Iconic image-Alexei Yeremenko

Discussion in 'The Eastern Front' started by Owen, Dec 28, 2009.

  1. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Does anyone know more about the man in this photo?
    What Battalion did he command, where was he killed, has he got a marked grave, where was he born?
    [​IMG]
    Battalion commander Alexei Yeremenko who died in battle in 1942.

    TopFoto Gallery - RIA Novosti 1961-1990
     
  2. Buteman

    Buteman 336/102 LAA Regiment (7 Lincolns), RA

    Owen

    Found this on another site.

    12. Juli 1942. 220th regiment, 4th rifle division. Batallion commander Alexei Yeremenko raising his men to attack. Few minutes after the photo he was dead.

    Hopefully a start to find out where they were on that date.

    Cheers - Robert
     
  3. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Cheers Rob,
    Found this on wiki.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_Rifle_Division_(Soviet_Union)

    In July 1941 the Division was part of the 3rd Rifle Corps of the 46th Army, in the Transcaucasian Military District. In the middle of April 1942 the Division under Colonel I.P.Roslogo was fighting as part of the 12th Army. In August 1942 it participated in the Battle of the Caucasus.
     
  4. deadb_tch

    deadb_tch the deadliest b#tch ever

    According to russian sources photo made at 12 of july 1942 on positions of 220th Regiment of 4th Rifle Division at village Khorosheye, Lugan' area. The man is definitely Aleksey Gordeyevich Yeremenko, born 1906. He was political worker and raised men to attack after commander of regiment were wounded and wasn't able to command the men. That day 220th regiment were defending its position and managed to held 12 enemy attacks, Aleksey raised soldiers to hold against 13th attack.
     
    Owen likes this.
  5. deadb_tch

    deadb_tch the deadliest b#tch ever

  6. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Cheers Alex, have you got a map of that area?
    both of those articles says he was in 285th Division.

    He received a referral to the 285 th Infantry Division. In summer 1942 the division conducted heavy defensive fights, suffered heavy losses. Colonel Vasily stock Verezubchik then fought in the same battalion with the youngest political director Eremenko and witnessed his death in battle for the village of Good. It happened on July 12.
    The first battalion repulsed the attack, but during the second shook right flank.
    Political leader Eremenko rushed there to stop fighters and decided to counterattack to restore the situation. During the counterattack, and he died.


    To find out when the hero died, there was only one possibility - to appeal to veterans of the 285 th Division.
     
  7. deadb_tch

    deadb_tch the deadliest b#tch ever

  8. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    From Alex's post, I would think that Aleksey was a political commissar attached to a front line fighting unit.Captured as POWs, and indentified as PCs,these people were seen as the ideological enemy of Nazism and would be subject to immediate execution under Hitler's Bullet decree/Commissar Order.As Hitler stated in March 1941,"German soldiers guilty of breaking international law will be excused.Russia has not participated in the Hague Convention and therefore has no rights under it"

    One of the features of the German screening of Russian POWs was the interrogations to weed out those PCs who were thought to be otherwise normal POWs,against the Geneva and Hague Conventions, of course, in a conflict of ideologies where excesses were the order of the day.
     
  9. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

  10. deadb_tch

    deadb_tch the deadliest b#tch ever

  11. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Where was the place he was born?
    Harry so he was doomed to die anyway , whether in combat or as a PoW.
     
  12. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    Where was the place he was born?
    Harry so he was doomed to die anyway , whether in combat or as a PoW.

    Had he been recognised as a PC and the the problem was that the Germans interrogated Russian POWs to denounce their PCs who had managed to appear as normal POWs,he would have been murdered.Incidentally,the reason,among others why so many German Generals spent time,post war, in Russia because while protesting about the practice, did nothing positive to stop it.

    Having paid a trip to Mauthausen, I noticed that a large number of Russian POW NCOs were murdered there under the Hitler Bullet decree.Execution was usually by the bullet in the nape of the neck through a small hole in a wall with the prisoner standing against the wall in a room, the "execution chamber" unsuspecting anything terminal was afoot.
     
  13. deadb_tch

    deadb_tch the deadliest b#tch ever

    Where was the place he was born?
    Harry so he was doomed to die anyway , whether in combat or as a PoW.

    He was born in Ukraine, area called Zaporozh'ye, place called Voln'yansk.
     
  14. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

  15. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Attached Files:

  16. tovarisch

    tovarisch Discharged

    Great thread, even being Russian, I always wondered who that man was, the photo's so symbolic, nevertheless so few know about the soldier that was depicted there. That photo is synonymous to the whole Great Patriotic War, it's been in so many articles, books, films etc. about it. Everyone in Russia knows about the picture, literally everyone, however, a select few can actually say who the man in the picture is. Alexei Yeremenko. Again, cheers. :)

    Here's another iconic photo of that era - who is this man?
    [​IMG]
     
  17. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    Great thread, even being Russian, I always wondered who that man was, the photo's so symbolic, nevertheless so few know about the soldier that was depicted there. That photo is synonymous to the whole Great Patriotic War, it's been in so many articles, books, films etc. about it. Everyone in Russia knows about the picture, literally everyone, however, a select few can actually say who the man in the picture is. Alexei Yeremenko. Again, cheers. :)

    Here's another iconic photo of that era - who is this man?
    [​IMG]
    Nice picture Tovaritsch. One question, is that a German Pak36 behind the soldier? It certainly looks like it.
     
  18. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

  19. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    Nice one mate. Thanks for that!
     
  20. Smudger Jnr

    Smudger Jnr Our Man in Berlin

    Ger,
    It was an updated Russian version of the German 3.7 Pak ( Door-Knocker).

    Regards
    Tom
     

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