Memorial plaque to be opened in a St.Petersburg barber shop which worked during the city's siege

On Thursday, a memorial plaque was opened in St. Petersburg in commemoration of the hair-dressers who worked in besieged Leningrad during the war, said the RIA Novosti correspondent.

Several hairdressers' and barber shops functioned in the besieged city during the war. The plaque has been put up in one of them situated in house No.54/3 on Nevsky Prospekt. The barber shop began to function on the first floor of a house in the city's main street even before the 1917 revolution and continued to work during the wartime siege - between 1941 and 1944. At present there is a beauty parlour there.

RIA Novosti learned from Sergei Lebedev, a Petersburg historian, that during the years of the blockade among the permanent clients of the barber shop were soldiers going to the front-lines. It was also visited by actors and actresses of the Alexandrinsky theatre and the Musical Comedy which were situated not far from it.

Lebedev also said that he was personally acquainted with Maria Khodachek who was in charge of the barber shop during the blockade years. Lebedev said Maria told him how she and her colleagues warmed on kerosene stoves the water they brought in pails from a well in the yard, dug trenches and extinguished incendiary bombs.

None of the people who worked in the barber shop during the war are alive now. And the memorial plaque designed by St. Petersburg artist Alexei Kotsyubinsky, will be a reminder of the hard work they were doing during the war.

The words "The work of barbers who worked during the blockade years proved that beauty will save the world."