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Daughter Alexandra: “My daddy was born in the village of Zudilovo near Omsk (20 May 1917). Since childhood he worked on the land. When kolkhoz ‘1 May’ was founded, he became a member. In June 1941 when dad and mum were in the meadows, he received a call to arms. Mama was left behind, pregnant, and I was born on 2 January 1942., his only daughter. I have never seen papa, but mama told me that he was short, sturdy and dark blond. Mama said that she had received letters from the front, but that they were lost in 1953 when our house caught fire.
After the war mama returned to her native soil, to Bystrushka. This is where we received word that papa had gone missing in action. All those years we knew nothing of his fate. Mama waited for many years, hoping that father would come home.
One day a man came by who had been a prisoner of war along with my dad. He said that father had been very weak after the liberation, worn out and sick. Only then did we lose all hope of his return
“One time they drove us to work”, remembered papa’s comrade. “Your father bent down to pick up a cigarette, he fell and could not get up anymore. That’s the last time I saw him.”
What the family does not know and does not learn until April 2005 from researcher Remco Reiding:
Mikhail is admitted to the sick barracks of the POW-camp Stalag VI A. He is liberated in April 1945 and in a severe state of weakness taken to an emergency hospital in Lüdenscheid by the Americans. Where he dies of tuberculosis on 15 May 1945.
The Americans bury Mikhail at Margraten (in the south of the Netherlands). In 1947 he receives his last resting place at the Soviet War Cemetery in Leusden. (grave # 292)
For more information, please visit www.sovjet-ereveld.nl