[Presenter] Meanwhile Donbass again under AFU shelling
The nationalists were hitting from grads, used mortars
[GFX] *Grad: 122-mm multiple rocket launcher
[Presenter] Shells are bursting in the DNR. In the crosshairs Ukrainian underground formations Donetsk...
[Laura Petrovna Ganich] As a child. war, and in my old age I'll die with war.
I never thought that something like this would happen.
I never thought
[Title] Laura's Two Wars
[GEO] Donetsk 2023
[Laura] On the fourth floor.
Here's our lab
[Laura] Ninotchka, hello. [Nina] Good morning!
[Laura] This is where I change.
My work day begins.
I'm pouring reagents for hemoglobin, white blood cells.
They don't take it from your finger now, they only take it from a vein now.
[Okay, Laura Petrovna.
[Woman] Hold your weapon [Laura] Nice to meet you
[Laura] I'm very energetic.
35 years in this lab
I was like that when I was younger, You couldn't keep up with me.
I work fast now. Just like when I was young,
I keep up with the youth.
[Laura] What can I ask you? [Woman] Scraping for...
[A swab? Go that way.
[Woman] On the table, yes, may I? [Laura] No, no, over there, in the other office.
[Laura] Husband's in the military. First trip was to Yakutsk.
Three years
I worked there in a bacteriological laboratory
There were mice, rats, rabbits, things like that.
And when they started working with polio,
[Subtitles] Laura Petrovna Ganich
[Laura] it's already more closer to human
We had a whole aviary of monkeys, long-tailed monkeys.
We had them sick, paralysis. paralysis, we used to take their temperature.
So that's how they behaved.
Then he brought me to Donetsk. And I started working here.
I really want to work
I'm afraid of loneliness.
Why do I work?
Not because it's hard for me to live, it's because I'm lonely.
I'm doing fine on my own.
I go to the market on my own, I go to the store on my own. and I go to the store, all by myself.
[Author] Laura Petrovna, here You're going, aren't you scared?
[Laura] Scared of what? [Well taking the bus, taking the trolley bus?
[Laura] Absolutely, even in my mind. there's nothing wrong with it, ever.
Although right here around 24ka, yeah, there's a stop right there. The bus got hit
[GFX] DONETSK April 28, 2023
[Author] Do you remember how the war started here?
[Laura] What's not to remember, it's...
it all started in '14
And the further it goes, the worse. The worse.
How long this will go on, it's hard to say, of course
Но уже надоело. Очень надоело
В детстве война, и под старость умру с войной
Никогда не думала, что случится такое,
никогда не думала
[GFX] Archival Footage 1936-1939
[Laura] I was born in Leningrad on April 17, 1936.
[GFX] Archival Footage 1941-1942
[Laura] At age 5, the war began
The bombing was so bad it was horrible
I saw the corpses being carried, all this I saw.
[GFX] 1941-1942
[Author] And if you compare that war that you had as a child and...
[Laura] How can you compare it? How can you compare it?
I mean, it's the, it's the, it's the the complete opposite.
[GFX] Archival Footage 1941-1944
[Laura] There's famine, there's there's devastation, there's Germans.
We had a square house. And in this there were only five families left alive.
The rest of them all died.
We lived with just the four of us:
grandma, mom, my brother and me.
Grandma watched my brother, I went to daycare, my mom worked.
And my dad, as soon as the war started, they took him to the front right away,
[GFX] Archival Footage 1941-1944
[Laura] and he three months later, got a a notice from his mom that he was missing in action.
Brother stopped walking from starvation
Grandma used to give him her bread. And she died.
They put her in a cold room for a month.
We had her lying there for a month.
So that we would to get a bread card for her.
[GFX] Archival Footage 1941-1944
[Laura] Mom worked
Anyway, then she she was starving.
And in 1942,
[GFX] Archival Footage 1941-1944
[Laura] I think it was in September month, we were evacuated to Kyrgyzstan.
In 1944 we returned to Leningrad.
[Olga Berggolts] Leningraders! Dear friends! Comrades in arms!
[GFX] Olga Bergholz, Russian and Soviet poet, announces the end of the Siege of Leningrad – January 18, 1943
[Olga] and all the hardships of frontline life! The blockade is broken.
Congratulations to you, darlings!
[Laura] When I was 9 years old, I went to school.
Anyway, I finished eight grades I finished and got in.
to the First Leningrad medical school
Graduated from it,
and I was sent to the Institute of Experimental of medicine in the virology department.
And in '59 I got married.
We lived with him 48 years, soul to soul.
He was a very good man. I don't think there are almost
Maybe that's what love is.
He used to tell me all the time he kept saying, "I love you."
And he asks me: "Do you "Do you love me?" - "I do."
Often.
It was so interesting, especially when I was young.
I'm not alone,
technically
I have children, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
And life is lived alone.
If my husband were alive,
even if my Daughter of mine, I wouldn't be working.
Because she was very close to me,
she used to come to my house a lot. I'd always bake pies,
So I would also maybe not work either.
And so I'm practically alone.
What, they're far away from from me, they're all working.
They lived here. And my husband worked in Mariupol.
And I was just calling on the 23rd the 23rd, and I see her crying.
"Mommy, I don't have time!" she's crying, she's crying.
I say, "Tanechka, what is it?" "We're packing, we're leaving urgently."
They left in what they were wearing.
They didn't take anything with them.
They came to the West, to Lvov. And then they left.
[Author] Well does she call you? Or do you like, do you call each other?
[Laura] Well, she calls. very, uh, rarely, for one thing.
She found some kind of loophole there, but it's too expensive to call.
And just like that, if someone comes to I'm gonna come over and I'm gonna talk to them like this.
[Author] Would you like to to talk? Do you want to talk?
[Laura] Oh, really? Yes
Hello?
[Daughter] Hello. [Laura] Daughter, hello!
[Daughter] Hi, Mommy. Hi.
[Laura] Daughter, how are you doing? [Daughter] Oh, nothing. We're on vacation,
[Daughter] we're on vacation at this... at the zoo.
[Laura] Oh, my God, oh, my God my God, when are we gonna meet.
[Daughter] We'll meet someday. [Laura] Yeah, someday, that's exactly what "someday" is.
[Laura] All right, daughter, kiss you all. [Daughter] Okay, mommy, come on, I'll give you one too! Bye!
[Laura] Bye-bye!
Oh, thank you so much!
I'm just having these conversations, I have...
it's hard on my soul.
[Author] It turns out that you have one child left on the side of Russia,
and the other child stayed on the side of Ukraine?
[Laura] Yes.
Oh, I haven't seen you in a long time.
Oh, it's so good to see you to see you, my boy
Son works as a driver,
takes gasoline to Mariupol there, to Berdyansk.
Eldest grandson is fighting
He fixes these cars, carrying shells or whatever.
[Laura] How are you doing, Sashulya? [Son] It's good.
[Laura] Did you fight in Mariupol? [Son] Yeah, assault... was a storm trooper.
[Laura] There were three such that I barely survived.
[Son] How's your health? [Laura] Oh, Sasha, my feet hurt.
[Laura] What I'm doing, what I'm doing, I'm doing nothing
[Son] She doesn't want to stay home. [No, I don't want to stay home.
[Son] She says, "no, it's easier with people."
[Laura] Still. some kind of incentive. And so...
It's terrible to stay home, It's terrible for me to stay at home.
I'm afraid for my children. I'm not afraid for me anymore.
I'm an atheist, I don't believe, I didn't go to my church. to my church, but I pray to God,
that only they live, that that nothing gets into them.
Of course you do, how beautiful it is around here.
Roses,
Christmas trees,
cleanliness, order,
everything is fine
I like Donetsk very much!
Did you like Donetsk? It's a beautiful city.
Here we had a flowerbed last year.
It was something...
[Woman] We have a town They call it "a million roses."
[Laura] Yeah, it's the city of a million roses. [Woman] And we love roses, we love too, plant roses
See how we have pomegranates?
[Laura] These ones. It was so side by side, like, like side by side
There were 6 or 7 of these just on the other side.
[Woman] Maybe air defense? [Laura] Hell if I know, I don't know.
[Laura] I feel sorry for the boys. Our boys are dying.
[Author] Did you ever think that you'd have to live through two wars?
[Laura] Never.
I just had in my mind, I told you. I told you, it was in my mind, it was a thought.
What if something happens, what if there's a war?
How will our people get together?
Because they've gotten sloppy.
[Subtitles] Laura Petrovna Ganich
[Laura] Bored
Lazy
What patriots were like during the during the war. What are the patriots like now?
Wussy.
Turns out you're not. You're all clenched into a fist and pulled together, that's how our people fight,
when grief comes
Heroically
Heroically fighting