Rank: Sergeant Branch of Service: Artillery Unit: 1st Guards Proletarian Moscow-Minsk Order of Lenin Red Banner Order of Suvorov and Kutuzov Rifle Division My uncle Georgy Boloban was born in Borisovka in 1918. Since his childhood, he helped his father, a cabinetmaker, to make beautiful, solid furniture, and when he grew up, he went with him to work in the city of Kharkov. There he was trained as a locksmith and worked in the workshops of one of the research institutes. Georgy was drafted into the Red Army in November 1940. He served in Moscow, in the fighter-anti-tank regiment of the famous 1st Moscow Proletarian Division. A smart, competent guy was assigned to the position of artillery craftsman in the armament warehouse. Just a few days after the start of the war, the 1st Moscow Proletarian Division, equipped with personnel and weapons, advanced to meet the enemy and blocked the path of Guderian's tanks on the land of Belarus. The fighting was terrible. The division had just over a thousand soldiers and officers left by the fall of 1941, out of original fifteen thousands. Private Georgy Boloban was also listed as missing in the casualty reports. This was reported to the family in 1943 when the village of Borisovka was liberated from the Nazi occupation. George's mother, my grandmother Evdokia, could not believe that her son was missing until her death (died in 1979). Through requests to the military enlistment office, archives, she tried to find out his fate, the place where he was buried, if an enemy bullet overtook him. However, it was in vain. It was only 65 years after the war, thanks to the memorial website, that I found a personal list of officers and enlisted men who died of wounds in the medical facilities of the 33rd Army from December 1941 to June 1, 1942. It contained new data. As it turned out, Georgy Boloban did not go missing in September 1941 near the city of Smolensk. He was among the few who survived the heavy fighting and continued to serve in the division, which received the Guards rank and was renamed the 1st Guards Moscow Rifle Division. Two letters in his surname were mistakenly changed by a clerk. Instead of Boloban it turned into Balaban in official documents. Probably, without even knowing it, George participated in the battle with the German-fascist invaders near Moscow. The artillery craftsman, Sergeant of the 1st Guards Moscow Rifle Division G. Balaban (Boloban) was wounded on January 5, 1942. They sent him to the hospital. It was located in the Moscow Region in the recreation center of "Arkhangelsk". Here, he died of his wounds on January 12, 1942 and was buried in a mass grave in the village of Krasnoe, Krasnopakhorsky Settlement of Moscow. The exact place of burial was established thanks to the Moscow search volunteer Larisa Shashkova and employees of the military enlistment office. Thank you for this, good people! We the relatives of George Boloban will always be grateful to you! Alexander Winkholtz, Belgorod Region, village of Borisovka.