"I remember one day in 1942, when Piotr Petrovich Firsov, chief
engineer of the Hermitage, in our presence started breaking the lock
on a rusty metal door leading to the cellar. Upon opening the door we
saw a sea of water and floating in it porcelain and chandeliers that
had dropped from their rotten ropes into the water. Many were from the
Pavilion Hall. In the pitch darkness we gathered from the bottom of
this sea sunken things filled with mud and sand."
From the memoirs of
O.E. Mikhailova
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