On 6 November 1942, 70 captured Red Army soldiers staged an extraordinary mass escape from Auschwitz. Among these men was prisoner number 1418 Andrey Pogozhev. He survived, and this is his story. Pogozhev was caught by the Germans in 1941 and was sent to Auschwitz. The fact that Pogozhev survived the appalling conditions in the camp is remarkable in itself. That he should also have taken part in one of the few successful escapes makes his gripping narrative rare indeed. His description of the escape and his subsequent journey as a fugitive to the east, through the Carpathian mountains into the Ukraine, is unforgettable reading.
Andrey Pogozhev was born in 1912 at Dontsk in the ukraine, and before the war he worked as a miner and mining engineer. He was mobilized in June 1941 and fought as a platoon commander of regimental artillery, but he was captured in September. He spend a year at Auschwitz, escaped, was recaptured, and then escaped from the Germans again. He finally reached the Soviet lines in 1943. After the war he went back to his work as a mining engineer. Andrev Pogozhev died in 1990.
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