I Rosh (Jaros) Otakar - commander of the 1st company of the 1st separate Czechoslovak infantry battalion as part of the 25th Guards Rifle Division of the 3rd tank army Voronezh Front, lieutenant (captain, posthumously); the first of the foreign soldiers, awarded the title of "Hero Soviet Union».
Born August 1, 1912 in the city of Louny (Austria-Hungary, now part of the Czech Republic). Czech. He graduated from the electrical engineering school in Prague in 1934.
Since 1934 - in the service of the Czechoslovak army, he served in the 17th Infantry Regiment. In 1937 he graduated from the Higher Military School in the city of Granice (Czech Republic, North Moravia), then served in the 4th communications battalion. After the occupation of the Czech lands by the troops of Nazi Germany, he emigrated in 1939 to Poland, and then to the USSR.
In February 1942, he joined the 1st separate Czechoslovak battalion, formed from Czech and Slovak volunteers under the command of Colonel Ludwik Svoboda in the city of Buzuluk (Orenburg region). On January 27, 1943, the battalion was presented with a combat banner, under the shadow of which the Czechoslovak patriotic soldiers took the military oath.
The 1st company of the Czechoslovak battalion under the command of Lieutenant Otakar Yarosh in the first days of March 1943 received a baptism of fire as part of the 25th Guards Rifle Division of the Voronezh Front. Particularly fierce battles unfolded on March 8, 1943 near the village of Sokolovo, Zmiyovsky district, Kharkov region (Ukrainian SSR).
Against the company of lieutenant Yarosh, who defended Sokolovo, the Nazis threw up to 60 tanks and motorized infantry. During the offensive, the enemy managed to bypass the village, but its defenders continued to fight surrounded and did not give him the opportunity to cross the Mzhu River. The enemy suffered significant losses: 19 tanks, 6 armored personnel carriers with machine gunners were hit and burned, about 300 soldiers and officers were killed. But many Czechoslovak soldiers also died the death of the brave. Among them is the fearless officer Otakar Yarosh. He was buried in a mass grave in the village of Sokolovo.
At order of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 17, 1943 for the skillful management of the unit and the heroism and selflessness shown to the lieutenant Yarosh Otakar awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. He became the first foreigner to be awarded the highest degree of distinction of the USSR.
Military ranks in the Czechoslovak army:
lieutenant (29.08.1937),
lieutenant (10/25/1941),
captain (05/05/1945, posthumously).He was awarded the Soviet Order of Lenin (04/17/1943; posthumously), Czechoslovak awards - the Order of the White Lion "For Victory", 1st degree (1948, posthumously), the Military Cross of 1939 (03/13/1943, posthumously), the medal "For Merit" ( 1944, posthumously), Sokolovskaya commemorative medal (03/18/1948, posthumously).
The name of the Hero is given to streets in Buzuluk and Kharkov, a secondary school in the village of Sokolovo. In the Czech city of Melnik, a monument was erected to Otakar Yarosh.
Apparently the theme of the Great Patriotic War inexhaustible (and the second world). The question of the very existence, first of all, of the Russian people, and the Slavs of Europe, in particular, was too serious. Our homegrown liberals and the media controlled by the "world behind the scenes" very often recall the "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact" (as they call it, although such a "pact" never existed, but there was a diplomatic agreement between the USSR and Germany, which existed and exist in practice of all states), a normal document in its essence, aimed at protecting the borders of its state and people. But the media NEVER REMEMBER AND WRITE about the agreement between the heads of government of Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany, which went down in history as the "Munich Pact", which authorized the seizure of Czechoslovakia by Hitler. This was the beginning of the world massacre, which claimed the lives of more than 50 million people. But in this post I want to talk about something else, perhaps little known to young people. About the Czech Otakar Yarosh, who lived in the city of Buzuluk, and on January 30, 1943, as part of 1 separate Czechoslovak battalion under the command of Ludwik Svoboda, went to the front, and already on March 8 he accomplished a feat. He was the commander of the 1st company. In the Czechoslovak army, the 1st company is considered the best and is entrusted to the best officer. Lieutenant Otkar Yarosh was the best... This story is about him.
Do you know what kind of guy he was!?...
(In memory of the Hero of the Soviet Union Otakar Yarosh)
The first Hero of the Soviet Union among foreigners, Otakar Yarosh, I type on the keyboard, and for some reason my consciousness protests against the formally correct, but in fact unacceptable in this case words - "foreigner". Not! Not a foreigner, but a native! brother of my people - Otakar Frantsevich Yarosh! Here, in Buzuluk, he lived, breathed, walked the streets of the then military city, together with the senior commander Ludwig Svoboda, prepared the soldiers of the first Czechoslovak infantry battalion to fight the fascist hordes that enslaved his native Czechoslovakia, and were going to pour blood and enslave the Soviet Union.
Then our peoples curbed the “brown plague” of fascism and, thanks to this, the peoples of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Russia in the 21st century have independence and decide for themselves how to live. It was this that Lieutenant (Senior Lieutenant) Otakar Yarosh dreamed about, for which he, like a soldier honestly, without flinching in a difficult battle, gave his life near the small Ukrainian village of Sokolovo on March 8, 1943. What was Otakar Yarosh like, in what environment did he grow up and be brought up, what helped him become a giant of the human spirit?
He was born on August 1, 1912 in the small town of Luneh (sometimes they write Louny) in the north-west of the Czech Republic in the family of a locomotive driver. The family had many children, Otakar was the second of five sons. In 1923, the family moved to the town of Melnik, located 40 km. south of Prague, at the confluence of the Vltava and Laba rivers. (Much later, a small town in the Orenburg region at the confluence of the Buzuluk and Samara rivers, from where Otakar will take a step into immortality, will vividly remind him of his native places and become his second homeland). For 5 years Otakar studied at a real gymnasium and became a passionate book reader. This was influenced by his mother Anna, who instilled in her son a love for the book. Otakar read a lot of patriotic, historical, adventure literature. He was well acquainted with the works of Russian classics: A.S. Pushkin, L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov.
Free from studying and reading books, the young boy devoted time to sports, he was especially fascinated by chess and boxing, although he was a good football goalkeeper, did gymnastics, and swam well. Sports skills gradually helped to forge from young man steadfast warrior.
In 1928, Otakar entered, and in 1934 he successfully graduated from the Prague Electrotechnical College and was drafted into the Czechoslovak army. Then he entered and in 1937, after graduating from a military school in Granik (Moravia), he received the rank of lieutenant and served in one of the military units in Slovakia. A true patriot of the Motherland, Otakar Yarosh was very upset by the events that went down in history as the "Munich conspiracy": when in September 1938, as a result of a criminal agreement between the heads of government of Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany, the capture of Czechoslovakia by fascist Germany was sanctioned. “Without a shot, the Czech Republic was given to the Nazis, without a single shot,” Otakar said bitterly to his comrades. (The help of the Soviet government was rejected by the Czechoslovak bourgeois government of those years).
Not wanting to live under the dictates of the Nazis, Otakar illegally crossed the border with Poland, where he joined the Czechoslovak unit called the "Polish Legion", which participated in military clashes with the Nazis. However, when Poland was occupied by Germany in September 1939, this unit, under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Ludwig Svoboda, crossed into the territory of the USSR. On July 18, 1941, by agreement between the government of the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Republic, the formation of the Czechoslovak military unit began on Soviet soil. Otakar Yarosh became one of its first officers.
The future soldiers of the First Separate Czechoslovak Battalion arrived in the city of Buzuluk, Chkalovsky Region, on February 5, 1942. There were only 88 of them, and after 2 months there were already 600! Otakar Yarosh lived in Buzuluk on Chapaev Street in house number 69, the owner of which was Maria Makarovna Maslova.
On May 27, 1942, in the Buzuluk cinema, then called "Proletary", and now "Victory", Klement Gottwald, the foreign leader of the communist Czechoslovak resistance, spoke to the fellow countrymen, who said: "I am convinced that you will prove worthy of your Hussite ancestors, that you will be worthy to fight together with the Red Army.” The soldiers of the Czechoslovak battalion stubbornly prepared for battles with the Nazi invaders throughout 1942.
Otkar's company was the best in combat training, the soldiers respected their seasoned, intelligent, fair commander and tried not to let down their "Otu", as they affectionately called him. In any weather: hot summer, rainy autumn, in the cold of winter - the soldiers of the 1st company, according to the Suvorov principle, "hard in training - easy in battle" learned to wield their weapons, overcome obstacles: they went to force the Samara River, storm the steep slopes of the Ataman mountains. It was especially difficult in winter, and Otakar himself once froze his toes so that he could hardly move. And when one day the murmur of individual fighters was heard for the hardships of military service, Otakar Yarosh brought his 1st company to the Kuibyshev plant, where Buzuluk youngsters, aged 13-15 years, were in the shops, standing on stands made of wooden boxes or bricks, for 11-12 hours worked on machine tools, manufacturing products for the needs of the front. This “excursion” turned out to be enough for the company’s soldiers to burn with the desire to get to the front as soon as possible in order to grapple with the hated fascists in battle.
And, finally, on January 30, 1943, the soldiers of the Czechoslovak battalion left for the West with echelon No. short name Mzha.
It was a fundamentally important battle. The Nazis knew that they were opposed by an unfired Czechoslovak battalion, and hoped to quickly put an end to it. They believed that the destruction of a foreign unit on the Soviet-German front would prevent the appearance of other foreign units here, so they initially provided a significant numerical superiority in the attack. In total, more than 80 tanks were thrown against the company of Otakar Yarosh, reinforced by two battalions of submachine gunners on 14 armored personnel carriers.
Ludwig Svoboda, by telephone, asked Otar Yarosh to hold out, not to retreat: - “You can’t leave. Do you hear, brother Yarosh? “We will not retreat, brother colonel,” Otakar promised and kept his word.
The fight was hot and furious. The armored tank armada, spewing deadly volleys from guns and machine guns, advanced, in addition, using flamethrower installations, and a handful of brave men, located next to Orthodox Church, repelled these attacks using four anti-tank guns, three 76-mm. cannons, 8 anti-tank rifles, 3 mortars and 6 heavy machine guns.
Ukrainian huts set on fire from flamethrowers were on fire, smoke covered the sky, people fell in battle, the company held on! But now, having destroyed up to 60 fascist submachine gunners, the machine gunner Ignaz Spiegl died a heroic death, having destroyed three tanks, the platoon commander Jiří Frank was killed, comrades P. Gyeri, G. Schwartz were killed, Lieutenant S. Lom was killed from the fire of an enemy tank, Redisch was killed ... Fascist the tanks were approaching the church. By this time, Otakar Yarosh had already been wounded twice, his lung had been shot, blood was coming from his mouth and nose, but, having gathered all his will into a fist, the brave son of the fraternal Czech people, fired from an anti-tank rifle, personally destroying two tanks. Bleeding, grabbing a bunch of grenades, he stepped towards the third tank, but pierced by a machine-gun burst, he fell before reaching a few steps ... Eyewitnesses of these last minutes of Otakar Yarosh's life said that the tank ran into the hero, but exploded and caught fire. It seemed that the dead Otakar continued to fight ... After the battle, the hero's body was identified by the crowns on his teeth ... In this battle, the Czechoslovak soldiers lost 86 people killed and 56 were wounded. Enemy losses amounted to 19 tanks, 6 armored personnel carriers, about 400 people were killed. This is how the "unfired" Czechoslovak soldiers fought with the Nazis! They did not know that messengers were sent to them twice, with an order to retreat to the main forces behind Mzhu, but both messengers died ... 10 tanks sent to help by L. Svoboda could not get through to them, since the loose March river ice could not withstand this mass metal, one of them failed ...
On April 17, 1943, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was signed, conferring the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to Lieutenant Otakar Yarosh. The first among foreign citizens. It was assigned to him military rank captain. And only 87 soldiers of the Czechoslovak battalion then received orders and medals of the Soviet Union.
67 years have passed since the end of the war. But Captain Otakar Yarosh is alive! Lives in the memory of grateful people! One of the central streets in the city of Buzuluk is named after him, there is a memorial plaque on the house where he once lived, citizens come here to pay tribute to the memory of his bright name, there is an exposition dedicated to Czechoslovak heroes in the local history museum of the city. And a young, handsome, courageous man looks at the visitors, whom the Buzuluchans, like the soldiers of his heroic 1st company, warmly and fraternally call Ota. Our Ota!
, Ukrainian SSR, USSR
Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia USSR USSR
Biography
Otakar Frantisek Jarosh was born in the city of Louny in Austria-Hungary (now in the Ustetsky region of the Czech Republic) in the family of a locomotive stoker. Czech by nationality.
Awards
- On April 17, 1943, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Otakar Yarosh, the first foreign citizen, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union;
- Order of the White Lion "For Victory", 1st class.
Memory
Thumbnail creation error: File not found
She's on the other side.
Write a review on the article "Yarosh, Otakar"
Notes
Links
. Site "Heroes of the Country".
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
An excerpt characterizing Yarosh, Otakar
Behind, from the place where Karataev was sitting, a shot was heard. Pierre heard this shot clearly, but at the same moment he heard it, Pierre remembered that he had not finished the calculation he had begun before the marshal's passage about how many crossings were left to Smolensk. And he began to count. Two French soldiers, one of whom held a shot, smoking gun in his hand, ran past Pierre. They were both pale, and in the expression of their faces - one of them looked timidly at Pierre - there was something similar to what he saw in a young soldier at an execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and remembered how this soldier of the third day burned his shirt while drying at the stake and how they laughed at him.The dog howled from behind, from the place where Karataev was sitting. “What a fool, what is she howling about?” thought Pierre.
The comrade soldiers, walking next to Pierre, did not look back, just like he did, at the place from which a shot was heard and then the howling of a dog; but a stern expression lay on all faces.
The depot, and the prisoners, and the convoy of the marshal stopped in the village of Shamshev. Everything was huddled around the fires. Pierre went up to the fire, ate roasted horse meat, lay down with his back to the fire and immediately fell asleep. He slept again in the same dream as he slept in Mozhaisk after Borodin.
Again the events of reality were combined with dreams, and again someone, whether he himself or someone else, spoke to him thoughts, and even the same thoughts that were spoken to him in Mozhaisk.
“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything moves and moves, and this movement is God. And as long as there is life, there is the enjoyment of the self-consciousness of the deity. Love life, love God. It is most difficult and most blessed to love this life in one's suffering, in the innocence of suffering.
"Karataev" - Pierre remembered.
And suddenly Pierre introduced himself as a living, long-forgotten, meek old man who taught geography to Pierre in Switzerland. "Wait," said the old man. And he showed Pierre the globe. This globe was a living, oscillating ball, without dimensions. The entire surface of the sphere consisted of drops tightly compressed together. And these drops all moved, moved, and then merged from several into one, then from one they were divided into many. Each drop strove to spill out, to capture the greatest space, but others, striving for the same, squeezed it, sometimes destroyed it, sometimes merged with it.
“This is life,” said the old teacher.
“How simple and clear it is,” thought Pierre. How could I not have known this before?
- In the middle is God, and each drop tends to expand in order to reflect him in the largest size. And it grows, merges, and shrinks, and is destroyed on the surface, goes into the depths and emerges again. Here he is, Karataev, here he spilled and disappeared. - Vous avez compris, mon enfant, [You understand.] - said the teacher.
- Vous avez compris, sacre nom, [You understand, damn you.] - shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.
He got up and sat down. By the fire, squatting on his haunches, sat a Frenchman, who had just pushed a Russian soldier away, and fried the meat put on the ramrod. Wiry, tucked up, overgrown with hair, red hands with short fingers deftly turned the ramrod. A brown, gloomy face with furrowed brows was clearly visible in the glow of the coals.
“Ca lui est bien egal,” he grumbled, quickly addressing the soldier behind him. - ... brigand. Va! [He doesn't care... Rogue, right!]
And the soldier, turning the ramrod, looked gloomily at Pierre. Pierre turned away, peering into the shadows. One Russian soldier, a prisoner, the one who was pushed away by the Frenchman, sat by the fire and ruffled something with his hand. Peering closer, Pierre recognized a purple dog, which, wagging its tail, was sitting next to the soldier.
- Did you come? Pierre said. “Ah, Pla…” he began and did not finish. In his imagination, suddenly, at the same time, connecting with each other, there arose a memory of the look with which Plato looked at him, sitting under a tree, of a shot heard in that place, of a dog howling, of the criminal faces of two Frenchmen who ran past him, of a shot smoking gun, about the absence of Karataev at this halt, and he was ready to understand that Karataev had been killed, but at the same moment in his soul, taking from God knows where, there arose a memory of the evening he had spent with the beautiful Polish woman, in the summer, on balcony of his Kiev house. And yet, without connecting the memories of the current day and not drawing a conclusion about them, Pierre closed his eyes, and the picture of summer nature mingled with the memory of bathing, of a liquid oscillating ball, and he sank somewhere into the water, so that the water converged over his head.
Before sunrise, he was awakened by loud, frequent shots and screams. The French ran past Pierre.
- Les cosaques! [Cossacks!] - shouted one of them, and a minute later a crowd of Russian faces surrounded Pierre.
For a long time Pierre could not understand what happened to him. From all sides he heard the cries of joy of his comrades.
- Brothers! My darlings, doves! - crying, shouted the old soldiers, hugging the Cossacks and hussars. Hussars and Cossacks surrounded the prisoners and hurriedly offered some dresses, some boots, some bread. Pierre sobbed, sitting in the middle of them, and could not utter a word; he embraced the first soldier who approached him and, weeping, kissed him.
