Grigori Averbuch

This is my father Grigori Averbuch. This photo was taken in Odessa in 1939. It is a photo from my father's military document, the only one left. In 1939 the Soviet troops came to Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. My father was recruited to the army and took part in those campaigns. When the Great Patriotic War began, my father was assigned to a military unit and although he had had myocarditis some time before and was 53 years old he joined this unit. When my mother mentioned that he could probably do something to avoid going to the front he replied that when fascists attacked the country a Jewish man had to be in the armed forces. He left that same day and never returned. This was at least the fourth war in his life. He went to the front-line forces in Bessarabia. He served in a medical unit of Primorskaya army and was responsible for logistics supplies to medical institutions and subdivisions of Primorskaya army in Sevastopol. He perished there during the defense of Sevastopol in July 1942. I still have 16 letters that he wrote from the front.