Grigory Gorokhov (1921–1999), a Slobodzeyan native-born is remembered as an honorary war and labor veteran. On Victory Day he, like other veterans, used to fastened to his jacket such military awards as the First Class Medal Partisan of the Patriotic War, the Third Class Order of Glory, the Second Class Order of the Patriotic War. Relatives and friends of Grigory Sergeevich knew, that he had fought in a partisan detachment. However, only last year, thanks to the site database “Belarusian partisans”, the details of military history in the Belarusian forests became widely known. The hero’s daughter-in-law Nadezhda Sazonova shared her memories of the partisan war veteran. All information was collected by the Slobodzeyan Museum Association employees.
Gorokhov Grigory Sergeevich was born on January 26, 1921 in the village of Slobodzeya in a peasant family and his fate is typical for his generation’s people. A modest, but assiduous and quick-witted boy graduated from the 7th grade in a local school. In May 1941, a month before the beginning of Great Patriotic war, Grigory Gorokhov was called up for military service by the Stalin’s regional military commissariat (RMC) of the Belorussian SSR in Minsk city.
At the battlefield he was from the war very first day. The story of how a Red Armyman fell into the ranks the partisan detachment named after G.I. Kotovsky is yet to be written. However, award sheets speak volumes about his achievements even now.
“He approved himself as a disciplined fighter, took an active part in helping the advancing Red Army, as well as in provisioning the detachment with explosive compounds. Grigory Sergeevich participated in combatant and sabotage operations as well as in three battles, where 47 Germans and “Polizei” were killed, 53 were injured. The German troop train’s disruption, where about 14 Hitlerites were killed, and 19 were wounded, blowing up a railroad overpass, destroying a railway communication with a distance of 5.0.50 meters and exploding railway lines with a distance of 45 meters – all of this was committed with his participation.”
For an active partisan struggle, Grigory Gorokhov was also nominated for the Order of the Red Star. Only in June 1946 he returned from the army, a year after the war’s end.
In Slobodzeya, the former partisan married, fathered three children and lived up to the point of death, which occurred in 1999. His grandson, militia captain of the Slobodzeyan District Department of the Interior, Vladimir Gorokhov honors a memory of his grandfather’s exploits. Annually, veteran’s relatives take part in the “Immortal Regiment” and proudly carry his photo.
Material for the article was prepared by:
Director of Slobodzeya Museum Association Victoria Cheban
Head of conservation for a museum Natalia Balan
