©Arolsen Archives
Alexandr Afanasiev was born on 8 November 1922 in the Russian town of Beshezk. As a soldier in the Red Army, he was taken prisoner of war by the Germans in 1941. He passed through various POW camps in Ukraine and was later taken to the German Reich, where he was held in the Stalag VI K (326) POW camp near Stukenbrock. Following escape attempts, he was detained in the Hagen and Dortmund police prisons.
On 25 August 1944, Alexandr Afanasiev was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, and after a few days transferred to the then Buchenwald subcamp Dora, which became the independent Mittelbau concentration camp in October 1944. From there, he was sent to the Ellrich-Juliushütte subcamp. He was repeatedly taken to the Mittelbau concentration camp's inmate infirmary as a result of the hard forced labour.
During the evacuation of the concentration camp complex in the southern Harz region, Alexandr Afanasiev was sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he was liberated by British soldiers on 15 April 1945. Like many other Soviet concentration camp survivors, he then had to do his military service in the Soviet occupation zone before returning home in 1946.
In order to receive a symbolic compensation payment for the injustice he had endured, he had to provide evidence of his time as a prisoner of war, concentration camp inmate and forced labourer. He travelled to Germany in 2017 and looked through documents in the Arolsen Archives that prove his imprisonment. He then shared his memoirs in his autobiography Один Против Германии ("One against Germany"). Our thoughts and sympathy are with his family and friends at this time.
