Back

Иван Александрович Александров / Iwan Alexandrowitsch Alexandrow 1905 - 1945 Edit

Born 20.4.1905 in Pensa
Died 7.4.1945 in Mauthausen

Biography

Ivan Alexandrovich Alexandrov was born on 20 April 1905 in the Russian city of Penza. Nothing is known about Ivan’s parents. The Alexandrov brothers – Boris, Ivan and Alexandr – grew up in a children’s home in Penza.

After graduating from school in 1924, Ivan and his brother Boris studied at the agricultural college in Penza and gained their diploma in agronomy in 1929. After this Ivan and Boris were called up for military service in the Red Army.

After his return from the army in 1931, Ivan Alexandrovich was assigned the job of agronomist in the village of Atkino in the Vadinsky district of Penza oblast. In 1932 he married the primary school teacher Ksenia Petrovna Pustovalova. In 1934 their son Genrikh was born.

In 1940 the Alexandrov family moved to the village of Kotel in the Vadinsky district to the house of Ksenia Petrovna’s parents. Ksenia Petrovna was the headmistress in Kotel for many years and died in 1954 after a lengthy illness.

When the war broke out, Ivan Alexandrovich was sent by the Vadinsky District Military Commissariat of the Penza region to the front in the rank of first lieutenant. The family received no news of him after this. Only in 1942 were they notified that he had been declared missing in action. Many years later, Ivan Alexandrovich’s son received an answer to his enquiry sent to the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. This letter informed him that Ivan Alexandrovich Alexandrov had been taken prisoner on 27 May 1942 in the village of Losovenka in the Kharkov (Kharkiv) oblast, had been handed over to the Gestapo in 1944 and that what happened to him after that was unknown.

In most cases, handover to the Gestapo meant the transfer from a Wehrmacht prisoner of war camp to a concentration camp, for which the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW – High Command of the Armed Forces) was no longer responsible.

While continuing the research, Ivan Alexandrovich’s grandson, Valerian Genrikhovich Alexandrov, learned in a letter from the concentration camp memorial museum that his grandfather had died in Mauthausen concentration camp. According to this letter, after imprisonment in prisoner of war camps for officers (Oflag) in Osterode (Oflag XI A) and Hammelburg (Oflag XIII D), Ivan Alexandrovich Alexandrov was handed over to the Gestapo in Wurzburg and deported from there to Mauthausen concentration camp, where he arrived on 15 August 1944. He was transferred to the Peggau subcamp and from there back to the Mauthausen main camp. He died there in the ‘infirmary camp’ on 7 April 1945 at 1.45am. The registered cause of death was ‘circulatory insufficiency, general deterioration’, although, as the letter states, it is likely this was not the actual cause of death.

For their assistance with our research we would like to thank V. V. Kolesinkov and S. A. Dvoryankin from the forum ‘No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten’.

 

Valerian and Natalya Alexandrov

 

Translation into English: Joanna White

Files

Send information about this person...

Add further information about this person...