ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Aleksandr Pechersky's life after he left Rostov-on-Don and was conscripted into the army in 1941, and continues with his trajectory as a Russian soldier and his deportation to Sobibor. He was serving near Vyazma in Belarus, where the Red Army attempted to halt the German advance to Moscow, when he was taken prisoner. Pechersky arrived in Sobibor following a year of life-threatening conditions in Minsk, conditions he shared with hundreds of thousands of Russian POWs captured in the early stages of the war. Like many Soviet soldiers, he believed that Communist values were worth fighting for and he did so with enthusiasm. Pechersky remained in the western part of Belarus for seven months and attempted unsuccessfully to escape in May 1942 with four others. In May 1943, after a failed escape attempt, Pechersky was transferred to the infamous Stalag 352 in Masyukovchina near Minsk, which was described in a 1944 Russian report about German atrocities.
