Infiltration into prisoner of war camps The Germans were the first to use infiltration into resistance groups in occupied territories double agents and informants. They also managed to penetrate the ranks of prisoners of war, into whose camps English-speaking agents were sent.

Extermination camps Historians and publicists who write about extermination camps - the last circle of Nazi hell - emphasize that the killing of people in them - in Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, Sobibor. Majdanek, Auschwitz - was put on an industrial basis.

Destruction of Soviet prisoners of war According to calculations Soviet historians… Nazi invaders In the occupied territory of the USSR alone, 3.9 million Soviet prisoners of war were destroyed. The Great Patriotic War. 1941–1945. Encyclopedia. M., 1985 One of the darkest and

Some preliminary remarks about prisoners of war When the Allied troops entered Paris on March 31, 1814 (March 19, old style - Ed.), Russian Tsar Alexander I assembled the marshals of the defeated French army and made a speech to them in which he painted a picture

Camps in Germany In the early summer of 1946 we were transported to Germany and placed in a camp near Ulm. There we met old comrades and friends and for the first time learned details about the collapse of the Reich and the fate of eastern regions Germany. Only there many of us fully realized everything

The largest among them were Darnitsky and Siretsky in Kyiv, “Citadel” in Lvov, camps in Uman, Poltava, Melitopol, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and other cities. Almost 140 thousand people died from hunger and disease in the Citadel alone, and more than 57 thousand in the Khorol camps. In Kremenchug, the Nazis killed 40 thousand soldiers and officers by starvation, torture, and deliberate infection of infectious diseases; in Volodymyr-Volinsky - 25 thousand (only in the winter of 1941–1942, 7–8 thousand). In Artemovskaya, in the camp created by the Nazis in November 1941, the exhausted terrible hunger the prisoners drank all the grass. To deprive them of even this “living”, the Nazis fenced the camp with a double fence of barbed wire. In Uman, over 70 thousand prisoners were concentrated in a small area in terribly crowded and unsanitary conditions. Most of them didn't even get a runny fish soup. In the camp in Rava-ru, the daily ration for prisoners consisted of frozen potatoes. Such “food”, exhausting labor, unheated barracks, inhuman punishment, in particular in the form of being tied to a barbed wire severe frosts, led to the death of almost all Soviet prisoners of war.

In the “gross hospital” in the town of Slavuta, Kamyanets-Podil region, doctors spread typhoid, tuberculosis, and dysentery. German guards sometimes killed unfortunates for fun. During the two years of occupation of the city of Slavuta, with the participation of German doctors Borbe, Sturm and other medical workers, 150 thousand wounded and sick captured officers and soldiers of the Red Army were destroyed there.

The head of the prisoner of war department at the headquarters of the supreme commander, General von Grewenitz, gave the order to kill prisoners of war using medical personnel.

In the concentration camp on the territory of the Troitskaya village council of the Milovsky district in the Lugansk region, collective farmers were strictly forbidden to help prisoners of war in any way. Despite this, risking their lives, the peasants still handed over food, clothing and shoes to the exhausted prisoners. Following the order of the commandant of the Pasha camp, prisoners of war, weakened from hunger, beatings, and hard physical labor, were killed and even buried alive in pre-dug holes. 400 wounded were shot and 300 were burned alive in one of the hospital buildings in Kharkov in March 1943.

In Mariupol, in the premises of the training center of the Ilyich plant, there was a camp for prisoners of war, among whom there were many wounded and sick. Knowing about the sympathetic attitude of the population towards prisoners of war, the Nazis organized the so-called relief committee, where people brought money, which was then appropriated by the German command and police. Subsequently, in February 1943, sick and wounded prisoners of war in their underwear were taken by 18 freight cars to the Starokri deadlock and froze there. Skull and crossbones were painted on the carriages with the inscription “Don’t approach, it’s contagious!” The means of destruction was the use of ligaments in the most difficult, often deadly, jobs. In the camp at the Amvrosiivka station in the Stalin region, prisoners of war who had frostbitten hands and feet were driven out to construction railways. Many died in the so-called mine sweeping companies - teams for clearing mines.

According to the commander of the fascist rear forces, an average of 2.5 thousand people died in Ukraine every day. In total, during 1941–1945 fascist captivity, at last count, about 6 million 300 thousand Soviet troops were killed. Of these, over 4 million 700 thousand died, in particular over two million - in concentration camps and prisons that were located by the occupiers in Ukraine.

"IN German captivity»

I. Introduction.

The problem raised in the work interested me, because the history of captivity is a chronicle of the suffering and grief of millions of people. And our duty to them is to try to tell the truth about this dark side of the war, at least to the extent that it is accessible to the researcher today. In our country they rarely talk about the problem of German captivity: official sources long years kept silent about this topic, ordinary people they don’t want to talk about it because it’s too scary and difficult, and the former prisoners of war themselves are reluctant to remember the horrors they experienced. On the one hand, this is a common tragedy for the entire people as a whole, but on the other hand, it is a personal tragedy and the crippled fate of each of those who, for one reason or another, found themselves in German captivity.

The purpose of my research work is to establish and document the fate of my fellow countrymen, those whom relatives and friends considered missing for many years and did not know how and where their military journey was completed.

Research objectives:

Collect and systematize materials on this topic;

Compare data various sources information.

The subject of my research is information about prisoners of war published on the pages of the site http:// www. obd- memorial. ru/ Memorial/ , www. dokst. ru, Volume IV of the Book of Memory.

Basic research methods - comparative analysis documents and statistical data.

The main sources for obtaining information were Volume IV of the Book of Memory, the Internet resource base, and the United Database of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. http:// www. obd- memorial. ru/ Memorial/ , www. dokst. ru.

In my opinion, the topic is relevant, since unfortunately, in our 21st century we are forced to admit that the people’s memory of the Great Patriotic War is weakening and dissolving. With the natural departure of veterans, witnesses of the events, historical memory is erased, acquires new shades, becomes less reliable and more saturated with the “realities” of today.

The past of our country, no matter how difficult it may be, is common property citizens, and its study and preservation in people’s memory is the most important patriotic, moral and cultural task. And in the implementation of this important, national task, the school cannot remain on the sidelines, and I, as a citizen of my country, want to take a direct part in this.

The novelty of the research work lies in the fact that the Book of Memory of the Zavetinsky District does not contain reliable data about our fellow countrymen who were captured during the Great Patriotic War. But with the appearance of documents on website pages http:// www. obd- memorial. ru/ Memorial/ , www. dokst. ru. We had the opportunity to fill this gap.

Practical significance: the materials of this research work can be used in local history work schools, as well as with the new edition of the Book of Memory of the Zavetinsky District.

II. In captivity.

"If the torch of memory goes out,

Life will fade without this fire,

It turns out that the sacrifices are all in vain,

And neither you nor me will exist.”

Rasul Gamzatov

During the war, about 5.2 - 6.2 million Soviet soldiers were captured by Germans, that is, almost the entire army on the eve of the war, including the reserve. Number of prisoners of war captured for a long time is the subject of debate in both Russian (Soviet) and German historiography. When asked how many of our soldiers died in captivity, there is no exact data. Just as there is no such information about our fellow countrymen who were captured by the Germans and died there. Why did such a huge number of Soviet soldiers end up in German captivity? The reasons for the large number of prisoners are given by historians differently:

Unexpected German attack on the USSR, difficult conditions the wars in which the soldiers of the Red Army found themselves led to the fact that large groups of Red Army units, having exhausted all possibilities of resistance and deprived of any support from the command, were captured;

The lack of command staff of the Red Army and the unprofessional level of training of the available personnel due to Stalin's repressions in the army of 1937-38, as well as the expansion of the army in 1939-41, as a result of which 70% of officers and 75% of political workers held positions for less than a year, more than 1 million Red Army soldiers served for less than a year, and the army grew three times; - confusion, panic caused by the lack of competent command and apparent superiority German troops in the first period of the war; Among the Soviet soldiers who were captured by the Germans and died in the camps were our fellow countrymen, the Zavetinians. Analyzing the data from the Book of Memory, I found out that 26 people are listed as killed in German captivity. Most of them were captured in 1941-1942. The unexpected attack of the Third Reich on the USSR, the difficult conditions of war in which the Red Army soldiers found themselves with virtually no qualified command, led to the fact that large groups of Red Army units, having exhausted all possibilities of resistance and deprived of any support from the command, were captured. There were also subjective psychological factors - confusion, panic caused by the lack of professional command and the visible superiority of German troops in the first period of the war.

It is known that the overwhelming majority of Soviet soldiers and officers were captured due to the impossibility of further resistance - wounded, sick, without food and ammunition, in the absence of control from commanders and headquarters.

It was at this time that the Red Army suffered its greatest losses. The overwhelming majority of prisoners were captured in the so-called “big cauldrons”. There is very little data in the Book of Memory about our fellow countrymen who were captured, mainly the last name, first name, patronymic and date of death. Working with the unified Database of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation , www. dokst. ru., I received more full information about our fellow countrymen who were captured by the Germans and partially restored it.

Concentration camp prisoners from the Book of Memory

The Germans had a well-established system of prisoner of war camps. Camps for prisoners of war were divided into 5 categories: assembly points (camps), transit camps (“Dulag”, German Dulag), permanent camps (“Stalag”, German Stalag), main work camps, small work camps. Collection points were created in close proximity to the front line or in the area of ​​the ongoing operation. Here the final disarmament of the prisoners took place, and the first accounting documents were drawn up. The next step movements of prisoners were “dulags” - transit camps, usually located near railway junctions. After the initial sorting, the prisoners were sent to camps, which were usually permanently located in the rear, away from military operations. As a rule, all camps differed in numbers; they contained a large number of prisoners.

Soviet military personnel who were captured were transported on foot or by rail trains from places of captivity (mainly Belarus, Ukraine) to German camps located in Poland, Germany and others. European countries. Having analyzed this information about prisoners of war, I found out that Gorodnichy Pyotr Denisovich, a resident of the village of Zavetnoye, was and died in a camp on the territory of Belarus [Appendix 2].

Soviet soldiers who were captured were initially held either in the front-line zone or in “dulags” located in the operational rear of German troops. From there they were moved to permanent prisoner of war camps - “Stalags”, and command staff- to officer camps - “oflags”.

Our fellow countryman Khimanych Ivan Polikarpovich went this way; from “Information about a prisoner of war” it follows that Khimanych Ivan Polikarpovich was captured near the town of Millerovo on July 1, 1942, and was presumably in the “Dulag 125” camp (Durchgangslager - transit camp), or "Miller's Pit", and then was sent to Germany to the camp "Stalag No. 326". Working with the unified Database of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation http://www.obd-memorial.ru/Memorial/, I found that our fellow countrymen after captivity ended up mainly in Stalags. Pyotr Nikiforovich Medvedev was in Stalag X D, created in July 1941. on the outskirts of the Münster military training ground in Witzendorf without any premises or other infrastructure. Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war “lived” here in earthen holes and other primitive homemade “auxiliary housing.” IN total in this camp, more than 16,000 Red Army soldiers died from hunger, cold, abuse and disease.

At the cemetery for Soviet prisoners of war in Mainholz, an obelisk was erected in 1945 in memory of more than 16,000 fallen Soviet prisoners of war. Among them is the name of Pyotr Nikiforovich Medvedev, who died in captivity on March 20, 1942 (information from the website http://Stalag X D). A resident of the village of Torgovoe, Ulyanov Ivan Ivanovich, was in “Stalag VIII E (308)”, located in the town of Neuhammer, and died there in October 1941 [Appendix 3].

Working with the unified Database of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation http://www.obd-memorial.ru/Memorial/, found out that most prisoners of war died in the camps for the first time for 6-7 months. Shebalinovets Kuznetsov Andrey Ivanovich was captured in July 1942, and died in October of the same year, Lozovoy Ivan Timofeevich was captured near Minsk in August 1941, and died in September 1942 in “Stalag IV B”. The reasons are as follows high mortality there were many. In addition to daily exhausting physical labor difficult situation prisoners of war was also due to extreme poverty of food. Soviet prisoners of war died en masse in German camps, especially in the prefabricated camps in which they were kept for the first time after captivity; they were often destroyed purposefully. In an effort to mass exterminate Soviet prisoners of war, the authorities of Nazi Germany condemned the soldiers of the Red Army to extinction from hunger and infectious diseases, without providing them with any assistance. medical care. For example, on the territory of Poland alone, according to the Polish authorities, 883 thousand 485 people were buried. Soviet prisoners of war who died in numerous Nazi camps. One of them was our fellow countryman Egor Ivanovich Osichkin, who died in a concentration camp in Poland [Appendix 6]. In the Book of Memory, Yegor Ivanovich is listed as missing in action, and there are many such soldiers. I have established that 19 missing people died in fascist captivity.

Missing people, concentration camp prisoners

During further search work, I found that 16 residents of the Zavetinsky district, who went to the front, were captured and died in German concentration camps, are not listed in the Book of Memory of the Zavetinsky district. But they go through the database http://www.obd-memorial.ru/Memorial/ those who died in German camps.

Not in the Book of Memory

It was difficult to restore this information since the data from the Zavetinsky RVC archive was not preserved, so I had to use http://www.obd-memorial.ru/Memorial/. and data from the Main Personnel Directorate People's Commissariat Defense of the USSR on irretrievable losses of spacecraft and German digitized documents. And, unfortunately, we can only operate with these facts.

The Third Reich kept strict records of prisoners of war. The Germans registered every newly arrived prisoner. Registration of prisoners of war was carried out by filling out individual cards on German in specially fenced off blocks. The cards were filled out by several prisoner-of-war clerks from the work team. For Soviet prisoners of war in the Reich Stalags, only card No. 1 was filled out. It contained all personal data: surname, year and place of birth, religious views, father's name, nationality, military rank, social affiliation, place and date of captivity and the number assigned to him as prisoner of war, including photograph, fingerprints and punishments during captivity.

Many of our fellow countrymen not only ended up in the same camps, but were also captured in the same territory. A resident of the village of Fedoseevka, Dmitry Denisovich Shevtsov, and Nikolai Ilyich Shpakov, a Zavetinian, were captured near Chernigov in the fall of 1941 .

Our two fellow countrymen Nikolai Egorovich Linkenko and Nikolai Denisovich Mudry from the village of Kichkino were captured in the summer of 1941 near the city of Odessa and were sent to camp 4 Vaslui on the territory of Romania. Whether they knew that they were fellow countrymen or communicated with each other, we can only assume, but both were buried on Romanian soil.

And the Zavetin Shpakov Nikolai Ilyich and the resident of the farm Alekseev Nikitenko Fyodor Afanasyevich were simultaneously in “Stalag IV N (304)”, where they died in 1942. Our three fellow countrymen Mikhail Semyonovich Gaivoronsky, Gavriil Efimovich Lagoshin, Ivan Trofimovich Lozovoy were prisoners of Stalag IV Century.

In the summer of 1942, near Kharkov, Efrem Romanovich Vasilchenko and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Gurov, Ivan Polikarpovich Khimanych and Vladimir Ivanovich Danilov were captured near Millerovo, but by the will of fate they all ended up in “Stalage VI K (326).” Camp "Stalag VI K (326)" was founded in the spring of 1941. Forest plot with an area of ​​400 m by 1000 m, near the small village of Ezelgaide, 7 km from railway station Hevelhof land North Rhine-Westphalia was carefully surrounded by barbed wire. There were machine guns around, guarded by sentries armed with machine guns. Here the Nazis created a death camp, which was listed in their official documents"Stalag VI K (326)" - "Stalag VI K (326)". The postal address of the camp is “Stalag No. 326 (VI-K)”, Forelkrug near Paderborn. I found out about this on the website http://Stalag326.live journal.com/.

Prisoners of war in this camp usually stayed from 3 to 6 weeks, but since transports came often, while there were usually 6-7 thousand prisoners of war in the camp, at times their number reached 15-20 thousand.

According to the recollections of camp prisoners, to escape the cold (information from the site http://Stalag326.live journal.com/.), prisoners dug holes in the ground and covered themselves with overcoats. However, such pits were often trampled by a crowd of prisoners in cases of panic, and those sitting in them died. In the camp we were fed once a day with rutabaga and spinach soup.

The camp was replenished by trains systematically arriving from assembly points (Durkhlag). Our fellow countrymen came from such transit camps. The camp had the significance of a central distribution camp to which prisoners of war were taken from eastern regions. Here they were sorted, checked, divided into teams and sent out of the camp. Stalag VI K (326) supplied labor to agricultural enterprises, factories in Westphalia, for the construction of the Atlantic Wall, and for work in the Emsland marshes. And, first of all, it was the main supplier of prisoners of war for work in the coal mines of the Ruhr region and the Rhine.

More than half a century has passed since then. Over the years, several new generations of people have entered into life. For them, the Great Patriotic War is a distant history, the glorious past of their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. We must not forget that the memory of the past war with its defeats and victories, of the military valor of those who defended their native honor, freedom and independence of the Fatherland in difficult times, is our national treasure, priceless wealth. As is customary throughout the civilized world, it is necessary to learn lessons from it, not to repeat old mistakes and not to make new ones.

Looking at the photographs of these people, I experience a keen sense of bitterness and compassion. How much humiliation, moral and physical suffering befell them! Yes, they did not reach the victorious May, they died in German concentration camps, but they were captured on their own land, defending this land [Appendix 7,8].

Remembering the war, the heroism and courage of people, and fighting for peace is the duty of everyone living on earth. It now depends on us whether the memory of the victims will be preserved.

Personal cards of prisoners of war.

Personal card No. I had to be filled out for each Soviet prisoner of war. But practice has shown that this order was fully implemented only in camps on the territory of the former Reich - Germany. The cards were standard forms in DIN A4 format, printed in printing houses in German. On the graphic sample (front and back sides), made and translated into Russian in the Documentation Center, the following fields to fill out during registration require some explanation:

The type of camp, camp number and often its “geographical” name were indicated.

Under the type of camp the following could be indicated:

Stalag - a permanent camp for privates and sergeants,

Oflag is a permanent camp for officers.

Dulag is a transit camp (there was no permanent registration number assigned to it).

Camp numbers were indicated in either Roman or Arabic numerals:

Roman numerals were given to camps located on the territory of the Reich, and corresponded to the number of the military district in whose territory they were located. The camps of one military district differed in additional capital letter(given in alphabetical order as they open). Arab numbers received camps in the occupied territories. The numbering of the camps was not based on territorial principles, but according to camp teams.

If a camp team moved from one place to another, the camp it accepted was given the number of that particular team. It should be noted that at the beginning of the war, many camps on the territory of the Reich were given double - Roman and Arabic - numbers, which were written either in brackets or through a dash.

In German, the word “patronymic” does not exist as such, so the cards had a “father’s name” column. In conditions of war and the mass arrival of prisoners of war in camps, a photograph of a prisoner of war was not always pasted up. Often, instead of a photograph, there is a stamp with race indicated on a red background (for example: “Asian”). If there was a photograph, then it indicated the camp in which the prisoner of war was registered and his number. This indicated the address of the next of kin who should be informed, for example, in the event of the death of a prisoner of war, or to whom the prisoner of war would like to send a letter.

At the bottom of the front there was space for additional notes, for example:

Record :"Gem." m. Abg. Liste No..............Stalag.............

According to the lists of those who departed No....... Stalag ... "

Such a record indicated that the death of a prisoner of war was reported to the Wehrmacht Information Service (WAST) and this could be traced by raising the lists under the specified number, from the specified number and the specified camp.

In addition, PK I was often stamped with a standard seal:

† am 20.6.43

Begrab. Russ.-Friedhof

Tr.-Üb.-Platz Zeithain Parzelle:

died 06/20/1943

buried in the Russian cemetery

Landfill Zeithain Square:

Block: Row:

But not all camps had such a standard stamp; in others, the date of death of a prisoner of war was often written down by hand and burial data was made arbitrarily. In the event of the death of a prisoner of war, PC I with the attached half of the prisoner of war tag was sent to VASt.

Seal:

OKW-Befehl v. 10.1.40 bestätigt.

Order supreme command reported on January 10, 1940.

In other camps they put a standard mark:

“Belehrt über das Verbot betr."Verkehr mit deutschen Frauen"

It is stated that it is prohibited to have sexual intercourse with German women.

or : “Die Bekanntgabe des Verbots des Verkehrs Kr.-Gef. mit deutschen Frauen vom 10.01.40 ist erfolgt.”

Informed about the prohibition of sexual relations among prisoners of war

With German women according to the decree of January 10, 1940.

On the back of the card there is information about the vaccinations the prisoner of war received, his stay in the infirmary, serving his sentences,

transfers from camp to camp or to work teams.

Personal card (PC) III. It had a size of DIN A5 format.

It contained mainly information about the stay of a prisoner of war in work teams within the same camp.

http://www.dokst.ru/node/1167/

Posted in order of arrival.

Gulevich Alexander Kazimirovich , born March 19, 1909

Gulevich Alexander Grigorievich , born October 19, 1898

Gulevich Andrey Leontievich , born October 10, 1920

Gulevich Vasily Ivanovich , born September 14, 1903

Gulevich Egor Ivanovich , born 01/01/1921

Gulevich Ivan Alexandrovich , born 04/25/1920

Gulevich Ivan Andreevich, Born 26.01.1916

Gulevich Nikolay Alekseevich , born December 25, 1920

Gulevich Pavel, Born 12/20/1913

Gulevich Petr Adamovich , born 1910

Gulevich Petr Adamovich , born 01/01/1910

Gulevich Petr Ivanovich , born 01/07/1917

Gulevich Sergey Emelyanovich, Born 09/08/1913

Gulevich Timofey Kuzmich , born July 18, 1907

Gulevich Andrey, born 1909

Gulevich Georgy Dmitrievich , born 09/13/1924

Gulevich Wilhelm , born 1922

Gulevich Kuzma Iosifovich, born January 25, 1919

Gulevich Petr Adamovich, born 01/01/1910

Gulevich Andrey, born 1909 (card file of the Mühlberg prisoner of war camp).

Collected and systematized: Gulevich Pavel Ivanovich.

Ekaterinburg, Russia.

They hid it from us for a long time the terrible truth- During the Great Patriotic War, more than five million Soviet soldiers were captured. The absolute majority found themselves in captivity through no fault of their own - because of the mistakes of their superiors, entire armies were surrounded. Captivity was hell. But soviet people lived and died in captivity without betraying their homeland. The time has come to remember everyone by name - he wrote in the newspaper "Life" about the grandson of a soldier who is looking for missing prisoners of war. Here is my text, thanks to Murat (he is in the photo, in another photo is his grandfather Yakub, below is a photo of the memorial at the site of the prisoner of war camp where the Red Army soldier Shevatsuk died) for his noble work:

"The Damned and the Forgotten

The grandson of a soldier who died in fascist captivity is looking for heroes who fell in captivity

Almost two million Soviet soldiers were tortured in camps by the Nazis

33-year-old Murat Shevatsuk returns to their homeland the Soviet soldiers who died in fascist captivity - their names, surnames, faces.

During the Second World War, more than five million Red Army soldiers were captured, almost two million of them died. And they found themselves cursed and forgotten - the soldiers who found themselves in the hands of the enemy were called cowards and traitors by Soviet leaders.

From many of the fighters who perished in captivity, not even a handful of ashes remained,” Murat Shevatsuk tells me. – But information about those killed in fascist camps was preserved on the prisoners’ registration cards. Until recently, these documents were classified. Now they are available to everyone, and thousands of families have a chance to find missing relatives.

...I look at copies of documents and am amazed at the meticulousness of the German bureaucracy: not only surnames, first names, patronymics are indicated, military ranks, nationality, age and place of birth. It is written down where and under what circumstances the soldier was captured, anthropological data is given, his occupation before the war is indicated, even character traits and habits are not forgotten! There is information about injuries, illnesses, and fingerprints have been taken. Most forms have photographs attached - the whole spectrum is visible in the eyes of emaciated people. human feelings- from fierce hatred of the enemy to despair and fear. How the prisoners dreamed of returning home and living to see Victory!

The archives of the Russian Ministry of Defense contain mountains of such captured registration cards, but only a small part has been disassembled and digitized.

This is a huge job that will take years,” says Murat. “Time is rushing, the children of the soldiers who died in captivity have already grown old, and soon there will be no one left who would remember their names and faces.

Soldier

...Murat’s grandfather, Private Yakub Shevatsuk, also did not return from the war. He went to the front, leaving his wife, two daughters and two sons at home. No letters from him or funeral were brought home to the Adyghe village of Tauykhabl.

The soldier's youngest son, Aslanbiy, was born in 1941, and knew about his father only from the memories of relatives. They said that Yakub could have stayed on the collective farm with his family, but did not ask for a deferment from conscription.

The family learned about the soldier’s fate only now, in the era of computers and the Internet. Murat began looking for information about his grandfather on specialized historical sites that house databases with digitized archival documents.

I didn’t find anything for a long time,” says Murat. - as if such a soldier had never existed! A thought occurred to me: what if my grandfather’s last name or first name was written down with an error in the documents? Tried it different variants, it turned out that the clerks mixed up one letter.

On my grandfather’s registration card it was written that he was captured on June 5, 1942 in Millerovo near Rostov, then he was kept in Stalag N 334, near the city of Belaya Tserkov Kyiv region. I wrote to the archives of Russia and Ukraine, but they told me that there was no other information. Then I sent a request to Germany. The Germans responded, and I received a copy of another card, which indicated that Private Yakub Eredzhibovich Shevatsuk was transferred to Stalag N365, where he was listed as disabled and died on April 22, 1943 from exhaustion. Most of the boxes were empty, which made it difficult further searches. But then the experts came to the rescue military history, with whom I became friends on the Internet. They compared samples of the camp clerks' handwriting, and based on the characteristic features of filling out the cards, they helped to establish the burial place of my grandfather.

Stalag No. 365, in which Private Shevatsuk died, was located in Ukraine in Vladimir-Volynsky. This creepy place- During the war years, the Nazis tortured more than 56 thousand prisoners of war here. But even there, Soviet soldiers behaved courageously and tried to raise an uprising. In 1942, a funeral team of prisoners disarmed a Nazi convoy and died giving battle to the enemy.

One of the prisoners of Stalag N365, who was lucky enough to survive until the Victory, described the conditions of detention in captivity in his memoirs:

“The hunger was such that we ate all the grass in the camp, belts, bones, horns, hooves, stripped the bark and leaves from the trees, ate hay, boots, after roasting them. And they fed us like this: in the morning “bread” - 100-150 grams of millet with sawdust and lunch - 1 liter of “gruel” - water and bran. For six months there was no bathhouse, millions of lice ate us, typhus broke out, there was no help for the sick, they were simply dragged into a semi-basement room and there Soviet people were dying on the floor, in the dirt.”

Memory

Murat did not immediately tell his father that he had found his grandfather’s trace - he was afraid that he would become so nervous that he would become ill with his heart.

I tried to tell him about the search in general outline, without details. But on Victory Day, he finally made up his mind, gathered all his relatives in his father’s house, and showed them copies of his grandfather’s documents.

My father’s eyes were wet with tears,” Murat tells me. “He cried not from pain and sadness, but from joy - because now we all know for sure that our dear grandfather fought bravely, was seriously wounded in battle and died in captivity, remaining faithful to the oath. We know the place where he is buried, and we will definitely visit him and lay flowers.

The family placed a photo of Red Army soldier Yakub Shevatsuk in the house in the most honorable place, and now his great-grandchildren are looking at it. But Murat does not stop searching.

Other soldiers who died in captivity should also return to their native lands, he shares his plans. – I decided to collect and publish registration cards of prisoners born in Adygea. I have already found the documents of four hundred people, this is a whole battalion - Adygeis, Russians, representatives of other nationalities. Local council veterans supported me, now we are raising funds to publish a book. This will be the first such project in Russia, I hope that it will be continued and supported in other regions. After all, this is a tribute to the memory of unknown heroes of the war; we must free them from the most terrible captivity - from the captivity of oblivion!
Grigory Telnov, first published in the newspaper "Life"

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