Gubarev, Vasily Ilyich

Gubarev Vasily Ilyich was born on March 22, 1916 in the Zharzhavninsky settlement of the Factory village of Sapozhkovsky district of the Ryazan province.

Born into a peasant family. In addition to Vasily, the family had four more children.

I didn’t get an education.

In 1933 he joined the collective farm.

Got married. A daughter was born.

The Gubarev family lived with his father and mother in the village of Fabrichnoe.

November 11, 1939 Vasily Gubarev was drafted into the Red Army.

He served the city of Tulchin (Vinnytsia region) on the border with Romania in the 363rd artillery regiment of the 130th infantry division of the 18th army. He was a riding, gunner on horse drawn traction.

In June-July 1940, the artillery regiment, where Gubarev served, participated in the annexation of part of Bessarabia to the USSR.

I met the Great Patriotic War on the border with Romania. The artillery regiment, where Gubarev served, served as the rearguard, covering the withdrawal of units of the Red Army.

September 8, 1941 under Kherson gun crew Gubarev was surrounded. Calculation courageously accepted the battle. The gun was disabled only after an aerial bomb hit it. The shell-shocked and wounded fighters were in German captivity.

In total, Vasily Gubarev went through four camps in the cities of Dnepropetrovsk, Drogobych, Osnabrueck, in the village of Zandbostyle.

In camp No. 333 in the German city of Osnabruck in Lower Saxony, Gubarev worked in a quarry. His personal number of prisoners of war is 128-699.

Drawing attention to Gubarev’s truly heroic health, the camp leadership drew him to freezing experiments. He was stripped, at minus temperature, tied to a column, doused with cold water and recorded how his body copes with extreme conditions.

Once the escort hit Gubarev with a rifle butt on the shoulder, killing his humerus. Vasily was forced to work with a broken bone in a quarry. Otherwise, he was threatened by a crematorium.

On Gubarev’s left shoulder, a callus the size of a fist formed. "Bump" - so called it Vasily Ilyich.

Only at the end of camp life, as Gubarev said, “was he lucky” - he got into the workers to a German anti-fascist who did not oppress the prisoners.

On May 4, 1945, Soviet aircraft flew over the XB concentration camp near the village of Zandbostel, where Gubarev was imprisoned. The camp guards fled. The prisoners independently left the camp and went towards the gun cannonade. But they got to the front sector, controlled by the British.

The released prisoners were placed at assembly point 619 in the barracks of the German naval school in Seedorf. Here, Vasily voluntarily enlisted as a Red Army commander of the camp of Russian prisoners of war. The company commander was a former prisoner of war, senior lieutenant Shevchenko.

Ivan Yegorovich Sidorov (1920–1974), a Volzhan from the Saratov region, got into Gubarev’s teammates.

May 21, 1945 Gubarev and Sidorov were on duty along with four Englishmen. The English corporal Morris from the 73th Assault Regiment led the patrol. The task of the patrol was to check suspicious persons in the village of Mainstadt, 5 kilometers northeast of Zevel.

After the end of the watch at 19.00, the British, waiting for the car, which was supposed to arrive at 20.00 and deliver the patrol to the places of their units, went to drink coffee. Gubarev and Sidorov decided to continue duty.

At 19.45, their attention was attracted by three tall Germans in cloaks, who intended to move from one forest to another. Gubarev and Sidorov quietly began to pursue them. When the Germans were two hundred meters away, Gubarev shouted: "Halt!" One German, with a black blindfold on his eye, stopped, and two others rushed into the forest. Gubarev fired and stopped the runaways. An examination of the documents of the detainees showed that they were false, since they did not have the necessary seals. The detainees were brought to the British.

The Germans began to convince that they were ordinary soldiers, wounded and go to the hospital. The British were ready to let them go, but Gubarev insisted on the arrest of the detainees. During a repeated search, several ampoules were found in a German with a blindfold on his eye. To the question "what is this?" the German said that this medicine for the stomach and the British did not begin to seize them.

After a night interrogation in the cells of the guardhouse in Sidorf, the detainees were sent to Bremerund under heavy guard.

Three days after this event, Gubarev and Sidorov were not on patrol, and the next time they were assigned to patrol, they were spotted by an English officer and translator Kovachevich. The translator told them: "You detained the head of the German Gestapo and Hitler's first assistant - Himmler." In addition, the translator said that Himmler had been poisoned (on the night of May 23-24, 1945, at the headquarters of the counterintelligence of the Second British Army in Luneburg, captive Himmler committed suicide by killing a vial of potassium cyanide).

By order N 19 on assembly point N 619 "for vigilance and resourcefulness in the performance of official duties" Gubarev and Sidorov were thanked and awarded each with a Red Cross package.

The second paragraph of the order prescribed: "To report to the military mission of the USSR about the foregoing with a report to the chief of staff of the assembly point with a request for submission to the Government award." However, in the telegram of the Commissioner of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR for Repatriation, Colonel General Golikov addressed to the head of the Main Directorate of Military Counterintelligence SMERSH Colonel General Abakumov of August 14, 1945, there were no proposals to reward yesterday's prisoners of war.

Gubarev and Sidorov in June 1945 were sent to Moscow for inspection, to the repatriated camp. In November, they were again questioned as witnesses regarding Himmler’s detention. But the soldiers could not provide any new information, but only confirmed their previous testimonies. And after the completion of all verification activities were written off.

In May 1946, V.I. Gubarev returned to his homeland. He worked as a policeman. But the salary was small. The family lived poorly.

In 1948, Gubarev went to work in the actively constructed mining city of Kimovsk. By that time, Gubarev's brother worked as a miner in the neighboring city of Donskoy.

He worked as a fastener in the mines of the 1st Grankovskaya.

They gave housing in a hut in the village at the mine. He was going to move his wife and daughter to a new place, but the wife categorically refused to move, which later became the reason for their divorce.

In the early 1950s, Vasily Ilyich married a second time.

With their second wife, Maria Grigoryevna, they gave birth to two children:

in 1952 - son Vladimir (lived in Kimovsk, died in February 2015),

in 1954 - daughter Tatyana (in the marriage of Kolesnikov; she died in 2007).

After the development of the 1st Grankovskaya mine and its closure, he switched to the 1st Zubovskaya mine in Kimov. He worked at the penetration.

In the mining village of Yasny built his own house.

In 1966, Vasily Ilyich retired and worked on the collective farm “Free Life” named after I. S. Efanov, was engaged in the repair of collective farm buildings.

He bred bees.

Died V.I. Gubarev November 30, 1992.

He was buried in the cemetery of the village of Ivanovskoye, Kimovsky District, Tula Region.

In 1959, Vasily Ilyich was awarded the medal "For the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945", and on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Victory - the Order of the Patriotic War of the 2nd degree. But the bitter regret that the main reward and glory for the detention of Himmler was simply stolen from him and Sidorov, Gubarev experienced until the end of his life.

During the life of V.I. Gubarev and I.E. Sidorov, they did not receive state awards for the capture of Himmler.

Gubarev did not tell anyone for a long time that he had once detained the second person of Nazi Germany.

In the mid-60s, when the British sounded a message on the British about their “heroic” capture of Himmler, Vasily Ilyich could not stand it and told his friends about his work. This information reached the director of the 1st Zubovskaya mine I. I. Skubilin, who reported it to his Moscow acquaintance, historian and writer Sergei Smirnov .

In 1964, the English journalist Bernard Stapleton published the article “Himmler’s Last Hours” in London’s Weekend magazine, where he distorted historical facts and attributed Himmler’s laurels to the British.

This article was reprinted on the Sunday supplement of the newspaper Izvestia - Week. Letters poured into the editorial office, requiring refutation.

The editors lifted the archives and on September 27, 1964, a true article appeared in Izvestia: "Our soldiers caught Himmler."

October 4, 1964 in the newspaper "Red Star" was published the story of N. Shumakhin "The Man Who Caught Himmler"

In October 1964, the Saratov newspaper “Communist” published an essay by D. Pyatnitsky “Volzhanin Ivan Sidorov detained Himmler”

In Moscow in 1971, M. Merkanov’s book, “So It Was”, was published, which mentions the feat of Soviet soldiers who detained a war criminal.

In 1974, two articles about Gubarev were published in Ryazan newspapers.

In 1976, the newspaper "Testament of Lenin" published an article by M. I. Khomutov, "One of Those Who Caught Himmler"

In 2008, Saratov veterans and deputies appealed to the Presidential Administration with a request for the posthumous award of V. I. Gubarev and I. E. Sidorov.

In February 2009, a notice was received that materials on Gubarev and Sidorov were sent for further consideration to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

But so far, heroes have not been found.

• Ovchinnikov D. The man who arrested Himmler

• Ovchinnikov D. Kimovsky miner told how he caught Himmler

• "Brands of Tula" - Vasily Ilyich Gubarev