Leningrad. September 1941. At the very beginning of the blockade, a female elephant named Betty lived in the zoo.

She was about fifty years old. She had arrived in Petersburg (at that time Leningrad was still called Petersburg) back in 1911.

Betty survived the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin’s NEP (New Economic Policy), and Stalin’s Five-Year Plans. But she did not survive even the first weeks of the blockade.

On September 8, 1941, the blockade ring closed. That same night, during an air raid, three high-explosive bombs fell on the zoo. One of them exploded right next to the elephant enclosure, destroying the guardhouse and collapsing the roof and walls. Betty found herself pinned under piles of brick, beams, and debris. The zoo guard died nearby.

The elephant did not die instantly. She was crushed, severely wounded by shrapnel and debris, but she was still alive. Her low roar was heard across the city, mistaken for the sound of sirens. Zoo staff, along with a small number of soldiers, attempted to clear the rubble by hand and with shovels (the authorities allocated machinery for rescuing people in other parts of the city), but under such weight, it was impossible to complete the task in time.

Betty groaned for a long time, almost two days, until her strength finally left her. They were never able to pull her out alive. She died under the ruins, one of the first victims of the blockade at the zoo.