The article is devoted to the study of the problem of reconstructing the lifestyle of children and adolescents in the occupied territories of the Leningrad region in 1941-1944. The purpose of the article is to determine the limits of the effectiveness of using diary entries when studying the specifics of the lives of children and adolescents under the occupation of Soviet territories during the Great Patriotic War. The direction of the research is to identify the informative possibilities of a personal diary as a special historical source. Personal diaries are highly informative compared to other types of sources of personal origin. The appeal to sources of personal origin as the main type of sources when studying the lifestyle of children and adolescents under occupation is due to the need to analyze private events that are not reflected in official documentation. The analysis of such information in combination with the data of the "big history" (official documents) allows us to develop a multifaceted, voluminous and versatile vision of everyday practices. This article focuses on studying the specifics of the perception of major historical events by children and adolescents who survived the Nazi occupation and identifying the features of their perception and fixation of historical reality in the framework of personal diaries.
