lishtvanonva, 99, would pick up unexploded shells and ammunition with her bare hands to help clear the streets for the fighting men and women. “Even off the roofs of buildings,” she recalls with a smile. “We were fighting for our land.”
Kharkiv, eight decades ago, as it is today, was the location for fierce battles in which many lives were lost and Lishtvanonva says that she and her mother, a nurse, had to leave their home city for a village on its outskirts after their apartment was destroyed in a bombing raid.
