Apparently the theme of the Great Patriotic War is inexhaustible (and the Second World War). The question of the very existence, first of all, of the Russian people, and the Slavs of Europe, in particular, was too serious. Our homegrown liberals and the media controlled by the "world behind the scenes" very often recall the "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact" (as they call it, although such a "pact" never existed, but there was a diplomatic agreement between the USSR and Germany, which existed and exist in practice of all states), a normal document in its essence, aimed at protecting the borders of its state and people. But the media NEVER REMEMBER AND WRITE about the agreement between the heads of government of Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany, which went down in history as the "Munich Pact", which authorized the seizure of Czechoslovakia by Hitler. This was the beginning of the world massacre, which claimed the lives of more than 50 million people. But in this post I want to talk about something else, perhaps little known to young people. About the Czech Otakar Yarosh, who lived in the city of Buzuluk, and on January 30, 1943, as part of 1 separate Czechoslovak battalion under the command of Ludwik Svoboda, went to the front, and already on March 8 he accomplished a feat. He was the commander of the 1st company. In the Czechoslovak army, the 1st company is considered the best and is entrusted to the best officer. Lieutenant Otkar Yarosh was the best... This story is about him.
Do you know what kind of guy he was!?...
(In memory of the Hero of the Soviet Union Otakar Yarosh)
The first Hero of the Soviet Union among foreigners, Otakar Yarosh, I type on the keyboard, and for some reason my mind protests against the formally correct, but essentially unacceptable in this case, the word “foreigner”. Not! Not a foreigner, but a native! brother of my people - Otakar Frantsevich Yarosh! Here, in Buzuluk, he lived, breathed, walked the streets of the then military city, together with the senior commander Ludwig Svoboda, prepared the soldiers of the first Czechoslovak infantry battalion to fight the fascist hordes that enslaved his native Czechoslovakia, and were going to pour blood and enslave the Soviet Union.
Then our peoples curbed the “brown plague” of fascism and, thanks to this, the peoples of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Russia in the 21st century have independence and decide for themselves how to live. This is exactly what Lieutenant (senior lieutenant) Otakar Yarosh dreamed about, for this he, like a soldier honestly, without flinching in a difficult battle, gave his life near the small Ukrainian village of Sokolovo on March 8, 1943. What was Otakar Yarosh like, in what environment did he grow up and be brought up, what helped him become a giant of the human spirit?
He was born on August 1, 1912 in the small town of Luneh (sometimes they write Louny) in the north-west of the Czech Republic in the family of a locomotive driver. The family had many children, Otakar was the second of five sons. In 1923, the family moved to the town of Melnik, located 40 km. south of Prague, at the confluence of the Vltava and Laba rivers. (Much later, a small town in the Orenburg region at the confluence of the Buzuluk and Samara rivers, from where Otakar will take a step into immortality, will vividly remind him of his native places and become his second homeland). For 5 years Otakar studied at a real gymnasium and became a passionate book reader. This was influenced by his mother Anna, who instilled in her son a love for the book. Otakar read a lot of patriotic, historical, adventure literature. He was well acquainted with the works of Russian classics: A.S. Pushkin, L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov.
Free from studying and reading books, the young boy devoted time to sports, he was especially fascinated by chess and boxing, although he was a good football goalkeeper, did gymnastics, and swam well. Sports skills gradually helped to forge a staunch warrior-fighter from a young man.
In 1928, Otakar entered, and in 1934 he successfully graduated from the Prague Electrotechnical College and was drafted into the Czechoslovak army. Then he entered and in 1937, after graduating from a military school in Granik (Moravia), he received the rank of lieutenant and served in one of the military units in Slovakia. A true patriot of the Motherland, Otakar Yarosh was very upset by the events that went down in history as the "Munich conspiracy": when in September 1938, as a result of a criminal agreement between the heads of government of Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany, the capture of Czechoslovakia by fascist Germany was sanctioned. “Without a shot, the Czech Republic was given to the Nazis, without a single shot,” Otakar said bitterly to his comrades. (The help of the Soviet government was rejected by the Czechoslovak bourgeois government of those years).
Not wanting to live under the dictates of the Nazis, Otakar illegally crossed the border with Poland, where he joined the Czechoslovak unit called the "Polish Legion", which participated in military clashes with the Nazis. However, when Poland was occupied by Germany in September 1939, this unit, under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Ludwig Svoboda, crossed into the territory of the USSR. On July 18, 1941, by agreement between the government of the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Republic, the formation of the Czechoslovak military unit began on Soviet soil. Otakar Yarosh became one of its first officers.
The future soldiers of the First Separate Czechoslovak Battalion arrived in the city of Buzuluk, Chkalovsky Region, on February 5, 1942. There were only 88 of them, and after 2 months there were already 600! Otakar Yarosh lived in Buzuluk on Chapaev Street in house number 69, the owner of which was Maria Makarovna Maslova.
On May 27, 1942, in the Buzuluk cinema, then called "Proletary", and now "Victory", Klement Gottwald, the foreign leader of the communist Czechoslovak resistance, spoke to the fellow countrymen, who said: "I am convinced that you will prove worthy of your Hussite ancestors, that you will be worthy to fight together with the Red Army.” The soldiers of the Czechoslovak battalion stubbornly prepared for battles with the Nazi invaders throughout 1942.
Otkar's company was the best in combat training, the soldiers respected their seasoned, intelligent, fair commander and tried not to let down their "Otu", as they affectionately called him. In any weather: hot summer, rainy autumn, in the cold of winter - the soldiers of the 1st company, according to the Suvorov principle, "hard in training - easy in battle" learned to wield their weapons, overcome obstacles: they went to force the Samara River, storm the steep slopes of the Ataman mountains. It was especially difficult in winter, and Otakar himself once froze his toes so that he could hardly move. And when one day the murmur of individual fighters was heard for the hardships of military service, Otakar Yarosh brought his 1st company to the Kuibyshev plant, where Buzuluk youngsters, aged 13-15 years, were in the shops, standing on stands made of wooden boxes or bricks, for 11-12 hours worked on machine tools, manufacturing products for the needs of the front. This “excursion” turned out to be enough for the company’s soldiers to burn with the desire to get to the front as soon as possible in order to grapple with the hated fascists in battle.
And, finally, on January 30, 1943, the soldiers of the Czechoslovak battalion with echelon No. 22904 left for the West, and already on March 8, the 1st company of Lieutenant Otakar Yarosh took an unequal battle with the Nazis near the Ukrainian village of Sokolovo, near the river with the short name Mzha.
It was a fundamentally important battle. The Nazis knew that they were opposed by an unfired Czechoslovak battalion, and hoped to quickly put an end to it. They believed that the destruction of a foreign unit on the Soviet-German front would prevent the appearance of other foreign units here, so they initially provided a significant numerical superiority in the attack. In total, more than 80 tanks were thrown against the company of Otakar Yarosh, reinforced by two battalions of submachine gunners on 14 armored personnel carriers.
Ludwig Svoboda, by telephone, asked Otar Yarosh to hold out, not to retreat: - “You can’t leave. Do you hear, brother Yarosh? “We will not retreat, brother colonel,” Otakar promised and kept his word.
The fight was hot and furious. An armored tank armada, spewing deadly volleys from guns and machine guns, attacked, in addition, using flamethrower installations, and a handful of brave men, located next to the Orthodox church, repelled these attacks using four anti-tank guns, three 76-mm. cannons, 8 anti-tank rifles, 3 mortars and 6 heavy machine guns.
Ukrainian huts set on fire from flamethrowers were on fire, smoke covered the sky, people fell in battle, the company held on! But now, having destroyed up to 60 fascist submachine gunners, the machine gunner Ignaz Spiegl died a heroic death, having destroyed three tanks, the platoon commander Jiří Frank was killed, comrades P. Gyeri, G. Schwartz were killed, Lieutenant S. Lom was killed from the fire of an enemy tank, Redisch was killed ... Fascist the tanks were approaching the church. By this time, Otakar Yarosh had already been wounded twice, his lung had been shot, blood was coming from his mouth and nose, but, having gathered all his will into a fist, the brave son of the fraternal Czech people, fired from an anti-tank rifle, personally destroying two tanks. Bleeding, grabbing a bunch of grenades, he stepped towards the third tank, but pierced by a machine-gun burst, he fell before reaching a few steps ... Eyewitnesses of these last minutes of Otakar Yarosh's life said that the tank ran into the hero, but exploded and caught fire. It seemed that the dead Otakar continued to fight ... After the battle, the hero's body was identified by the crowns on his teeth ... In this battle, the Czechoslovak soldiers lost 86 people killed and 56 were wounded. Enemy losses amounted to 19 tanks, 6 armored personnel carriers, about 400 people were killed. This is how the "unfired" Czechoslovak soldiers fought with the Nazis! They did not know that messengers were sent to them twice, with an order to retreat to the main forces behind Mzhu, but both messengers died ... 10 tanks sent to help by L. Svoboda could not get through to them, since the loose March river ice could not withstand this mass metal, one of them failed ...
On April 17, 1943, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was signed, conferring the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to Lieutenant Otakar Yarosh. The first among foreign citizens. He was also given the military rank of captain. And only 87 soldiers of the Czechoslovak battalion then received orders and medals of the Soviet Union.
67 years have passed since the end of the war. But Captain Otakar Yarosh is alive! Lives in the memory of grateful people! One of the central streets in the city of Buzuluk is named after him, there is a memorial plaque on the house where he once lived, citizens come here to pay tribute to the memory of his bright name, there is an exposition dedicated to Czechoslovak heroes in the local history museum of the city. And a young, handsome, courageous man looks at the visitors, whom the Buzuluchans, like the soldiers of his heroic 1st company, warmly and fraternally call Ota. Our Ota!
Otakar was born in 1912 in the city of Louny in the Czech Republic, which in those years was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the family of a railway depot fireman. The family was large - five ...
Otakar was born in 1912 in the city of Louny in the Czech Republic, which in those years was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the family of a railway depot fireman. The family was large - five sons. After seven years of school, he studied at an electrical college, and being drafted into the army, he ended up in a non-commissioned officer school in Trnava. After serving for several years as a non-commissioned officer in the infantry, in 1937 he was sent to a military school in the city of Granice-na-Morava, from where he graduated with an excellent diploma and officer rank.
Otakar's hometown
Two passions determined all the interests and the whole inner world of Otakar Yarosh. Above all else in life, he loved books and sports. The house had a small but tastefully selected library. He loved the history of his native and long-suffering country, the history of the Czech Republic. Therefore, for the most part, I read books about that heroic time when Jan Hus, as a heretic, was burned at the stake in Constanta by the cruel, self-satisfied and hypocritical German Catholics of the Pope. And the straightforward and responsive to the sufferings of his people, the national hero of the Czech Republic, the fearless Jan Zizka raised a flag against the German oppressors, on which the call to fight was drawn in large letters - “Pravda vitezi!” - "Truth wins!" Otakar was especially fond of reading historical novels by Alois Irasek, a classic of Czech literature of the 19th century.
But the Czech Republic, which broke away from the Empire after the First World War, was not independent for long. In 1939, the Germans came ... The patriotic young commander refused to serve the Nazis and secretly left for Poland. He worked as a simple electrician ... But a few months later, German troops, breaking the border, flowed across the Polish land - the Second World War began.
Lieutenant Otakar Yarosh
For a young man with strong anti-fascist convictions, there were two ways - to stay in the occupied country and join the partisans, or to leave for Russia. Otakar preferred the second - he already had a family ... But the war - that's why the World War, so that there are no safe places and safe statuses left in the world. In 1941, Germany treacherously attacked the Soviet Union.
Czechoslovak patriots who lived on Soviet territory sent a letter to the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander. The letter contained a request: to find a use for their forces on the front of the struggle against the Nazi invaders. In February 1942, the 1st combined Czechoslovak battalion began to form from Czech immigrants in Buzuluk. Otakar Yarosh was among his first volunteers.
Parade before leaving for the front line
The young commander led the first company of this battalion. Since January 30, 1943 - at the forefront, as part of the 25th Guards Rifle Division of the Voronezh Front.
The Czechs fought bravely and desperately, like those whose homeland has been groaning under the fascist boot for years. On March 8, 1943, the battalion took the battle with the Nazi troops near the village of Sokolovo, Zmievsky district, Kharkov region. At noon, about 60 enemy tanks and several armored personnel carriers attacked the village, on the outskirts of which, on the rural churchyard near the old church, the Czech infantry settled in the trenches.
The fighters of Otakar Yarosh's company knocked out 19 tanks and 6 armored personnel carriers with machine gunners. About 300 enemy soldiers and officers were destroyed. During the battle, Yarosh himself was wounded twice - in the head and in the chest, but did not go to the medical battalion for dressing - he continued to command a company and fire from an anti-tank rifle at the advancing enemy. The cartridges came to an end, the orderly, sent with a cart for ammunition to the second line of defense, died along the way. And the enemy tanks crawled and crawled along the melted March snow mixed with mud ... The battalion suffered losses.
One of the tanks broke through to the gates of the churchyard for a dozen meters. Doubt now!
Nádrže hlavy - horí! (on the head - fire!) - Lieutenant Yarosh waved his mitten for the umpteenth time during this battle. But the armor-piercers were silent ... Some were killed, some clung to the parapet in anticipation of replenishment of ammunition. Retreat? .. Yes, how much can you retreat - something ...
The commander unfastened a bunch of grenades from his belt. One grenade is not enough here - the German colossus is healthy! He rose to his height, dashed forward along the crunchy lacquer crust - in front of the enemy ...
A burst of machine-gun fire rang out. She cut off the lieutenant: comrades-in-arms saw from the trench how the uniform on the back was torn by hot bullets passing right through. Staining the dirty snow with blood, Yarosh managed to take five more steps - only five, but they were enough! The officer fell right under the tracks of the iron monster.
Feat. From a painting by a contemporary artist
A deafening explosion interrupted the caterpillar, and the wrecked tank, due to inertia, helplessly turned sideways towards the fighters, collapsed on its side. Tankers climbed out of the burning car, drugged by shell shock, in smoke and flames, who were immediately laid down by the Czech machine gunner. The rest of the Germans did not dare to tempt fate anymore and retreated ...
After the battle, 120 Czechoslovak fighters who gave their lives "for our and your victory" were buried together with Soviet soldiers in a mass grave in the village of Sokolovo. Among the buried was the lieutenant of the Czechoslovak army Otakar Frantisek Yarosh. The officer was identified only by a silver patch on the surviving sleeve.
Award list of Otakar Yarosh
Posthumously lieutenant Otakar Yarosh was awarded the rank of captain. And on April 17, 1943, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Otakar Yarosh, the first of the foreign citizens, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Otakar Yarosh was born on August 1, 1912 in Louny (Czech Republic) in the family of a locomotive stoker. His parents gave him a name in honor of the Czech king, who became famous for his military victories. After graduating from the Prague Electrotechnical College, Otakar decided to become a career military man. In 1937, he graduated from the Higher Military School in the city of Hranice, then served in the Czech troops. After the occupation of the Czech lands in 1939 by Nazi Germany, he emigrated to Poland, and then to the Soviet Union. The Munich events convinced Otakar Yarosh that the Soviet Union was the main ally and defender of the freedom of Czechoslovakia. He would have fought at home, but he could not, there was another front, an underground one, which he did not really trust and was even afraid of him ... but he was not afraid of meeting the enemy. In February 1942, Otakar Yarosh, together with Lieutenant Colonel L. Svoboda and a group of military men, arrived in Buzuluk and, as a professional military man, was appointed commander of the 1st company of a separate Czechoslovak infantry battalion. So the military telegraph operator became an infantry commander. At the first meeting with the personnel of the company, Otakar Yarosh said: “Soldiers, just as a pile of bricks is not a building, so a group of soldiers is not a combat-ready unit. I am your commander, and I will have to lead you into battle. Please be aware of who we will have to fight. These are not some frightened youths for you, but fascists who have perfectly mastered the art of killing. If we want to successfully resist them, moreover, defeat them, then we must know a lot, be able to do a lot. We must know and be able to do more and better than they do. I believe that you understand me and no task, even the most difficult one, will knock you out of the saddle. This is what I will lead you to today. Don't expect any relief from me. I will demand a lot from you."
And in any weather: in the rain, in the summer heat, in severe frost and in deep snow they crossed Samara, stormed the Sukhorechensky mountains, built huts in the forest, developed skills for living in the most difficult conditions. They acted according to the famous Suvorov principle: “It is hard in learning - it is easy in battle!”. Otakar Yarosh has always been an example in everything. As a commander, he was strict, demanding, firm, however, he was loved and respected by the soldiers.
In a letter home, to his homeland, he said that he was going to the front and hoped that he would return home, but it might happen that he would not return ...
January 30, 1943 Otakar Yarosh as part of a battalion, echelon 22904 went to the Soviet-German front. Many residents of Buzuluk then came to see off the allied (Czechoslovak) military unit on a long journey ...
Unloading from wagons1 at the Valuyki station. March through Alekseevka, Volchanok, Belgorod. The commander of the 1st company Otakar Yarosh, like the commander of the battalion Ludwik Svoboda, walked along with the soldiers on foot.
A short rest in Kharkov, recently recaptured from the Germans. Late in the evening on March 2, the Czechoslovak battalion received order No. 006 from the head of defense of the Kharkov city district, Lieutenant General D.T. Kozlov.
The company of lieutenant O. Yarosh was instructed to defend the village of Sokolov. He placed his observation post in the church.
B.C. Petrov, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, an artillery general, recalled a meeting with Otakar Yarosh: From Soklov's side, a man came out to meet, dressed in the same way as all the commanders of the Czechoslovak battalion: a hat with earflaps, an overcoat, equipment with shoulder straps. On the chest binoculars, a camera. He stopped a few paces away and raised his hand to his headdress in greeting. The staff officer introduced the counter lieutenant Otakar Yarosh, commander of the 1st company. After a handshake, Yarosh began to acquaint us with his defensive sector. Calmly, unhurriedly, without missing a detail, Yarosh outlined the tactical scheme of actions for platoons and squads, just as experienced front-line soldiers do. Oh, lieutenant Yarosh inspired confidence! Among his compatriots, people for the most part tall, the commander of the 1st company differed not only in appearance. In the firm gaze of serious, even gloomy eyes, as in all the features of the face of the Czechoslovak lieutenant, the nature of a warrior was visible, vulnerable, perhaps in the flesh, but not in spirit.
And on March 8, 1943, at 13:00, about 60 tanks and 15-20 armored personnel carriers attacked Sokolovo. There is smoke over the village. The roar and rumble was indescribable. Tank guns were loudly beaten, machine guns were scribbling. The single combat of the Germans and the Czechoslovak infantry began. The last conversation of the commander of the Svoboda battalion with O. Yarosh: “You can’t leave. Do you hear, brother Yarosh?” "Let's not retreat, my brother Colonel." O. Yarosh had already been wounded twice during the battle. Blood flooded his face, broken fingers stuck to the trigger of an anti-tank rifle ...
Reserve Colonel Yaroslav Perny (participant in the battle) talks about the last minutes of his life: “Yarosh, on the run, unhooked a bunch of grenades from his belt, obviously intending to throw it at the tank. But he fell dead, struck by a burst of tank machine guns. The tank ran over him, Yarosh's grenades exploded, and the tank turned over on its side. Yarosh, even dead, managed to destroy a fascist tank ... During the explosion, I was covered with earth, the Nazis considered me dead, and this saved my life.
It was about five in the evening. So Otakar Yarosh stepped into immortality. On April 17, 1943, a decree was signed by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on awarding Lieutenant Otakar Yarosh the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously). This was the first foreign citizen who was awarded such an honorary title during the Great Patriotic War. He was also posthumously awarded the military rank of captain.
Streets in Buzuluk, Kharkov, a secondary school in the village of Sokolovo bear the name of Yarosh. In the city of Melnik, in the homeland of Yarosh, a monument was erected with the inscription: “Captain Otakar Yarosh”, a bust of the hero was erected in the regional museum.
, Ukrainian SSR, USSR
Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia USSR USSR
Biography
Otakar Frantisek Jarosh was born in the city of Louny in Austria-Hungary (now in the Ustetsky region of the Czech Republic) in the family of a locomotive stoker. Czech by nationality.
Awards
- On April 17, 1943, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Otakar Yarosh, the first foreign citizen, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union;
- Order of the White Lion "For Victory", 1st class.
Memory
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She's on the other side.
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Notes
Links
. Site "Heroes of the Country".
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An excerpt characterizing Yarosh, Otakar
Behind, from the place where Karataev was sitting, a shot was heard. Pierre heard this shot clearly, but at the same moment he heard it, Pierre remembered that he had not finished the calculation he had begun before the marshal's passage about how many crossings were left to Smolensk. And he began to count. Two French soldiers, one of whom held a shot, smoking gun in his hand, ran past Pierre. They were both pale, and in the expression of their faces - one of them looked timidly at Pierre - there was something similar to what he saw in a young soldier at an execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and remembered how this soldier of the third day burned his shirt while drying at the stake and how they laughed at him.The dog howled from behind, from the place where Karataev was sitting. “What a fool, what is she howling about?” thought Pierre.
The comrade soldiers, walking next to Pierre, did not look back, just like he did, at the place from which a shot was heard and then the howling of a dog; but a stern expression lay on all faces.
The depot, and the prisoners, and the convoy of the marshal stopped in the village of Shamshev. Everything was huddled around the fires. Pierre went up to the fire, ate roasted horse meat, lay down with his back to the fire and immediately fell asleep. He slept again in the same dream as he slept in Mozhaisk after Borodino.
Again the events of reality were combined with dreams, and again someone, whether he himself or someone else, spoke to him thoughts, and even the same thoughts that were spoken to him in Mozhaisk.
“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything moves and moves, and this movement is God. And as long as there is life, there is the enjoyment of the self-consciousness of the deity. Love life, love God. It is most difficult and most blessed to love this life in one's suffering, in the innocence of suffering.
"Karataev" - Pierre remembered.
And suddenly Pierre introduced himself as a living, long-forgotten, meek old man who taught geography to Pierre in Switzerland. "Wait," said the old man. And he showed Pierre the globe. This globe was a living, oscillating ball, without dimensions. The entire surface of the sphere consisted of drops tightly compressed together. And these drops all moved, moved, and then merged from several into one, then from one they were divided into many. Each drop strove to spill out, to capture the greatest space, but others, striving for the same, squeezed it, sometimes destroyed it, sometimes merged with it.
“This is life,” said the old teacher.
“How simple and clear it is,” thought Pierre. How could I not have known this before?
- In the middle is God, and each drop tends to expand in order to reflect him in the largest size. And it grows, merges, and shrinks, and is destroyed on the surface, goes into the depths and emerges again. Here he is, Karataev, here he spilled and disappeared. - Vous avez compris, mon enfant, [You understand.] - said the teacher.
- Vous avez compris, sacre nom, [You understand, damn you.] - shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.
He got up and sat down. By the fire, squatting on his haunches, sat a Frenchman, who had just pushed a Russian soldier away, and fried the meat put on the ramrod. Wiry, tucked up, overgrown with hair, red hands with short fingers deftly turned the ramrod. A brown, gloomy face with furrowed brows was clearly visible in the glow of the coals.
“Ca lui est bien egal,” he grumbled, quickly addressing the soldier behind him. - ... brigand. Va! [He doesn't care... Rogue, right!]
And the soldier, turning the ramrod, looked gloomily at Pierre. Pierre turned away, peering into the shadows. One Russian soldier, a prisoner, the one who was pushed away by the Frenchman, sat by the fire and ruffled something with his hand. Peering closer, Pierre recognized a purple dog, which, wagging its tail, was sitting next to the soldier.
- Did you come? Pierre said. “Ah, Pla…” he began and did not finish. In his imagination, suddenly, at the same time, connecting with each other, there arose a memory of the look with which Plato looked at him, sitting under a tree, of a shot heard in that place, of a dog howling, of the criminal faces of two Frenchmen who ran past him, of a shot smoking gun, about the absence of Karataev at this halt, and he was ready to understand that Karataev had been killed, but at the same moment in his soul, taking from God knows where, there arose a memory of the evening he had spent with the beautiful Polish woman, in the summer, on balcony of his Kiev house. And yet, without connecting the memories of the current day and not drawing a conclusion about them, Pierre closed his eyes, and the picture of summer nature mingled with the memory of bathing, of a liquid oscillating ball, and he sank somewhere into the water, so that the water converged over his head.
Before sunrise, he was awakened by loud, frequent shots and screams. The French ran past Pierre.
- Les cosaques! [Cossacks!] - shouted one of them, and a minute later a crowd of Russian faces surrounded Pierre.
For a long time Pierre could not understand what happened to him. From all sides he heard the cries of joy of his comrades.
- Brothers! My darlings, doves! - crying, shouted the old soldiers, hugging the Cossacks and hussars. Hussars and Cossacks surrounded the prisoners and hurriedly offered some dresses, some boots, some bread. Pierre sobbed, sitting in the middle of them, and could not utter a word; he embraced the first soldier who approached him and, weeping, kissed him.
To the 95th anniversary of the birth of the Czech warrior-hero, whose name is one of the most famous streets of Kharkov.
Otakar Yarosh is hard to imagine as a gray-haired old man with a wrinkled face. In our minds, he forever remained a young man, with a courageous, stern face and a thoughtful look. His appearance eloquently conveyed the inner essence of this granite-hard, taciturn man, whose life path became the logical prehistory of a heroic death.
He was born in the small village of Louny in the North Bohemian region on August 1, 1912, into an ordinary middle-class proletarian family. Father, Frantisek, worked as a locomotive driver at the railway station, mother, Aninka, was a housewife. There were five children in the Yarosh family - boys who played different games from morning to evening, swam and bathed in the river, ran and competed. They especially liked football. Often arranged yard games on their street.
When the children began to grow up, the family moved to the ancient town of Melnik, which rises like a high castle at the confluence of the Vltava River with Laba (on the Slavic Elba). On the arrow of these rivers, the boys liked to arrange swimming competitions for a distance - who was the first. More often than others, Otakar, or Ota, as the brothers called him, won. He was the second son in the Yarosh family. From childhood he loved outdoor games, sports, he grew up as a well-built and strong guy. He was not only physically strong, but also a fair, kind and honest young man. Therefore, unequivocally, he enjoyed indisputable authority in his youth team and always remained a recognized leader in the team.
Two passions determined all the interests and the whole inner world of Otakar Yarosh. Above all else in life, he loved books and sports. The house had a small but tastefully selected library. He loved the history of his native and long-suffering country, the history of the Czech Republic. Therefore, for the most part, I read books about that heroic time when Jan Hus, as a heretic, was burned at the stake in Constanta by the cruel, self-satisfied and hypocritical German Catholics of the Pope. And the straightforward and responsive to the sufferings of his people, the national hero of the Czech Republic, the fearless Jan Zizka raised a flag against the German oppressors, on which the call to fight was drawn in large letters - “Pravda vitezi!” “Truth wins!” Otakar was especially fond of reading historical novels by Alois Irasek, a classic of Czech literature of the 19th century.
After school, he went to study in Prague, located 30 kilometers from Melnik. Went to electrical engineering school. In his free time, he liked to visit ancient churches, Prague Castle, the Cathedral of St. Vita, wander over the pensive Vltava and the old lanes of the ancient Slavic capital. He fell in love with Prague for the rest of his life, she was his first love, she entered his flesh and blood and she accompanied him until the end of her days. Translated from the Czech "prah" means threshold, and he was aware that his native Prague was the threshold of the Slavic lands on the western borders of his homeland. He always felt the malevolence and arrogance of strangers.
Slav's choice
More than 1 million Germans lived in the Czech Sudetes, who despised everything Slavic, national and tried to subordinate the local population to their influence. This is especially about
appeared in the days of the Munich Conference, when on September 30, 1938, the governments of Germany, Italy, England and France signed an agreement on the introduction of fascist troops into the Czech Republic. The next day, the German Nazis crossed the border and entered the borders of western Bohemia. Otakar acutely experienced the enslavement and helplessness of his homeland. And the Sudeten Germans, in a fit of devotion to Adolf Hitler, threw bouquets of flowers at the Nazi soldiers (looking ahead, we say that by the decision of the Potsdam Conference in 1945, more than 2.5 million Germans were deported from Czechoslovakia to their historical homeland, Germany). Among the fascist divisions that entered the Czech Republic, one of the first to occupy its units was the SS division "Dead Head", the Fuhrer's personal guard.
Ota did not yet know that in a few years he would meet with them, with these same thugs, in a mortal battle in the snowy fields near the Ukrainian village of Sokolovo. Where he would give his life for the victory, for our Victory... He stood in the crowd and looked with hatred at the well-trained SS executioners proudly striding across his land.
By this time, Otakar Yarosh had already become a career officer. After graduating from an electrical engineering school, Ota served in active service in Trnava (Eastern Slovakia), where he was noticed and appreciated as a skilled warrior. He was sent to an officer's school in the Border na Morava, from which he graduated with honors in 1937, a year before the Anschluss of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany. He had to choose - to remain in the occupied homeland, where he would have to serve the Nazi regime, or be shot. Otakar Yarosh could not allow even the thought of submitting to the hated fascists.
Everyone who could, many patriots of the Czech Republic secretly, in freight trains, crossed the border and headed for Polyna, in Cieszyn Silesia. Here, in the Polish city of Wroclaw, Czech defectors and military personnel joined the emerging military unit under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ludwik Svoboda. With the beginning of the Second World War, the Czech part goes to the Soviet Union, to Western Ukraine, to the Ternopil region and the city of Kamenetz-Podolsky. After - the evacuation of a thinned and still incapacitated military unit, first to Suzdal, and then to Buzuluk, the Kuibyshev (now Samara) region of Russia. Time was needed for the formation and training of incoming recruits - Czechs from different parts of the USSR and Transcarpathian Ukraine. Now the Czechoslovak battalion numbered about 1000 soldiers and officers. Several times the battalion headquarters sent reports to Moscow, to the Kremlin, with a request to voluntarily send them to the front. With the victory of the Soviet troops in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Czech brothers were already impatiently preparing to engage in battle with the Nazi
hordes.
In the memory of the villagers
Their baptism of fire took place on March 8, 1943 near the village. Sokolovo, Zmievsky district, Kharkiv region, where the Svoboda battalion took up defensive positions along the Mzha River. Here, on the outskirts of the village, on the snowy March snow, they held the defense, having received a military order from the commandant of Kharkov, Lieutenant General D.T. Kozlov, not to let a single fascist tank, not a single soldier through Mzha. “Not a step back, Kharkov is behind you!” - said the order.
The commander of the 1st company, the most combat-ready company in the Czechoslovak battalion, Lieutenant Ot. Yarosh. He volunteered to lead the defense of the village. In the entire unit there was no more intelligent and experienced, competent and humane commander than he. Therefore, Ludwik Svoboda calmly and without fear entrusted the defense of this most difficult sector to Lieutenant Yarosh.
The Czech battalion arrived in Sokolovo urgently, on a forced march, at dawn on March 3. During the period from March 3 to March 8, the Czechs actively built trenches, communication passages and dugouts. In this they diligently helped the villagers. All these days, commander Otakar Yarosh, his deputy Ignaz Spiegel, together with ordinary soldiers Gnat and Andriy, lived in a simple rural hut. We managed to find out that Yarosh stayed at the Sokolov woman Natalka Khomovna Nesmiyan. In place of her hut, there is now a stadium in the center of the village. Early in the morning, the commander, together with Ignaz Spiegl, left to supervise the construction of the defense of the village. Before leaving, Natalka treated the soldiers to what she had - she put hot potatoes “in uniform” and a bowl of sauerkraut on the table. They came home late in the evening. The hostess directly on the clay “topping up” (floor in a rural hut) spread straw for all four fighters, and covered it with a row on top. They all slept together in one room, on straw. This fact from the life of O. Yarosh, published for the first time on the basis of the memoirs of Natalka Nesmiyan, perfectly characterizes his simplicity and humanity, lack of pride and arrogance towards ordinary soldiers.
The scouts of Antonin Sohor had already brought news several times that the Nazis were concentrating large forces of tanks and infantry in the area north of Taranovka. On March 7, Otakar knew that the next day would be a fierce battle. But on the evening of that day, the tired commander found time to the point of exhaustion and went to congratulate the girls of the medical unit on the upcoming holiday of March 8. The nurse, and later reserve major Dana Drnkova, recalls: “March 7 was Sunday, on this day Yarosh had a lot of trouble. I was sent to the first company, commanded by Otakar Yarosh. A wonderful person, even in such a difficult time he did not forget about us and came to congratulate us on the eve of International Women's Day. We saw how terribly tired he was, as he had not slept at all for several nights. We asked him about the situation, he said that the battle with superior enemy forces would be very difficult.”
Last Stand
The fight was brutal and bloody. On that memorable day, the March snow, according to the recollections of the villagers, turned red from spilled blood. Czechoslovak soldiers fought to the death.
They fought for every rural hut, for every street. The poorly armed infantry unit courageously repelled the attacks of the brutalized SS men of the Totenkopf Division. The Czechs were armed with Soviet weapons. Behind each fighter was a PPSh assault rifle and two anti-tank grenades. The company was given 4 Maxim machine guns and 8 anti-tank rifles. The Red Army itself experienced great difficulties then, but they tried to help the Czech soldiers in any way they could. Three batteries of "forty-five" (45 mm guns) were put up ahead under the command of the Estonian Nikolai Mutle, the Russian Petr Filatov and the Czech Jiri Frank. Because of Mzhi, from Mirgorod, the Czechs were supported by batteries of 76 mm guns under the command of captains Gromov and Novikov.
Otakar Yarosh to lead the battle chose a position on the bell tower towering in the middle of the village of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The church became the last line of defense for Sokolov's defenders. The calm and cold-blooded commander, without a shadow of fear, slowly and judiciously gave orders to his liaison officers, alternately brought in reinforcements - platoons of Antonin Sohor, Stanislav Steiskal and Hynek Vorach. From here he fired from his machine gun. Faithful to documentary accuracy, Yarosh did not part with the camera even in battle and recorded all the moments of the historical battle. The church was the center of defense of the Czechoslovak battalion. Beaten by shells and crushed by bullets, she stood in the middle of the village, not bowing or bending before the fascist attacks.
Otakar Yarosh had already been seriously wounded twice. His head was tightly pulled together by a bloody bandage, his right lung was pierced. But the courageous commander, without losing his composure, confidently led the defense of the combat position entrusted to him. When the German tanks, approaching the very gates of the church, began to fire cannons on its inner walls, Otakar Yarosh ran out of the church doors and, on the move, untying a bunch of grenades from his belt, wanted to throw it under the caterpillars of the steel monster. At this time, a burst from a tank machine gun sounded. The dead commander fell to the snow.
From the memoirs of the captain, and later reserve colonel Yaroslav Perny: “Up to a dozen fascist tanks broke through to the church. One of them drove almost ten meters to the church gates and opened fire. Shells were already exploding inside the church when Otakar Yarosh ran out. I was at that moment three or four meters from the entrance to the church in a deep crater from a shell, so I could see everything. Yarosh on the run unhooked a bunch of grenades from his belt, apparently intending to throw it at the tank, which was already about five meters away. But before Yarosh could do it, he fell dead near the porch, hit by a burst from a tank machine gun. The tank ran into him, Yarosh's grenades exploded and the tank turned over on its side. Yarosh, even dead, managed to destroy the Nazi tank. During the explosion, I was covered with earth, the Nazis considered me dead, and this saved my life.
Epilogue
Otakar Yarosh, the first foreign citizen, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and the title of lieutenant (captain) posthumously. In the mass grave of the village of Sokolovo, along with Soviet soldiers, 120 Czechoslovak soldiers who gave their lives for our lives are buried. Among them are the remains of the lieutenant of the Czechoslovak army Otakar Frantisek Yarosh. Every year on the day of the battle - March 8 and on Victory Day - May 9, villagers come here to put flowers on the graves of the guys who gave their young, blooming lives to victory over fascism, hated by all the peoples of Europe ... Do not forget the dead soldiers and Czech delegations constantly coming to Sokolovo to honor the memory of their countrymen.
