BIOGRAPHIES
Graphic: Christine Kitta
Петр Ионович Белов (1907-1941)
Petr Ionovich Belov is born in the village of Parakhino in the Russian Vladimir Region.
He is taken prisoner in October 1941 and is put in Stalag 352 Minsk. Tens of thousands of prisoners starve to death there in autumn/winter 1941. One of them is P. I. Belov. He dies on December 25, 1941. For a long time his family does not have any details about his fate. He is considered missing since October 1941. Not until 2018 does his great-granddaughter Albina Turchaninova find clues to his death in the Minsk camp. The family has no photo of their relative who died as a German prisoner of war.
Diomid Tavadz, German Armed Forces identity photo, TsAMO, Poldolsk
დიომიდ თავაძე (1921-1941)
Diomid Tavadze is born in Georgia. The student serves in the Red Army artillery service.
On July 3, 1941 he is taken prisoner near Minsk. When he comes to Stalag 321 Oerbke in mid-October, prisoners there have to live in dugouts and improvised shelters. They go hungry. Typhus becomes widespread and thousands die. D. Tavadze perishes on December 26, 1941, a few days before his 21st birthday. The German Army records the cause of death as “overall physical weakness”, a code for starvation.
Andrei Mikhailovich Lemeshko, German Armed Forces identity photo, TsAMO, Podolsk
Андрій Михайлович Лемешко (1908-1942)
Andrei Mikhailovich Lemeshko is a farm worker before he serves as a soldier in the Red Army.
He is taken prisoner by the Germans in mid-October 1941 near Polotnyanka. The German Army transfers him to the annexed Sudeten territories and assigns him to a labour battalion in Mayerhöfen near Bukovany. A. M. Lemeshko dies there on February 6, 1942. The cause of death is concisely noted as “exhaustion”. This is an indication that the prisoner of war starved to death, as did over two million of his comrades whom until spring 1942 the German Army let die.
Mikhail Alekseevich Savarsin, German Armed Forces identity photo, TsAMO, Poldolsk
Михаил Алексеевич Заварзин (1917-1941)
Mikhail Alekseevich Savarsin comes from the Altai Region and is a trained metalworker.
After he is taken prisoner on July 5, 1941 in Riga he is sent via Stalag 321 Oerbke to a labour assignment in Kaltenweide near Hanover. There he is shot to death on October 1, 1941 when attempting to flee. Prisoners of war from other countries are not punished for such attempted escapes. But the German Army had ordered that fleeing Soviet prisoners of war were to be immediately shot without warning, with the firm intention to hit them.
Aidbai Abdurakhmanov, German Armed Forces identity photo, TsAMO, Podolsk
Айдбай Абдурахманов (1916-1942)
Aidbai Abdurakhmanov is born in Karaganda. The Kazakh is a Muslim and works as a teacher.
Five days after the war begins the soldier is taken prisoner on June 27, 1941 near Lida in Belarus. The German Army transfers him to Stalag 324 Ostrów Mazowiecka and later to Grodno. He dies there on March 24, 1942. His grave is in the prisoner-of-war cemetery in Grodno. This hint is on the card that the German Armed Forces used to document prisoners. There is no information on it about the cause of death of A. Abdurachmanovs.
Unknown prisoner of war, Propaganda-troop photographer: Walter Friedrich (detail), 101I-267-0111-37A, Federal Archive, Coblenz
Not known
A German Armed Forces propaganda-troop photographer took this photo in August 1941 in a camp in Smolensk Region.
A six-pointed star is sewn on the shirt of this member of the Red Army. The German Army thereby identified him as a Jew. Jewish members of the Red Army are to be shot and killed. As is the case with most photographs of Soviet prisoners of war, we do not know who the man on the picture is. They are often the last photographs taken of these people before their death.
Ilya Ivanovich Novikov, German Armed Forces identity photo, FSB Archive Smolenk
Илья Иванович Новиков (1921-1941)
Ilya Ivanovich Novikov comes from the Smolensk area and is a farm worker before the war.
On July 7, 1941 this tank unit soldier is taken prisoner in Latvia and in early August is brought to Stalag 321 Oerbke in Lower Saxony. Gestapo officials are looking for “intolerable” prisoners there. I. I. Novikov is brought to Sachsenhausen concentration camp beginning of October and shot in the back of the neck in a facility especially constructed for such purposes. The SS shoots and kills at least 12,000 Soviet prisoners of war here, out of a total of 33,000 murders committed by the end of July 1942 in the territory of the German Reich.
Nina Dmitrievna Karaseva, German Armed Forces identity photo, TsAMO, Podolsk
Нина Дмитриевна Карасева (1922-?)
Nina Dmitrievna Karaseva from Valday serves in a night-bomber flight regiment. She has the rank of a second lieutenant when she is taken prisoner in September 1943.
Six months later the German Army releases her from captivity as a prisoner of war for a labour assignment at the Opta Radio A.G. company in Grünberg, Silesia. Many women in the Red Army are pressured to give up their prisoner-of-war status. As civilians they can be transferred to employment offices which are in urgent need of manpower. The further fate of the 22 year old is not known.
Tamurbek Davlechin, Photo: not known, around 1943, private property of Camilla Dawletschin-Linder
Тимурбәк Дәүләтшин (1904-1983)
Tamurbek Davlechin is born in the Tatar village of Sildyar. The Muslim is a lawyer and university professor of law in Kazan.
He is drafted at the beginning of the war and after a few weeks is captured by the German Army near Novgorod. Via Riga and Fallingbostel he is sent in December 1941 to Stalag XI C Bergen-Belsen, where he works as a clerk in the hospital. In mid-1942 after a year in prison he makes himself available to German agencies who care for Tatar troops. Gravely ill with tuberculosis, from 1943 he spends several years in lung sanatoriums before he lives in Munich starting in 1951.
Aleksandr Aronovich Pecherskii, Photo: not known (detail), private archive of the Petscherskii family
Александр Аронович Печерский (1909-1990)
Aleksandr Aronovich Pecherskii is raised in a Jewish family in Kremenchug. The musicologist and drama expert is drafted on June 22, 1941 and taken prisoner in October.
Via Borisov he is brought to Stalag 352 Minsk and later to an SS labour camp. He is sent from there to Sobibor extermination camp in September 1943. Together with other prisoners, the 34 year old lieutenant organizes an armed revolt there. On October 14, 1943 eleven SS men are killed and over 300 prisoners manage to escape. But only 60 of those who fled survive until the end of the war. Among them is also A. A. Pecherskii.
Ivan Mykolaiovych Demyanyuk, Photo: not known, Wikipedia public domain
Іван Миколайович Дем’янюк (1920-2012)
Ivan Mykolaiovych Demyanyuk comes from a village in western Ukraine.
He is taken prisoner in 1942 and is recruited in Stalag 319 Chelm as so-called Hilfswilliger. The SS trains him at the Trawniki camp. From March 1942 until October 1943 he is a guard at the Sobibor extermination camp. Afterward, the SS transfers him to Flossenbürg concentration camp. In the first years after the war I. M. Demyanyuk lives in southern Germany before he emigrates to the USA in 1951. Charges are brought against him several times. The Munich regional court sentences him in 2011 to five years of imprisonment as an accessory to murder. It is the very first trial in which the judges waive the need for evidence of a specific individual offence.
Antonina A. Nikiforova, end of the 1930s. Photo: not known, Ravensbrück Memorial Museum, Fürstenberg/Havel
Антонина Александровна Никифорова (1907-2001)
Antonina Aleksandrovna Nikiforova, born in Leningrad, is a military doctor.
In October 1941 she is taken prisoner on the Baltic island of Saaremaa and survives various camps in Estonia, Lithuania and Poland. When she refuses a civilian labour assignment she is sent to Majdanek concentration camp. In April 1944 she is transferred by the SS to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she is liberated one year later. Until the end of October 1945 she works as senior physician in the Soviet hospital in Ravensbrück, then she returns. However, only in 1948 is she allowed to live in her home city. Until her retirement, A. A. Nikiforova works as a pathologist in a Leningrad hospital.