Heroes of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 and their exploits

The fighting has long since died down. One by one the veterans are leaving. But the heroes of the Second World War 1941-1945 and their exploits will forever remain in the memory of grateful descendants. This article will tell about the brightest personalities of those years and their immortal deeds. Some were still very young, and some were no longer young. Each of the heroes has its own character and its own destiny. But all of them were united by love for the Motherland and the willingness to sacrifice themselves for its good.

Alexander Matrosov

The pupil of the orphanage Sasha Matrosov went to war at the age of 18. Immediately after the infantry school, he was sent to the front. February 1943 turned out to be "hot". Alexander's battalion went on the attack, and at some point the guy, along with several comrades, was surrounded. It was not possible to break through to our own - enemy machine guns fired too dense fire.

Soon Matrosov was left alive alone. His comrades were killed by bullets. The young man had only a few seconds to make a decision. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the last in his life. Wanting to bring at least some benefit to his own battalion, Alexander Matrosov rushed to the embrasure, covering it with his body. The fire stopped. The attack of the Red Army was eventually crowned with success - the Nazis retreated. And Sasha went to heaven as a young and handsome 19-year-old boy ...

Marat Kazei

When the Great Patriotic War began, Marat Kazei was only twelve. He lived in the village of Stankovo ​​with his sister and parents. In 1941 he was in the occupation. Marat's mother helped the partisans, providing them with her own shelter and feeding them. Once the Germans found out about this and shot a woman. Left alone, the children, without hesitation, went into the forest and joined the partisans.

Marat, who had finished only four classes before the war, helped his older comrades as much as he could. They even took him on reconnaissance; and he also participated in undermining German trains. In 43rd the boy was awarded the medal "For Courage" for heroism shown during the breakthrough of the encirclement. The boy was wounded in that terrible battle.

And in 1944 Kazei was returning from intelligence with an adult partisan. The Germans noticed them and started firing at them. The senior comrade died. Marat fired back to the last bullet. And when he had only one grenade left, the teenager let the Germans get closer and blew himself up with them. He was 15 years old.

Alexey Maresyev

The name of this person is known to every inhabitant of the former Soviet Union. After all, we are talking about the legendary pilot. Alexey Maresyev was born in 1916 and dreamed of the sky since childhood. Even the transferred rheumatism did not become an obstacle on the way to the dream. Despite the prohibitions of doctors, Alexey entered the flight department - they took him after several vain attempts.

In 1941, the stubborn young man went to the front. The sky was not what he dreamed of. But it was necessary to defend the Motherland, and Maresyev did everything for this. One day his plane was shot down. Alexei, wounded in both legs, managed to land the car on the territory occupied by the Germans and even somehow make his way to his own.

But time was lost. The legs were "devoured" by gangrene and had to be amputated. Where can a soldier go without both limbs? After all, he is completely crippled ... But Alexei Maresyev was not one of those. He remained in the ranks and continued to fight the enemy.

As many as 86 times, a winged machine with a hero on board managed to rise into the sky. 11 German planes were shot down by Maresyev. The pilot was lucky enough to survive in that terrible war and feel the heady taste of victory. He died in 2001. "The Story of a Real Man" by Boris Polevoy is a work about him. It was the feat of Maresyev that inspired the author to write it.

Zinaida Portnova

Born in 1926, Zina Portnova met the war as a teenager. At that time, a native of Leningrad was visiting relatives in Belarus. Once in the occupied territory, she did not sit on the sidelines, but joined the partisan movement. I pasted leaflets, established contacts with the underground ...

In 1943, the Germans seized the girl and dragged her to their lair. During interrogation, Zina somehow managed to take a pistol from the table. She shot her tormentors - two soldiers and an investigator.

It was a heroic act that made the attitude of the Germans towards Zina even more brutal. It is impossible to convey in words the torment that the girl experienced during the terrible torture. But she was silent. Not a word was squeezed out of her by the Nazis. As a result, the Germans shot their captive, and did not achieve anything from the heroine Zina Portnova.

Andrey Korzun

Andrei Korzun in the 41st turned thirty. He was drafted to the front immediately, sending him to the gunners. Korzun took part in terrible battles near Leningrad, during one of which he was seriously wounded. It was November 5, 1943.

As he fell, Korzun noticed that the ammunition depot started on fire. It was urgent to put out the fire, otherwise an explosion of enormous force threatened to take many lives. Somehow, bleeding and suffering from pain, the artilleryman crawled to the warehouse. The artilleryman did not have the strength to take off his overcoat and throw it into the flames. Then he covered the fire with his body. The explosion did not happen. Andrey Korzun did not manage to survive.

Leonid Golikov

Another young hero is Lenya Golikov. Was born in 1926. He lived in the Novgorod region. With the beginning of the war, he left to partisan. Courage and determination to this teenager was not to take. Leonid destroyed 78 fascists, a dozen enemy trains and even a couple of bridges.

The explosion, which went down in history and carried away the German general Richard von Wirtz, was his handiwork. The car of an important rank flew into the air, and Golikov took possession of valuable documents, for which he received the Star of the Hero.

A brave partisan died in 1943 near the village of Ostraya Luka during a German attack. The enemy significantly outnumbered our fighters, and they had no chance. Golikov fought until his last breath.

These are just six of the great many stories that permeate the entire war. Everyone who has passed it, who has brought victory even for a moment closer, is already a hero. Thanks to the likes of Maresyev, Golikov, Korzun, Matrosov, Kazei, Portnova and millions of other Soviet soldiers, the world got rid of the brown plague of the 20th century. And the reward for their exploits was eternal life!

During the Great Patriotic War, heroism was the norm for the behavior of Soviet people, the war revealed the steadfastness and courage of the Soviet people. Thousands of soldiers and officers sacrificed their lives in the battles of Moscow, Kursk and Stalingrad, in the defense of Leningrad and Sevastopol, in the North Caucasus and the Dnieper, in the storming of Berlin and in other battles - and immortalized their names. Women and children fought alongside men. The home front workers played an important role. People who worked exhausted to provide the soldiers with food, clothing, and thus a bayonet and shell.
We will tell you about those who gave their life, strength and savings for the Victory. Here they are the great people of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

Medics are heroes. Zinaida Samsonova

During the war, more than two hundred thousand doctors and half a million nurses worked at the front and in the rear. And half of them were women.
The working day of doctors and nurses of medical battalions and front-line hospitals often lasted several days. Sleepless nights, medical workers stood relentlessly near the operating tables, and some of them pulled the dead and wounded out of the battlefield on their backs. Among the doctors there were many of their own "sailors" who, saving the wounded, covered them with their bodies from bullets and shell fragments.
They did not spare, as they say, their belly, raised the spirit of the soldiers, raised the wounded from the hospital bed and sent them back into battle to defend their country, their homeland, their people, their home from the enemy. Among the numerous army of doctors, I would like to name the Hero of the Soviet Union Zinaida Alexandrovna Samsonova, who went to the front when she was only seventeen years old. Zinaida, or, as her fellow soldiers called her, Zinochka, was born in the village of Bobkovo, Yegoryevsky district, Moscow region.
Before the war, she entered the Yegoryevsk Medical School. When the enemy entered her native land, and the country was in danger, Zina decided that she must definitely go to the front. And she rushed there.
She has been in the active army since 1942 and immediately finds herself on the front lines. Zina was a sanitary instructor for a rifle battalion. The soldiers loved her for her smile, for her selfless assistance to the wounded. With her soldiers, Zina went through the most terrible battles, this is the Battle of Stalingrad. She fought on the Voronezh front and on other fronts.

Zinaida Samsonova

In the fall of 1943, she took part in an amphibious operation to seize a bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnieper near the village of Sushki, Kanevsky district, now the Cherkasy region. Here she, together with her fellow soldiers, managed to seize this bridgehead.
From the battlefield, Zina carried more than thirty wounded and ferried them to the other side of the Dnieper. This fragile nineteen-year-old girl was legendary. Zinochka was distinguished by her courage and courage.
When the commander died near the village of Holm in 1944, Zina, without hesitation, took command of the battle and raised the fighters to attack. In this battle, her fellow soldiers heard her amazing, slightly hoarse voice for the last time: "Eagles, follow me!"
Zinochka Samsonova died in this battle on January 27, 1944 for the village of Holm in Belarus. She was buried in a mass grave in Ozarichi, Kalinkovsky district, Gomel region.
For endurance, courage and courage, Zinaida Alexandrovna Samsonova was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
The school where Zina Samsonova once studied was named after her.

A special period of activity of Soviet foreign intelligence officers is associated with the Great Patriotic War. Already at the end of June 1941, the newly created State Defense Committee of the USSR considered the issue of the work of foreign intelligence and clarified its tasks. They were subordinated to one goal - the earliest possible defeat of the enemy. For exemplary performance of special missions behind enemy lines, nine cadre foreign intelligence officers were awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union. This is S.A. Vaupshasov, I.D. Kudrya, N.I. Kuznetsov, V.A. Lyagin, D.N. Medvedev, V.A. Molodtsov, K.P. Orlovsky, N.A. Prokopyuk, A.M. Rabtsevich. Here we will tell you about one of the hero scouts - Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov.

Since the beginning of World War II, he was enrolled in the fourth department of the NKVD, whose main task was to organize reconnaissance and sabotage activities behind enemy lines. After numerous training and study in the prisoner of war camp, the customs and life of the Germans, under the name of Paul Wilhelm Siebert, Nikolai Kuznetsov was sent to the rear of the enemy along the line of terror. At first, the special agent conducted his secret activities in the Ukrainian city of Rovno, where the Reich Commissariat of Ukraine was located. Kuznetsov closely communicated with enemy officers of the special services and the Wehrmacht, as well as local officials. All the information obtained was transferred to the partisan detachment. One of the notable feats of the secret agent of the USSR was the capture of the Reichskommissariat courier, Major Gahan, who was carrying a secret map in his briefcase. After interrogating Gahan and studying the map, it turned out that a bunker for Hitler had been built eight kilometers from the Ukrainian Vinnitsa.
In November 1943, Kuznetsov managed to organize the kidnapping of the German Major General M. Ilgen, who was sent to Rovno to destroy partisan formations.
The last operation of the intelligence officer Siebert in this position was the elimination in November 1943 of the head of the legal department of the Reichskommissariat of Ukraine, Oberführer Alfred Funk. After interrogating Funk, the brilliant intelligence officer managed to obtain information about the preparations for the assassination of the heads of the "Big Three" of the Tehran Conference, as well as information about the enemy's offensive on the Kursk Bulge. In January 1944, Kuznetsov was ordered, together with the retreating fascist troops, to go to Lvov to continue his sabotage activities. Scouts Jan Kaminsky and Ivan Belov were sent to help Agent Siebert. Under the leadership of Nikolai Kuznetsov, several invaders were destroyed in Lvov, for example, the head of the government office, Heinrich Schneider and Otto Bauer.

From the first days of the occupation, boys and girls began to act decisively, a secret organization "Young Avengers" was created. The guys fought against the fascist invaders. They blew up a pumping station, which delayed the dispatch of ten fascist echelons to the front. Distracting the enemy, the Avengers destroyed bridges and highways, blew up a local power plant, and burned down the plant. Obtaining information about the actions of the Germans, they immediately passed it on to the partisans.
Zina Portnova was assigned more and more complex tasks. According to one of them, the girl managed to get a job in a German canteen. After working there a little, she carried out an effective operation - she poisoned food for the German soldiers. More than 100 fascists suffered from her lunch. The Germans began to blame Zina. Wanting to prove her innocence, the girl tried the poisoned soup and only miraculously survived.

Zina Portnova

In 1943, traitors appeared who disclosed secret information and betrayed our guys to the Nazis. Many were arrested and shot. Then the command of the partisan detachment instructed Portnova to establish contact with those who survived. The Nazis grabbed a young partisan when she was returning from a mission. Zina was terribly tortured. But the answer to the enemy was only her silence, contempt and hatred. The interrogations did not stop.
“The Gestapo man went to the window. And Zina, rushing to the table, grabbed a pistol. Obviously catching a rustle, the officer turned abruptly, but the weapon was already in her hand. She pulled the trigger. For some reason I didn't hear the shot. I just saw how the German, clutching his chest with his hands, fell to the floor, and the second, who was sitting at the side table, jumped up from his chair and hastily unfastened the holster of his revolver. She pointed the gun at him too. Again, almost without aiming, pulled the trigger. Rushing to the exit, Zina pulled open the door, jumped into the next room and from there onto the porch. There she fired almost point-blank at the sentry. Having run out of the building of the commandant's office, Portnova rushed down the path in a whirlwind.
"If only I could run to the river," thought the girl. But the noise of the chase was heard from behind ... "Why don't they shoot?" The surface of the water already seemed very close. And beyond the river the forest was black. She heard the sound of machine gun fire, and something prickly pierced her leg. Zina fell onto the river sand. She still had enough strength, slightly raised herself, to shoot ... She took care of the last bullet for herself.
When the Germans ran very close, she decided that it was all over, and pointed the pistol to her chest and pulled the trigger. But there was no shot: a misfire. The fascist knocked the pistol out of her weakening hands. "
Zina was sent to prison. For more than a month, the Germans brutally tortured the girl, they wanted her to betray her comrades. But having sworn an oath of loyalty to the Motherland, Zina kept it.
On the morning of January 13, 1944, a gray-haired and blind girl was taken out for execution. She walked, stumbling with bare feet, in the snow.
The girl withstood all the torture. She truly loved our Motherland and died for her, firmly believing in our victory.
Zinaida Portnova was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet people, realizing that the front needed their help, made every effort. Engineering geniuses simplified and improved production. Women who had recently escorted their husbands, brothers and sons to the front, took their place at the machine, mastering unfamiliar professions. "Everything for the front, everything for the victory!" Children, old people and women gave all their strength, gave themselves for the sake of victory.

This is how the call of collective farmers sounded in one of the regional newspapers: “... we need to give the army and the working people more bread, meat, milk, vegetables and agricultural raw materials for industry. We, the workers of the state farms, together with the collective farm peasantry must hand it over. " Only by these lines can one judge how much the home front workers were obsessed with thoughts of victory, and what sacrifices they were willing to make in order to bring this long-awaited day closer. Even receiving funerals, they did not stop working, knowing that this is the best way to take revenge on the hated fascists for the death of their relatives and friends.

On December 15, 1942, Ferapont Holovaty gave all his savings - 100 thousand rubles - to purchase an aircraft for the Red Army, and asked to transfer the aircraft to the pilot of the Stalingrad Front. In a letter addressed to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, he wrote that, having accompanied his two sons to the front, he himself wanted to contribute to the cause of victory. Stalin answered: “Thank you, Ferapont Petrovich, for your concern for the Red Army and its Air Force. The Red Army will not forget that you gave all your savings to build a combat aircraft. Please accept my greetings. " Serious attention was paid to the initiative. The decision on who exactly will get the personalized plane was made by the Military Council of the Stalingrad Front. The combat vehicle was handed over to one of the best - the commander of the 31st Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, Major Boris Nikolayevich Eremin. The fact that Eremin and Holovaty were fellow countrymen also played a role.

Victory in the Great Patriotic War was won by inhuman efforts, both front-line soldiers and home front workers. And this must be remembered. Today's generation should not forget their feat.

Before the war, these were the most ordinary boys and girls. They studied, helped the elders, played, bred pigeons, sometimes even took part in fights. But the hour of difficult trials came and they proved how huge an ordinary little child's heart can become when sacred love for the Motherland flares up in it, pain for the fate of its people and hatred of enemies. And no one expected that these boys and girls are capable of performing a great feat for the glory of freedom and independence of their Motherland!

Children left in the destroyed cities and villages became homeless, doomed to death by starvation. It was terrible and difficult to remain in the territory occupied by the enemy. Children could be sent to a concentration camp, taken to work in Germany, turned into slaves, made donors for German soldiers, etc.

Here are the names of some of them: Volodya Kazmin, Yura Zhdanko, Lenya Golikov, Marat Kazei, Lara Mikheenko, Valya Kotik, Tanya Morozova, Vitya Korobkov, Zina Portnova. Many of them fought so hard that they deserved military orders and medals, and four: Marat Kazei, Valya Kotik, Zina Portnova, Lenya Golikov, became Heroes of the Soviet Union.

From the first days of the occupation, boys and girls began to act at their own peril and risk, which was indeed fatal.

"Fedya Samodurov. Fedya is 14 years old, he is a pupil of a motorized rifle unit commanded by the Guard Captain A. Chernavin. Fedya was picked up in his homeland, in the destroyed village of the Voronezh region. Together with the unit he participated in the battles for Ternopil, with a machine-gun crew he kicked the Germans out of the city. When almost the entire crew died, the teenager, together with the surviving soldier, took up the machine gun, firing long and hard, delayed the enemy. Fedya was awarded the medal "For Courage".

Vanya Kozlov, 13 years old,he was left without relatives and for the second year he has been in a motorized rifle unit. At the front, he delivers food, newspapers and letters to soldiers in the most difficult conditions.

Petya Tooth. Petya Zub chose an equally difficult specialty. He has long decided to become a scout. His parents were killed, and he knows how to settle accounts with the accursed German. Together with experienced scouts, he gets to the enemy, reports his location on the radio, and artillery fires at their orders, crushing the fascists. "(Argumenty i Fakty, No. 25, 2010, p. 42).

A sixteen year old schoolgirl Olya Demesh with her younger sister Lida at the Orsha station in Belarus, on the instructions of the commander of the partisan brigade S. Zhulin, fuel tanks were blown up with the help of magnetic mines. Of course, the girls attracted much less attention from the German guards and policemen than teenage boys or adult men. But the girls were just right to play with dolls, and they fought with the soldiers of the Wehrmacht!

Thirteen-year-old Lida often took a basket or bag and went to the railway tracks to collect coal, mining intelligence on German military echelons. If the sentries stopped her, she explained that she was collecting coal to heat the room in which the Germans lived. Olya's mother and younger sister Lida were captured and shot by the Nazis, and Olya continued to fearlessly carry out the partisans' assignments.

For the head of the young partisan Oli Demesh, the Nazis promised a generous reward - land, a cow and 10 thousand marks. Copies of her photograph were distributed and sent to all patrol services, policemen, headmen and secret agents. Capture and deliver her alive - that was the order! But they failed to catch the girl. Olga destroyed 20 German soldiers and officers, derailed 7 enemy trains, conducted reconnaissance, participated in the "rail war", in the destruction of German punitive units.

Children of the Great Patriotic War

What happened to the children during this terrible time? During the war?

The guys worked day and night in factories, factories and industries, standing behind the machines instead of brothers and fathers who had gone to the front. Children also worked at defense enterprises: they made fuses for mines, fuses for hand grenades, smoke bombs, colored flares, assembled gas masks. They worked in agriculture, grew vegetables for hospitals.

In school sewing workshops, the pioneers sewed linen and tunics for the army. The girls knitted warm clothes for the front: mittens, socks, scarves, sewed pouches for tobacco. The guys helped the wounded in hospitals, wrote letters to their relatives under their dictation, put on performances for the wounded, arranged concerts, causing a smile from the war-worn adult men.

A number of objective reasons: the departure of teachers to the army, the evacuation of the population from the western regions to the eastern, the inclusion of students in labor activity in connection with the departure of the family breadwinners to the war, the transfer of many schools to hospitals, etc., prevented the deployment in the USSR during the war of a universal seven-year compulsory training begun in the 30s. In the remaining educational institutions, training was conducted in two, three, and sometimes four shifts.

At the same time, the children were forced to store firewood for the boiler rooms themselves. There were no textbooks, and due to lack of paper they wrote on old newspapers between the lines. Nevertheless, new schools were opened, additional classes were created. Boarding schools were created for the evacuated children. For those young people who left school at the beginning of the war and were employed in industry or agriculture, schools for working and rural youth were organized in 1943.

There are still many little-known pages in the annals of the Great Patriotic War, for example, the fate of kindergartens. "It turns out that in December 1941 in besieged Moscowkindergartens worked in bomb shelters. When the enemy was driven back, they resumed their work faster than many universities. By the fall of 1942, 258 kindergartens had opened in Moscow!

From the memories of the war childhood of Lydia Ivanovna Kostyleva:

“After the death of my grandmother, I was assigned to a kindergarten, my older sister was at school, my mother was at work. I went to kindergarten alone, by tram, in less than five years. Once I got seriously ill with mumps, I was lying at home alone with a high fever, there was no medicine, in my delirium I fancied a pig running under the table, but nothing happened.
I saw my mother in the evenings and on rare weekends. The children were raised by the street, we were friendly and always hungry. From early spring, they ran on mosses, fortunately, the forest and swamps are nearby, they picked berries, mushrooms, and various early grass. The bombing gradually stopped, the residences of the allies were located in our Arkhangelsk, this brought a certain flavor to life - we, children, sometimes fell out of warm clothes, some food. Basically, we ate black shangi, potatoes, seal meat, fish and fish oil, on holidays - "marmalade" of seaweed, tinted with beets. "

More than five hundred educators and nannies in the fall of 1941 dug trenches on the outskirts of the capital. Hundreds worked in the logging area. The educators, who only yesterday led a round dance with the children, fought in the Moscow militia. Natasha Yanovskaya, a kindergarten teacher in the Bauman region, heroically died near Mozhaisk. The educators who remained with the children did not perform feats. They simply rescued babies whose fathers fought, and mothers stood at the machines.

Most of the kindergartens became boarding schools during the war, children were there day and night. And in order to feed children in a half-starved time, to protect them from the cold, to give them at least a little bit of comfort, to keep them occupied for the benefit of the mind and soul - such work required a great love for children, deep decency and boundless patience. "(D. Shevarov" World of news ”, No. 27, 2010, p. 27).

Children have changed their games, "... a new game - in the hospital. They played in the hospital before, but not like that. Now the wounded are real people for them. But the war is played less often, because no one wants to be a fascist. They are carried out by trees. They shoot snowballs at them. We have learned to help the victims - those who have fallen and bruised. "

From a boy's letter to a front-line soldier: “We used to play the war too often, but now much less often - we are tired of the war, it would sooner be over, so that we can live well again ...” (Ibid.).

In connection with the death of their parents, many street children have appeared in the country. The Soviet state, despite the difficult wartime, nevertheless fulfilled its obligations to children left without parents. To combat neglect, a network of children's reception centers and orphanages was organized and opened, and the employment of adolescents was organized.

Many families of Soviet citizens began to take orphans to their upbringingwhere they found new parents for themselves. Unfortunately, not all educators and heads of children's institutions were distinguished by honesty and decency. Here are some examples.

"In the fall of 1942 in Pochinkovsky district of the Gorky region, children dressed in rags were caught stealing potatoes and grain from collective farm fields. It turned out that the inmates of the regional orphanage were" harvesting "the crops. And they did not do it out of a good life. Investigations, local police officers discovered a criminal group, and, in fact, a gang, which consisted of employees of this institution.

In total, seven people were arrested in the case, including the director of the orphanage Novoseltsev, accountant Sdobnov, storekeeper Mukhina and others. During the searches, 14 children's coats, seven suits, 30 meters of cloth, 350 meters of manufactory and other misappropriated property were seized from them, which was allocated with great difficulty by the state during this harsh wartime.

The investigation established that by not supplying the due norm of bread and food, these criminals only during 1942 stole seven tons of bread, half a ton of meat, 380 kg of sugar, 180 kg of biscuits, 106 kg of fish, 121 kg of honey, etc. The employees of the orphanage sold all these scarce products on the market or simply ate them themselves.

Only one comrade Novoseltsev received fifteen servings of breakfast and lunch for himself and his family members every day. At the expense of the pupils, the rest of the attendants also ate well. The children were fed "dishes" made from rot and vegetables, citing poor supplies.

For the whole of 1942, they were given only one candy each for the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution ... And what is most surprising, the director of the orphanage Novoseltsev in the same 1942 received an honorary diploma from the People's Commissariat of Education for excellent educational work. All these fascists were deservedly sentenced to long terms of imprisonment "(Zefirov MV, Dektyarev DM" Everything for the front? How the victory was actually forged ", pp. 388-391).

At such a time, the whole essence of man is manifested .. Every day to face a choice - how to act .. And the war showed us examples of great mercy, great heroism and great cruelty, great meanness .. We must remember this !! For the future !!

And no time can heal wounds from war, especially children. "These years that were once, the bitterness of childhood does not allow to forget ..."

The Pravoslavie.fm portal is like a bee, laboriously collecting for itself and for its readers-beekeepers the nectar of good news and Christian wisdom.

You will learn from many sources about what the world is dangerous and what things to watch out for. We will try to tell you about the sacrificial love of some people in relation to others, presenting below several cases of heroism from the life of Russians:

1. Students of the Iskitim branch of the Novosibirsk Assembly College, 17-year-old Nikita Miller and 20-year-old Vlad Volkov, managed to immobilize an armed raider who was trying to rob a grocery store and hold him until the police arrived.

“We had no visitors, and we went to the back room for a couple of minutes to disassemble the goods. Suddenly we heard - they hit the scales with something iron. We look out - and there is a man with a gun. I screamed, of course, right away, pressed the panic button. And just then the guys entered. This raider got scared and tried to escape.

But Nikita and Vlad did not let him escape: they knocked down the criminal near the kiosk and kept him there until the police squad called by the panic button arrived, ”recalls the seller Svetlana Adamova.

2. In the Chelyabinsk region, priest Alexei Peregudov saved the life of the groom at a wedding.

During the wedding, the groom lost consciousness. The only one who was not taken aback in this situation was Priest Alexei Peregudov. He quickly examined the recumbent, suspected cardiac arrest and provided first aid, including chest compressions. As a result, the sacrament was successfully completed.

Father Alexei noted that before this incident, he had seen indirect heart massage only in the movies.

3. At one of the gas stations in the city of Kaspiysk, an explosion suddenly thundered. As it turned out later, a foreign car passing at high speed crashed into a gas tank and knocked down a valve.

Slow down a little and the fire would spread to the nearby fuel tanks.

The situation was saved by Arsen Fittsulaev, a Dagestani, who averted a catastrophe at a gas station, skillfully reducing the scale of the accident to a burned-out car and several damaged cars. Later, the guy realized that he actually risked his life.

4. Schoolchildren from Krasnodar Territory Roman Vitkov and Mikhail Serdyuk rescued an elderly woman from a burning house.

On their way home, they saw a fire in a private house. Running into the courtyard, the schoolchildren saw that the veranda was almost completely engulfed in fire. Roman and Mikhail rushed into the barn for the instrument. Grabbing a sledgehammer and an ax, knocking out the window, Roman climbed into the window opening. An elderly woman slept in a smoky room. The guys broke down the door and saved the woman.

5. Tulyak Alexander Ponomarev saved a man from a burning car.

The driver went on a regular flight - or rather, everything would have been as usual if a man had not seen a flaming car on the side of the road.

Alexander could not just pass by, like the other drivers: he stopped, took a fire extinguisher and rushed to help. He knocked down the flame, tried to open the driver's door, but it turned out to be blocked, while a man remained in the car.

“I knocked out the side window and opened the door. The car continued to burn, but there was no time to extinguish it - it was necessary to save a man. He pulled a man out of the driver's seat, he did not understand what was happening - he inhaled carbon monoxide, ”said Ponomarev.

Having dragged the victim to a safe distance, Alexander called the dispatcher and she called the rescuers to the place of the fire and went to meet them herself. And Ponomarev, in order not to waste time, took the burnt driver to the nearest hospital in his truck.

6. Pskov policeman Vadim Barkanov saved two men from the fire. Walking with his friend, Vadim saw smoke and flames bursting out into one of the houses.

A woman ran out of the building and began calling for help, as there were two men left in the apartment. Calling the firemen, Vadim and his friend rushed to their aid. As a result, they managed to carry two unconscious men out of the burning building. The victims were taken by ambulance to the hospital, where they received the necessary medical assistance.

7. In Borisov, policeman Igor Pozdnyakov saved the baby by removing him from the roof of the store.

32-year-old police officer Igor Poznyakov accidentally saw a one and a half year old baby on the roof of the store: the boy was calmly walking along the edge of the roof, to which the windows of the apartment adjoin.

He himself talked about it this way: “I was with a colleague. I told him to stand for the belay near the roof, and he himself ran to the entrance to the second floor. Mom opened the door, and I immediately ran to the window. He climbed through the windowsill onto the roof and approached the child with the words: "Hello, friend, let's go to me!" After that, he abruptly grabbed him in his arms - he did not even cry. By that time, people had already gathered on the street, watching the baby. Mother, of course, was shocked. Imagine: from roof to ground about six meters. "

“When the doorbell rang, I got scared:“ God forbid, my husband forgot to close the door and the son went out into the street! ” A policeman stood on the threshold and ran to the window. Asleep, I did not understand what had happened. And when I saw that my son was on the roof, I was speechless. I slept and did not even hear how he woke up. It turned out that he rolled his bicycle to the window, then climbed onto the window sill and opened the window handle! ”, The baby's mother shared with reporters.

The young mother is very grateful to the savior - a child's walk on the roof could turn into a tragedy.

8. Zalina Arsanova in Ingushetia covered her brother from bullets.

The story took place at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

In Ingushetia, this time, children congratulate friends and relatives on the holiday, coming to visit them. In a nearby courtyard, an attempt was made on one of the FSB officers.

When the first bullet pierced the facade of the nearest house, the girl realized that it was shooting, and her younger brother was in the line of fire, and covered him with herself.

The girl with a gunshot wound was taken to the Malgobek Clinical Hospital No. 1, where she underwent an operation. The surgeons had to literally collect the internal organs of a 12-year-old child in parts, but both the girl and her brother survived.

9. A resident of the village of Yurmash (Bashkortostan) Rafit Shamsutdinov saved two children in a fire.

A fellow villager Rafita lit the stove and went to school with her older children, leaving her three-year-old daughter and one and a half-year-old son at home.

For some reason, a fire started. Rafit Shamsutdinov noticed the smoke from the burning house. Despite the abundance of smoke, he managed to get into the burning room and carry both children out.

10. On vacation after the shift, a firefighter from Bely Yar carried a woman and her baby out of the fire.

It seems to be a common everyday story for fire fighters - to save people from burning houses. But Ivan Morozov had a day off that day - a guy with a friend worked a daily shift and at night he went out to “ride around the village”.

From under the roof of one of the two-story houses, Vanya saw thick smoke coming out - and the first thing he did was dial 112, calling the fire department. But then the veranda caught fire and Ivan rushed to the house so that the help would be in time. The firefighter knocked down the door and immediately saw a woman on the floor.
“She sat, as if in oblivion, and covered herself from the smoke with her hand. The door was already on fire by that moment, so I evacuated it through the window. In the process, she asked if there was anyone else at home, and she said that her son was sleeping on the second floor, ”the hero recalls.

The fireman, as he was - in one T-shirt, without a protective suit, as it should be in such cases - rushed upstairs to look for the boy. He was asleep, so Ivan easily took him in his arms, went downstairs and passed him to his mother through the window.

The selection is based on materials from Komsomolskaya Pravda, the Heroes of Our Time portal, etc.

Andrey Segeda

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Twelve out of several thousand examples of unparalleled childhood courage
Young heroes of the Great Patriotic War - how many were there? If you count - how could it be otherwise ?! - the hero of every boy and every girl whom fate brought to war and made soldiers, sailors or partisans, then tens, if not hundreds of thousands.

According to the official data of the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO) of Russia, during the war years, more than 3,500 servicemen under the age of 16 were registered in combat units. At the same time, it is clear that not every unit commander who dared to take the son of the regiment into the upbringing found the courage to declare about the pupil on command. You can understand how their fathers-commanders tried to hide the age of the little fighters, who in fact were for many instead of their fathers, by the confusion in the award documents. On the yellowed archival sheets, the majority of underage servicemen are clearly overstated. The real one came to light much later, after ten or even forty years.

But there were also children and adolescents who fought in partisan detachments and were members of underground organizations! And there there were much more of them: sometimes whole families went to the partisans, and if not, then almost every teenager who found himself in the occupied land had someone to avenge.

So “tens of thousands” is far from an exaggeration, but rather an understatement. And, apparently, we will never know the exact number of young heroes of the Great Patriotic War. But this is not a reason not to remember them.

Boys walked from Brest to Berlin

The youngest of all the known little soldiers - in any case, according to the documents stored in the military archives - can be considered a graduate of the 142nd Guards Rifle Regiment of the 47th Guards Rifle Division, Sergei Aleshkin. In archival documents, you can find two certificates about the awarding of a boy who was born in 1936 and ended up in the army since September 8, 1942, shortly after the punishers shot his mother and older brother for contact with the partisans. The first document dated April 26, 1943 - about rewarding him with the medal "For Military Merit" in connection with the fact that "Comrade. Aleshkin, the regiment's favorite, "with his cheerfulness, love for the unit and those around him, in extremely difficult moments, instilled courage and confidence in victory." The second, dated November 19, 1945, on awarding the pupils of the Tula Suvorov Military School with the medal "For Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945": in the list of 13 Suvorovites, the name of Aleshkin is the first.

But still, such a young soldier is an exception even for wartime and for a country where all the people, young and old, rose to defend the Motherland. Most of the young heroes who fought at the front and behind enemy lines were on average 13-14 years old. The very first of them were defenders of the Brest Fortress, and one of the regiment's sons - holder of the Order of the Red Star, the Order of Glory III degree and the medal "For Courage" Vladimir Tarnovsky, who served in the 370th artillery regiment of the 230th rifle division, left his autograph on the wall of the Reichstag in the victorious May 1945 ...

The youngest Heroes of the Soviet Union

These four names - Lenya Golikov, Marat Kazei, Zina Portnova and Valya Kotik - have been the most famous symbol of the heroism of the young defenders of our Motherland for over half a century. Fighting in different places and performing feats of different circumstances, all of them were partisans and all were posthumously awarded the country's highest award - the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Two of them - Lena Golikov and Zina Portnova - by the time they had a chance to show unprecedented courage, were 17 years old, two more - Valea Kotik and Marat Kazei - only 14 each.

Lenya Golikov was the first of the four to be awarded the highest rank: the assignment decree was signed on April 2, 1944. The text says that the title of Hero of the Soviet Union Golikov was awarded "for exemplary performance of command assignments and for the displayed courage and heroism in battles." And indeed, in less than a year - from March 1942 to January 1943 - Lenya Golikov managed to take part in the defeat of three enemy garrisons, in blowing up more than a dozen bridges, in the capture of a German major general with secret documents ... the battle near the village of Ostraya Luka, without waiting for a high reward for the capture of a strategically important "language".

Zina Portnova and Valya Kotik were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union 13 years after the Victory, in 1958. Zina was awarded an award for the courage with which she carried out underground work, then performed the duties of a liaison between the partisans and the underground, and in the end endured inhuman torment, falling into the hands of the Nazis at the very beginning of 1944. Valya - according to the totality of exploits in the ranks of the Shepetivka partisan detachment named after Karmelyuk, where he came after a year of work in an underground organization in Shepetivka itself. And Marat Kazei was awarded the highest award only in the year of the 20th anniversary of Victory: the decree on conferring the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on him was promulgated on May 8, 1965. For almost two years - from November 1942 to May 1944 - Marat fought as part of the partisan formations of Belarus and died, blowing up himself and the Nazis who surrounded him with the last grenade.

Over the past half century, the circumstances of the exploits of the four heroes have become known throughout the country: more than one generation of Soviet schoolchildren has grown up on their example, and the present people are certainly told about them. But even among those who did not receive the highest award, there were many real heroes - pilots, sailors, snipers, scouts and even musicians.

Sniper Vasily Kurka

The war found Vasya as a sixteen-year-old teenager. In the very first days he was mobilized to the labor front, and in October he achieved enrollment in the 726th Infantry Regiment of the 395th Infantry Division. At first, the boy of non-recruitment age, who also looked a couple of years younger than his age, was left in the train: they say, there is nothing for teenagers on the front line to do. But soon the guy got his way and was transferred to a combat unit - to the sniper team.

Vasily Kurka. Photo: Imperial War Museum

An amazing military fate: from the first to the last day, Vasya Kurka fought in the same regiment of the same division! He made a good military career, rising to the rank of lieutenant and taking command of a rifle platoon. He wrote down to his own account, according to various sources, from 179 to 200 killed Nazis. He fought from Donbass to Tuapse and back, and then further, to the West, to the Sandomierz bridgehead. It was there that Lieutenant Kurka was mortally wounded in January 1945, less than six months before the Victory.

Pilot Arkady Kamanin

The 15-year-old Arkady Kamanin arrived at the location of the 5th Guards Assault Air Corps with his father, who was appointed commander of this illustrious unit. The pilots were surprised to learn that the son of the legendary pilot, one of the first seven Heroes of the Soviet Union, a member of the Chelyuskin rescue expedition, would work as an aircraft mechanic in a communications squadron. But they soon became convinced that the "general's son" did not live up to their negative expectations at all. The boy did not hide behind the back of the famous father, but simply did his job well - and strove to the sky with all his might.

Sergeant Kamanin in 1944. Photo: war.ee

Soon Arkady achieved his goal: first he rises into the air as a letnab, then as a navigator on the U-2, and then goes on the first independent flight. And finally - the long-awaited appointment: the son of General Kamanin becomes the pilot of the 423rd separate communications squadron. Before the victory, Arkady, who rose to the rank of foreman, managed to fly almost 300 hours and earn three orders: two - the Red Star and one - the Red Banner. And if it were not for meningitis, who literally in a matter of days killed an 18-year-old guy in the spring of 1947, perhaps in the cosmonaut corps, the first commander of which was Kamanin Sr., Kamanin Jr. would also have been listed: Arkady managed to enter the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy back in 1946.

Frontline intelligence officer Yuri Zhdanko

Ten-year-old Yura ended up in the army by accident. In July 1941, he went to show the retreating Red Army soldiers a little-known ford on the Western Dvina and did not manage to return to his native Vitebsk, where the Germans had already entered. So he left together with a part to the east, to Moscow itself, in order to start the return journey to the west from there.

Yuri Zhdanko. Photo: russia-reborn.ru

On this path, Yura managed to do a lot. In January 1942, he, who had never jumped with a parachute before, went to the rescue of the encircled partisans and helped them break through the enemy ring. In the summer of 1942, together with a group of fellow intelligence officers, he blows up a strategically important bridge across the Berezina, sending not only the bridge bed to the bottom of the river, but also nine trucks passing through it, and less than a year later, he turns out to be the only one of all messengers who managed to break through to the surrounded battalion and help him get out of the "ring".

By February 1944, the 13-year-old scout's chest was decorated with the Medal For Courage and the Order of the Red Star. But a shell that exploded literally underfoot interrupted Yura's front-line career. He ended up in the hospital, from where he went to the Suvorov School, but did not pass for health reasons. Then the retired young intelligence officer retrained as a welder and on this "front" also managed to become famous, having traveled with his welding machine almost half of Eurasia - he was building pipelines.

Infantryman Anatoly Komar

Among the 263 Soviet soldiers who covered the enemy embrasures with their bodies, the youngest was Anatoly Komar, 15-year-old private of the 332nd reconnaissance company of the 252nd Infantry Division of the 53rd Army of the 2nd Ukrainian Front. The teenager entered the active army in September 1943, when the front came close to his native Slavyansk. It happened with him in almost the same way as with Yura Zhdanko, with the only difference that the boy served as a guide not for the retreating, but for the advancing Red Army men. Anatoly helped them to go deep into the front line of the Germans, and then left with the advancing army to the west.

Young partisan. Photo: Imperial War Museum

But, unlike Yura Zhdanko, the front line of Tolya Komar was much shorter. Only two months he had a chance to wear the shoulder straps that had recently appeared in the Red Army and go on reconnaissance. In November of the same year, returning from a free search in the rear of the Germans, a group of scouts revealed themselves and was forced to break through to their own in battle. The last obstacle on the way back was the machine gun, which pressed the reconnaissance to the ground. Anatoly Komar threw a grenade at him, and the fire died down, but as soon as the scouts got up, the machine gunner started firing again. And then Tolya, who was closest to the enemy, got up and fell on the machine-gun barrel, at the cost of his life buying his comrades precious minutes for a breakthrough.

Sailor Boris Kuleshin

In the cracked photograph, a boy of about ten is standing against the backdrop of sailors in black uniforms with ammunition boxes on their backs and the superstructures of a Soviet cruiser. His hands are tightly gripping the PPSh submachine gun, and on his head is a peakless cap with a guards' ribbon and the inscription "Tashkent". This is a pupil of the crew of the leader of the Tashkent destroyer Borya Kuleshin. The picture was taken in Poti, where, after repairs, the ship entered for another load of ammunition for the besieged Sevastopol. It was here at the gangway of "Tashkent" that twelve-year-old Borya Kuleshin appeared. His father died at the front, his mother, as soon as Donetsk was occupied, was hijacked to Germany, and he himself managed to escape through the front line to his own people and, together with the retreating army, reached the Caucasus.

Boris Kuleshin. Photo: weralbum.ru

While they were persuading the commander of the ship Vasily Yeroshenko, while they were deciding which combat unit to enroll in the cabin boy, the sailors managed to give him a belt, a peakless cap and a machine gun and take a picture of the new crew member. And then there was a transition to Sevastopol, the first raid on the "Tashkent" in Boris's life and the first in his life clips for an anti-aircraft artillery machine, which he, along with other anti-aircraft gunners, handed to the shooters. At his combat post, he was wounded on July 2, 1942, when German aircraft tried to sink a ship in the port of Novorossiysk. After the hospital, Borya followed Captain Yeroshenko to a new ship - the guards cruiser Krasny Kavkaz. And already here I found him a well-deserved award: presented for the battles on the "Tashkent" for the medal "For Courage", he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner by the decision of the front commander Marshal Budyonny and a member of the Military Council Admiral Isakov. And in the next front-line picture he is already showing off in the new uniform of a young sailor, on whose head a peakless cap with a guards' ribbon and the inscription "Red Caucasus". It was in this uniform that in 1944 Borya went to the Tbilisi Nakhimov School, where in September 1945, along with other teachers, educators and pupils, he was awarded the medal "For Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."

Musician Petr Klypa

Fifteen-year-old pupil of the musical platoon of the 333rd Rifle Regiment, Pyotr Klypa, was supposed to, like other underage inhabitants of the Brest Fortress, go to the rear with the beginning of the war. But Petya refused to leave the fighting citadel, which, among others, was defended by his only family member - his elder brother Lieutenant Nikolai. So he became one of the first teenage soldiers in the Great Patriotic War and a full participant in the heroic defense of the Brest Fortress.

Petr Klypa. Photo: worldwar.com

He fought there until early July, when he received an order to break through to Brest along with the remnants of the regiment. This is where Petit's ordeal began. Having crossed the tributary of the Bug, he, among other colleagues, was captured, from which he soon managed to escape. He reached Brest, lived there for a month and moved east, following the retreating Red Army, but did not reach it. During one of the nights he and a friend were found by policemen, and the teenagers were sent to forced labor in Germany. Petya was released only in 1945 by American troops, and after checking he even managed to serve in the Soviet army for several months. And upon returning to his homeland, he again ended up behind bars, because he succumbed to the persuasions of an old friend and helped him speculate on the loot. Pyotr Klypa was released only seven years later. He had to thank the historian and writer Sergei Smirnov for this, who, bit by bit, recreated the history of the heroic defense of the Brest Fortress and, of course, did not miss the history of one of its youngest defenders, who after his liberation was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree.