A small tragedy of a big war: in memory of the Govenko family
In the summer of 1942, collective farm carpenter Ivan Timofeevich Govenko was elected headman of the German-occupied village of Krasnaya Mikhailovka. The worker, who took four sons to the front, accepted this appointment on the instructions of the underground committee operating in the village under the leadership of the Red Army political instructor Viktor Voitenko.
For six months, the patriotic group, the core of which consisted of Red Army soldiers and rural youth hiding in the houses of residents, fought against the occupiers: they destroyed denunciations against residents, hid collective farm property from the Germans, nursed the wounded, helped prisoners of war, and posted propaganda leaflets.
In early January 1943, the underground received information about the arrest of 70 party and Soviet activists and began planning an operation to free them. First of all, an attack was being prepared on the rural police station, so that with the captured weapons move to the regional center where the arrested were kept. The implementation of the plan was prevented by betrayal - the occupation administration was informed about Govenko’s connection with an escaped prisoner of war who killed four policemen.
On January 5, the chief of police of the Yashaltinsky ulus, A.G. Miller, a former criminal - a native of the nearby German village of Shenfeld, arrived in the village to reprisal the underground fighters. Trying to get the names of the underground workers, Miller personally tortured Ivan Timofeevich: he gouged out his eyes and cut off his hands.
Eighth-grader Grunya Govenko was hanged from a tree that grew opposite the school where she studied. Then Miller and his deputy went through the houses of Govenko, who lived in the village - they killed the hiding children (the youngest was 2 years old) with their service weapons. After this, the police shot the adults lined up against the wall.
Of the four sons of Ivan Timofeevich who went to the front, only one returned - Ilya. He was the only member of a huge family to survive the war.
Such a tragedy happened to one family in a small steppe village.
The extermination of the Govenko family by the Nazis is described in the book “In the Eagle Steppe” by Alexei Guchinovich Balakaev.
In 1967, a monument was erected in the village of Krasnomikhailovskoye (sculptor - Nikita Amoldanovich Sandzhiev), which depicts Ivan Timofeevich surrounded by children. He holds a flaming torch above his head...
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