Павел Михайлович Ковела / Pawel Michailowitsch Kowela 1902 - 1945

Born 29.6.1902 in Wolka Łosiniecka
Died .5.1945 in Mauthausen

Biography

Pavel Michailovich Kovela was born on 29 June 1902 in the village of Wolka Łosiniecka in the municipality of Paseki in the Tomaszów district of the voivodeship of Lublin (Poland) into a poor peasant family. As Pavel Michailovich wrote himself in his autobiography, which is now held in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, their poverty meant his father had to send him at the age of eight to work in the neighbouring village as a shepherd.  In May 1915, as the front drew near, the family was forced to leave their home; Pavel and his elder sister ended up in Turkmenistan to the town of Merv and lived there in a home for refugee children, since their father had died already in April 1915 and their mother’s health prevented her from travelling. Pavel lived at the home from 1916 to 1920 and completed four years of secondary schooling. In spring 1920 he was sent to an agricultural college in Samarkand, where he remained for a little over a month before breaking off his studies to volunteer for the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, joining the 4th Rifle Regiment as part of a division combating bandits in the Turkestan Military District, where he served as a Red Army soldier. After the disbandment of the regiment in November 1920, he was sent to an artillery depot on the Turkestan front. 

In June 1922 Pavel was discharged from the military and went to Uman (Ukraine) to join his brother, who had returned from a prisoner of war camp in 1919. In Uman he worked for the fire service for two and a half years. In January 1924 he volunteered again, joining the 297th Ukrainian Rifle Regiment of the 99th Division, with whom he served until October 1926. From 1926 to 1929 he studied at the ‘Workers of the Red Zamoskvorechye in Kiev’ military infantry training school, on completion of which he obtained a position with the 22nd Machine Gun Battalion of the Ukrainian Military District. From 1929 to 1938 he served in a variety of posts and rose from platoon commander to ordnance commander of the 4th Territorial Machine Gun Regiment.

In April 1930 he married Lidiya Michailovna Litvinova and their two children Emma and Yury, were born soon afterwards.

In 1940 the Kovela family moved from Kiev to Lutsk so that Pavel could take up the post of adjutant to the chief of staff of the 306th Rifle Regiment. Kovela was on the very front line from the very first days of the war. As a battalion leader serving with the 123th Rifle Regiment of the 62nd Rifle Division of the Southwest Front, in September 1941 he was caught in an enemy pocket in the village of Krasenovka in the Cherkassy region. He was unable to escape and there was no news of him. He was reported as missing in action.

There is a postcard in the family archive written by Kovela on 4 October 1942 from the  prisoner of war camp Stalag XIII C. Only in 1959 did his wife Lidiya Michailovna receive a letter from which she learned that Pavel Michailovich had been in Mauthausen concentration camp.

An excerpt from this letter: ‘My friend Pavel Kovela became bedridden two or three days after the liberation. His stomach couldn’t take any food. With the help of our comrades I took him by car to the American field hospital. Afterwards I didn’t see him again and couldn’t find out what happened to him.’

In 2013, information about Kovela’s time in internment could be found on the internet site of the OBD-Memorial. With the help of experts on the forums of the Union of Search Detachments, we were able to ‘decode’ his database entry.

Pavel Michailovich Kovela was interned initially at Stalag 346 (Kremenchug), from there he was transferred to Oflag XI A (Volodymyr-Volynskyi), and in July 1942 to Stalag 367 Tschenstochau (today’s Częstochowa). On 4 August he arrived at Oflag XIII D Hammelburg (identification number 8775) and remained there for two years, working in detachment 10077 Zapfendorf (probably quarrying gravel and sand). On 12 July 1944 he was passed from the infirmary to the Nuremberg-Fürth Gestapo and, on 19 July, from the Gestapo to Mauthausen concentration camp (prisoner number 79813).

On 17 August 1944, Pavel was transferred to Peggau, where prisoners worked on the construction of underground factories. In April 1945 all the prisoners returned to Mauthausen.

According to the information provided by his friend, Pavel Michailovich Kovela died in May 1945 in the 131st Evacuation Hospital of the US Army.

Marat Burakovsky, Kiev, Ukraine

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