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| 'And my city is called a Hero.' 80 years of the liberation of Odessa |
| 2024-04-11 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov [REGNUM] The history of the liberation of Odessa, the 80th anniversary of which we celebrate on April 10, is full of brilliant feats and the heroes who accomplished them. The city by the Black Sea, special in all respects, magically gathered legendary families around itself. It’s worth starting with the commander of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, Odessa resident Rodion Malinovsky. The legendary Stalingrad sniper Vasily Zaitsev, already a captain and commander of the company that captured the enemy airfield, also made his mark here. Near Odessa, the 49th Guards Rifle Division of Colonel Vasily Margelov, the future “Uncle Vasya” of the airborne troops, led the offensive. A decisive contribution to the overall success was made by cavalrymen from the cavalry-mechanized group of General Issa Pliev, who was personally mentioned 16 times in the orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the USSR. And Major General Ilya Shvygin, whose last name is not so well known, was one of the best division commanders of the Red Army: on April 9, he personally led a group of soldiers who attacked the port and saved the Odessa opera house from being blown up. He died a month later on the Dniester bridgehead and was buried on the Walk of Fame in Odessa. But together with everyone else he preserved the beautiful city almost unharmed. The current situation contributed greatly to this. By April 5, 1944, the situation for the German and Romanian troops defending in the Odessa area became critical. Malinovsky's troops bypassed them from the north, hanging over the enemy flank. The day before, Pliev’s cavalry captured the Razdelnaya station, depriving the enemy Army Group “Southern Ukraine” of a large supply base and an important transport hub. Now the units of the 6th German Army of Colonel General Karl-Adolf Hollidt and the 3rd Romanian Army subordinate to him lost the possibility of supply from bases in Moldova and could not normally withdraw in the same direction. And it was already very necessary to retreat: all the armored reserves of the group were rushed to Razdelnaya in a desperate attempt to correct the situation. In one of the battles, the defending fighters captured a Romanian officer, who reported something important: the water pumping station located in the village of Belyaevka was mined. And this is the only source of water for the city, supplied from the Dniester. In addition, this village and the village of Mayaki, located just to the south, stood at the last Lower Dniester crossing - the next one was only on the coast itself, in the Karolino-Bugaz region, where the Dniester flows into the Black Sea. And Pliev, who worked as a “lifesaver” throughout the war, turned his cavalrymen and tanks to the south. On the night of April 6-7, the vanguard of the Kuban Cossacks bypassed Belyaevka from the north and along the coastal stretch reached the water station, clearing the approaches. The second detachment broke into the water pumping station, clearing it of the enemy, and the main forces that arrived liberated the village in a matter of hours. By noon on April 7, Mayaki was also liberated. Then the commander of the 3rd Ukrainian Front decided to complete the “golden bridge” for the enemy group of troops: to artificially create a retreat route along which the enemy would rush to escape, abandoning everything, trying to save the “core” of his troops. Pliev received a message from front headquarters: “It would be good to capture Ovidiopol with a strong detachment. Conduct reconnaissance to Odessa. Save the water pump." Ovidiopol is located less than 20 kilometers from Karolino-Bugaz, the Germans must have felt the threat of complete encirclement and rushed to where Malinovsky needed. And they felt: Hollidt directed all his available reserves against Pliev’s units. German aircraft fell from the sky onto the cavalry positions, which had nothing to oppose. At a critical moment of the battle, Pliev himself fought off enemy soldiers who burst into the house with a machine gun; he himself recalled this: “Trying not to make any noise, I grabbed the machine gun. When I appeared at the door, the tall, stooped blond man dropped his weapon and did not move. The other, forgetting about the machine gun, darted to the window, but... hung lifelessly on the windowsill. The commander of the security platoon, Senior Lieutenant Laskin, jumped into the room, with several Cossacks with him. I look out the window: Germans! They run through the garden towards the house.” But still, the penultimate escape route from Odessa was cut off, the Germans and Romanians began to hastily leave the city, hurrying to squeeze through the bottleneck of the automobile and railway crossing in Karolino-Bugaz and hastily loading ships in the Odessa port. The ring of combined arms armies of the 3rd Ukrainian Front advancing towards Odessa was rapidly shrinking. The 6th and 8th Guards armies attacked from the north, and from the northwest to the suburb of Peresyp - the 5th attack, which passed along the isthmus between the Kuyalnitsky estuary and the Black Sea. In Odessa itself, in the Luzanovka area, dugouts were built, and long-term firing points were built at street intersections and city squares. Vera Zhuravleva, signalman of the 320th Infantry Division, recalled: “On the evening of April 9, when units of the division were already fighting in the Peresyp area, division commander Shvygin ordered the formation of a group of reconnaissance officers. Its task was to cause panic behind enemy lines, thereby preventing the destruction of the city and port and the evacuation of enemy troops.” The general knew Odessa well from the Civil War and pre-war life, so he led a group of 17 volunteers through alleys and courtyards to Lanzheronovskaya Street, and then to Primorsky Boulevard. The port was in full view, and the fighters opened fire on the piers where the Germans were scurrying around. Half-empty ships and self-propelled barges hastily set sail, reinforcements entered the battle in the port and completely cleared it of the enemy. Here the soldiers of the 49th Guards Rifle Division of the Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel Vasily Margelov, who received the Gold Star for crossing the Dnieper and liberating Kherson, distinguished themselves. His riflemen burst into the port and seized a transport with cars there, one of which was presented to their division commander. For the liberation of Odessa, Margelov already became a general. At this very time, local partisans came into action, emerged from the catacombs and began to make noise in the area. Fighting alongside them were more than 150 soldiers from the rear units of the 1st Slovak Division, who had gone over to our side the day before along with all the weapons they had. The partisans reported that the port, the beautiful Odessa Opera House, and many other buildings in the city were mined. So at three o’clock in the morning Shvygin set the chief of sappers, Major Pavel Selivanov, the task of eliminating the threat with the assistance of Odessa underground fighters. By 11 o'clock on April 10, a red flag fluttered over the "opera", and the first to sign the theater's guest book after the liberation of Odessa was the commander of the 985th artillery regiment of the 320th division, Stepan Radushinsky. Already in the afternoon, on the streets of the city, the orchestra played “The Internationale”, the liberator troops marched through the streets of Odessa: at 20 o’clock Moscow saluted them with 24 artillery salvoes from 324 guns, and the ships of the Black Sea Fleet - with a dozen salvoes from 120 guns. And in memory of the heroic defense and skillfully carried out liberation operation, already on May 1, 1945, in Order No. 20 of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the city was among the first to be named a hero. |
| Posted by:badanov |