Luise Davies

"I was born Luise Posvistak, in Leningrad, Russia, on 27 May 1928. The city was originally known as St Petersburg. It had been planned and built by the Russian tsar, Peter the Great. History records that he founded it on 27 May 1703, exactly 225 years to the day before I was born. He named it after his patron saint, St Peter.

At the outbreak of World War 1, in 1914, it was renamed Petrograd, to avoid sounding German, as Russia was then at war with Germany. Then, in 1924, it was renamed Leningrad, in honour of the famous communist leader, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

St Petersburg, as it is now known once again, is a world-famous, picturesque city, situated at the head of the Gulf of Finland, on the River Neva, which flows out into the Baltic Sea.

My mother, Helene Boegenhold, was German, and my father, Anton Posvistak, was Ukrainian. He was born in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine."


Luise Davies sadly passed away on Christmas Eve 2019, in the year of the 75th anniversary of the end of the siege of Leningrad.