WWII veterans from Armenia told about their struggle at the front and in the rear

On April 28, veterans of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) from Armenia told Izvestia about the trials they had to face at the front and in the rear during the fight against Nazi Germany. Video interviews of wartime witnesses are published in the "Living History" section of the Izvestia News Center's "Great Victory" virtual museum.

Asatur Alumovich Baziyan was drafted to the front in the autumn of 1942. After training, he joined the 340th Infantry Regiment and with the 1st Ukrainian Front liberated Donbass, Poltava, Kiev, Rivne, and Polish cities.

Once in Ukraine, Asatur Alumovich thwarted a German tank attack. In the predawn darkness, he saw the enemy dragging a captured Soviet cannon to their positions.

"I took an anti-tank rifle, aimed and fired four times in a row. Something caught fire, we looked closely, and there was a tank. They requested artillery support. Our Katyusha immediately started shooting in that direction. And it turned out that six tanks were hiding there. We set two more on fire, and three managed to escape," the veteran said about the episode.

In Western Ukraine, Asatur Alumovich earned the Order of Glory, III degree. While relaxing on the central street of one of the cities, he "noticed a woman with a completely non-feminine gait." The soldier detained a suspicious man, who turned out to be a man, and brought him to the headquarters, where they found sketches of the location of the Soviet troops.

During the crossing of the Vistula, Asatur Alumovich was seriously wounded. He learned about the Victory when he returned to the front after treatment and vacation. In January 2025, the veteran celebrated his 100th birthday.

Anna Pavlovna Sorokina's family lived in the Leningrad region before the war. In the summer of 1941, the father of a 10-year-old girl was mobilized, and her town of Luga was bombed. One day, a bomb hit Anna's family home, killing her grandmother and injuring the child himself.

The wounded girl was sent to Leningrad in a freight car. There she was separated from her family, evacuated to Bashkiria, and ended up in a boarding school for street children. In September, the blockade began.

"All of us children slept on the floor, dressed, tightly huddled together. We were terribly hungry. Every morning, the tutors collected the dead children, there were five or six of them," the woman recalls her life at the boarding school.

After the siege ring was broken in January 1943, the students were evacuated from Leningrad. Anna Pavlovna was taken to Armenia, where she became seriously ill with pneumonia.

"I was already a candidate for death row, and suddenly my mother comes into the room. She found me. She took care of me, nursed me, and by the will of fate I recovered," she said.

For the next two years, Anna's mother worked in a military unit as a dishwasher and a nurse at a military hospital. After school, she worked at a chemical plant as a clerk, typist, and secretary. She still lives in Armenia now.

Sargis Tigranovich Harutyunyan barely graduated from the seventh grade in a mountainous Armenian village in the summer of 1941. The schoolboy was inspired by the war heroes — his father and uncle went to the front. The young man tried to join the army as a volunteer, but was refused.

Finally, in October 1944, Sargis Tigranovich was mobilized. After two months of training as a signalman, he went to the front in Poland. He happened to transmit important messages, including to the headquarters of Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, commander of the 2nd Belorussian Front.

"Towards the end of the war, we had fewer casualties. Although we were advancing, we should have lost more people. But the enemy was constantly running away, and therefore almost our entire division remained alive," the man recalls.

Just before the end of the war, Sargis Tigranovich found himself under the rubble of a building destroyed by bombing. The soldier was hospitalized with a severe leg injury and concussion. For three days he couldn't talk at all. He learned about the Victory during treatment.

"Some captain came and said that the war was over. There was jubilation. Your whole inner world is filled with joy that there is no more war," Sargis Tigranovich shared.

After the war, the veteran lived a long life in his native Armenia. He died on January 22, 2025, having managed to give an interview for the Great Victory project.

War and the musical world: how our composers reflected the theme of the Great Patriotic War

Symphonies, oratorios and cantatas about the heroic deed of the Soviet people

Earlier, on April 13, WWII veteran Anatoly Parubin told Izvestia about the capture of Vienna by the Red Army in 1945. According to him, the Germans blew up almost all the bridges across the Danube in the city, but the Soviet soldiers managed to clear the last remaining crossing.