The ceremony of laying flowers at the tomb of Major General Fyodor Krasavin at the Arsky cemetery in Kazan

The ceremony is dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the Soviet military commander.

Today, the ceremony of laying flowers at the tomb of Major General Fyodor Krasavin was held at the Arsky cemetery in Kazan. The ceremony is dedicated to the 125^th anniversary of the Soviet military commander.

The ceremony was attended by Military historian, reserve colonel Yevgeny Panov, founder and co-chairman of the Holocaust Center, Professor of the Russian State University of Humanitarian Sciences Ilya Altman, Deputy head of the Department of Culture of the Kazan Executive Committee Emil Mustafin, relatives of Fyodor Krasavin, schoolchildren, teachers and students.

“We hope that this ceremony will give a new impetus to restoration of the names of the victims of Auschwitz in Tatarstan and other republics, - Ilya Altman addressed the audience. - And we believe that this ceremony of laying flowers at the tomb of Fyodor Krasavin will be held annually on March 4 -as a memory of 7 thousand liberated prisoners of the concentration camp.”

Fyodor Mikhailovich Krasavin, Major General, was the commander of the 100^th Lviv Rifle Division of the 60^th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front, which on January 27, 1945 released 7 thousand prisoners of the Auschwitz – Birkenau concentration camp. For this feat, Fyodor Krasavin was awarded the Order of Alexander Nevsky.

The life and military service of Major General Fyodor Krasavin is studied by students of school № 62 of the Aviastroitelny district of Kazan. The collected data is reflected in the research work “Time passes – memory remains: he liberated Auschwitz”. “Our research work took about three years, we studied the archives. This is a very important part of the educational process, children should know the real heroes, whose names were unfortunately forgotten during their lifetime,”- said Nina Khakimova, a teacher of Russian language and literature at school № 62 of the Aviastroitelny district.

The book “Generals of Tatarstan” describes the life of Fyodor Krasavin, one of its authors is a military historian, reserve сolonel Yevgeny Panov. “Our generation should honor the memory of such people. We also need to revive the memory of the Holocaust, the liberation of Auschwitz – this is a story that needs to be known,”- Yevgeny Panov outlined.

The ceremony of laying flowers was also attended by relatives of the Major General- his son Vladimir Krasavin and his step-sister Tatiana Krasavina.

“I was 2.5 years old when my father died, I don't remember much about him, - said Vladimir Krasavin. – I began to learn about my father when I was a student, I was told about him by teachers who lived with my father in the same house. Thank you for paying so much attention to studying my father's life.”

The ceremony ended with the laying of flowers at the tomb of the Major General.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Krasavin was born in the Yaroslavl region on March 4, 1896. He was a participant in the First World War and the Civil War. From 1938 to 1942, he was in the GULAG, released on February 11, 1942 (he was posthumously rehabilitated on September 4, 1968). Since the spring of 1942, he participated in battles of the Great Patriotic War from Karelia to Prague. In 1945-1948, he was the head of the Kazan garrison. He died in 1948 in Kazan.

A memorial plaque will be installed on the front of the house at 4 Adamyuk Street in Kazan, where Fyodor Krasavin lived.