Павел Константинович Трегубов / Pawel Konstantinowitsch Tregubow 1904 - 1945

Born 18.8.1904 in Tschugan
Died 3.1.1945 in Hartheim

Biography

Pavel Konstantinovich Tregubov was born on 18 August 1904 into a poor peasant family in the village of Chugan in the Sulaevsky municipality of the Vyatsky district of the Vyatka oblast (in what is now the Zuyevsky district of the Kirov oblast). In 1914 his father was drafted to serve in the First World War, fell shortly afterwards in a battle in the Carpathians and left behind a family of seven – his blind mother, his wife and five children.

Pavel was the eldest child in the family and, following the death of his father, had to start working on the land already at the age of ten. In winter, when there was no work in the fields, he attended the village school but was only able to complete three years – there was no possibility of any further education. After the October Revolution of 1917, Pavel was employed on farms until 1925, but also worked as a carpenter in villages near to Vyatka. In 1925 the family moved to the village of Arsenovo in the Krapivinsky district in the West Siberian region (today’s Kemerovo oblast). There Pavel was drafted into the Red Army on 26 September 1926.

He was assigned to the Special Pioneer Battalion of the 19th Coastal Rifle Corps (Khabarovsk) and to the battalion school of the lower officer corps. He finished at the school in August 1927. The battalion was then disbanded. Along with two other former companies from the battalion, Pavel was transferred to Kazan to one of the Pioneer Battalions of the 13th Rifle Corps and served there until October 1929. Tregubov was then appointed as a guard to military depot no. 78 in Syzran. Pavel Konstantinovich lived there until September 1938 and served in a range of positions in military depots nos. 78 and 409. In 1931 he became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and began to take an active role in party life in the city. While still in Syzran he met Tamara Vasilevna Frantseva, the daughter of one of the local watchmakers. She was already with him when he travelled to his new posting – in September 1938 he was appointed as military commissar for the Alekseevsky district of the Kuybyshev oblast (today’s Samara oblast).

This information was taken from the autobiography written by Pavel Konstantinovich Tregubov on 20 November 1938 and which his granddaughter, Irina Sinyavskaya, made available to us. Unfortunately, almost nothing is known about his life during the period 1939–1942. The following details were researched at the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation and at the archive of the Mauthausen Memorial.

As the chief political officer of a company of soldiers, Pavel Konstantinovich Tregubov fought in the ‘Great Patriotic War’ with the 1264th Rifle Regiment of the 380th Rifle Division. The division was created in winter 1941 and, from February 1942 onwards, found itself on the Kalinin Front as part of the 22nd Army. In July 1942 it was almost completely wiped out during Operation Seydlitz, which had been planned by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW – Supreme Command of the Armed Forces). The Red Army soldiers who had not been killed were taken prisoner. Pavel Konstantinovich Tregubov was among them. He was deported from the prisoner collection point to Stammlager (Stalag) 319 Cholm and arrived in Mauthausen concentration camp on 9 March 1943, where he was assigned prisoner number 24940. This transport was made up of a total of 135 people, and research has shown that all or nearly all of them were so-called ‘Politruks’. From the 380th Rifle Division, Andrei Petrovich Popov (born 1910), Grigory Timofeevich Repin (born 1899) and Ivan Mikhailovich Ruban (1906) arrived in Mauthausen at the same time as Tregubov. Different fates awaited the new arrivals. Of the 135 former prisoners of war, who were categorised as political prisoners in the concentration camp, 59 men were shot on 17 April 1943, including Andrei Popov. The others were probably classified as less dangerous – they were allowed to live. Grigory Repin and Ivan Ruban were fortunate: they lived to see the liberation of the concentration camp on 5 May 1945.

But Pavel Tregubov did not experience freedom again – by the end of 1944, Pavel had already become a ‘Muselmann’ – as the emaciated prisoners who could barely move their feet were known. The camp administration sent them to ‘recover’ at the so-called ‘sanatorium’ in Hartheim, where they were murdered in a gas chamber. Pavel Tregubov also died in Hartheim. His official date of death is recorded as 3 January 1945 but in reality he was probably murdered already at the end of 1944.

 

Tatiana Szekely

Translation into English: Joanna White

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