Leningradskiy Zoopark
Historic zoo garden whose keepers kept animals alive through an eight-hundred-day wartime siege.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Leningradskiy Zoopark in Saint Petersburg opens on September 8, 1941, the day a German bomb hits the elephant house as the Nazis close the siege ring around the city. It follows keeper Yevdokia Dashina's decision that a hippopotamus named Beauty would survive the blockade, and the daily routine she built around it: boiling sawdust into porridge, hauling water from the Neva by sledge. Listen for the old elephant house nearby as you take in what one keeper decided to give her animal.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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