In August 1941, residents of Shostka felt that the war was far away. In the north, fighting took place in Belarus in the Moscow direction, in the west – on the other bank of Dnieper around Kiev.
Therefore, when Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group turned sharply south from the Moscow direction to surround the troops of the Southwestern Front defending Kiev, Shostka found itself in the way of this Wehrmacht offensive.
The fighting in the Shostka district began on the night of August 25, 1941, when about a hundred paratroopers were dropped by German aircraft over the meadows along the Ivotka River. The 2nd Fighter Battalion, formed of the residents of the village of Kapsul and led by Stepan Yeresey, met them face on and managed to detain them for some time. Neither did this landing group succeed in carrying out a diversion on the railroad for they were discovered by Shostka patrol.
German troops entered Shostka region from Novgorod-Siversky. The strike group of Baron Levinsky was able to penetrate the rear of the 143rd Infantry Division defending Novgorod-Siversky and seize the bridge and the base near Ostroushki village. In the battle for the bridge, 28 Red Army soldiers were killed, including Lieutenant Vasily Kozynets.
On the night of August 27, in the village of Ivot, Nazis overtook a unit of the 143rd Division retreating from Ostroushki village and a group of the Shostka militia. Rifles against tanks were powerless, so almost all of the Soviet soldiers lay their lives in the streets and orchards of Ivot. At 8 in the morning, Germans entered Shostka, seized the territory of the Powder and Capsule Plants and the village of Kapsul. Commander of the 3rd Panzer Division, General Walter Model, arrived at the headquarters of the German group in Nekrasov street.
In the afternoon, German troops completed the capture of Shostka. One of the strike groups seized the Tereshchenskaya railway station, the other hit the rear of the defenders of Pirogovka village.
The fighting in the Shostka region continued for another week. The most significant battles took place on the Esman River, where the 28th Motorized Rifle Regiment of NKVD held defense from August 29 to September 2, 1941. The fate of German officer Joachim Vainschenko, who was seriously injured and died in the hospital of Shostka on September 24, confirms serious fighting that took place in the region. His relatives searched for his burial place in 2011 and passed some materials from their family archive to the museum.
More on this topic can be found in S.A. Shishkov’s book The Ottoman Epic, 2012.
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- Junior Lieutenant Vasily Kozynets, senior assistant of staff of the 171st Regiment of the NKVD of the 57th Kharkiv Brigade. Photo 1936 Kozynets headed a detachment that was supposed to blow up a bridge across the Desna River near the village of Pyrohivka. Killed 27.08.1941
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- Commissioner Stepan Yeres, commander of the 2nd Shooting Battalion of the Shostka Regional Military Committee of the NKVD. Photo [1941].
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- Commander of the 3rd Panzer Division that was part of the 2nd Wehrmacht Tank Group, Major-General Walter Model (left) and Commander-in-Chief of the 2nd Panzer Group, Lieutenant General Heinz Guderian. 1941
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- Stepan Sadovy. Bromberg, 1943. Born in 1922 in Obrazhiyivka. Before the war, worked at Film Factory No. 6. From July 1941, served in the Shostka Fighter Battalion. Due to the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht, remained in occupation. In 1942, was deported to Germany to the powder factory in Bromberg.
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- The Soviet damaged tank is near the Gamaliyev monastery. Autumn 1941
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- Wehrmacht soldiers in Shostka. Karl Marx Street, September 1941
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- Senior Lieutenant Joachim Weinschenk, Commander of the Tank Reconnaissance Squadron. Photo [1941]. On September 24, 1941, he died of wounds in Shostka. His photos and documents were brought by his relatives in 2011, when they searched for Weinschenk’s burial place
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- A letter from the Commander of the 29th Division to Joachim Weinschenk’s father, announcing the death of his son. 1941
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- The first graves of German soldiers killed in Shostka. September 1941
