Doctor Sinyakov is an angel from a German concentration camp. "Wonderful Russian Doctor"

He became a real angel for hundreds of prisoners of the Küstrin concentration camp. Russian doctor Georgy Sinyakov operated on hopeless patients 24 hours a day and, risking his life, helped prisoners organize escapes. The doctor himself did not even think of running away - until the liberation of the camp, he remained with those who needed his help.

Sinyakov resurrects from the dead

In August 1944, attack aircraft Anna Egorova did not return from her next mission. At the Magnuszew bridgehead beyond the Vistula, her Il-2 was shot down, and the burnt and barely showing signs of life pilot was picked up by the Germans. Egorova’s next destination was the Kyustrinsky concentration camp.
A funeral service was sent to the pilot’s homeland, the Tver region, and an award sheet was sent to higher headquarters, awarding her the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously.

It’s not hard to imagine what awaited the wounded pilot in the camp, where thousands of people were mowed down by hunger and overwork. However, she managed to survive, and received the well-deserved Hero Star - albeit 20 years after the Victory - personally.
This miracle became possible largely thanks to the “Russian doctor.” He not only treated Egorova, but also hid her orders and shared his rations.
“All the prisoners were herded into a column, and, surrounded by brutal guards and German shepherds, she walked through the Kyustrinsky camp,” Egorova wrote in her memoirs. - They carried me on a stretcher, as comrades in trouble carry the dead to a cemetery. And suddenly I hear the voice of one of the stretcher bearers: “Hold on, sister! Russian doctor Sinyakov resurrects from the dead!..”

Captive doctor

Georgy Sinyakov went to the front on the second day of the war. As the leading surgeon of a medical battalion, he fought and saved the wounded on the Southwestern Front.
On October 5, 1941, near the village of Borshchevka, near Kiev, Soviet units were retreating under enemy pressure. The advance of the German forces was so rapid that the soldiers did not have time to evacuate the military hospital: the wounded and medical personnel remained in the occupied territory. So Georgy Sinyakov, who did not want to leave the wounded who were surrounded, was captured.

In May 1942, having passed through the Boryspil and Darnitsa camps, he became prisoner No. 97625 of the Küstrin international prisoner of war camp near Berlin.
Sinyakov was appointed camp surgeon and immediately gave him an “exam” - they ordered him to perform an operation. Numerous guards, led by Dr. Koshel, gathered to see what he was capable of.
“Georgy Fedorovich’s assistants’ hands were shaking with excitement,” Anna Egorova wrote in her memoirs. - One of the fascists loudly asserted that the best doctor from Russia is no higher than a German orderly. And Doctor Sinyakov, barely able to stand on his feet, pale, barefoot, ragged, performed a gastric resection.”
From that day on, the qualifications of the “Russian doctor” - as Sinyakov began to be called - did not raise doubts either among the guards or among the European prisoner doctors who assisted him.
He operated on patients for days on end, performing the most complex operations, even without the necessary instruments. Operations, dressings... The doctor was overwhelmed, but in the barracks there were more than a thousand wounded and sick people who needed help.
Georgy Sinyakov not only treated prisoners, he also shared part of his reinforced rations with them: he exchanged lard for bread and potatoes, which could feed a larger number of prisoners.
“On behalf of all the camp prisoners, Dr. Sinyakov and Belgrade University professor Dr. Pavle Trpinac went to the Gestapo and demanded permission to treat me,” wrote Anna Egorova. - Yes, that’s exactly what they demanded (...). I think the Russian surgeon Sinyakov generally had such a right to demand.”

Once he saved the son of one of the Gestapo men, after which not only did Germans from nearby settlements begin to turn to him for treatment, but all the guards began to trust him. Sinyakov was able to move freely around the camp, going where prisoners were not allowed.
Having similar privileges, the doctor soon headed the underground committee in the camp. He distributed leaflets about the state of affairs at the front, raising the morale of the Kustrin prisoners, and even organized escapes.
In the infectious disease barracks, where the Nazis were afraid to poke their noses, under the numbers of the dead, he hid prisoners preparing to escape. The underground workers developed an escape route, provided the prisoners with a map, as well as a watch or compass, and dried crackers for them. When everything was ready, the unsuspecting Germans, along with the corpses of the prisoners, took Sinyakov’s “wards” out of Küstrin.

Liberation of the camp

In January 1945, when the front approached Küstrin, the underground was ready to start an uprising. But the Nazis were ahead of them: at night the prisoners were loaded into trains, and those who could walk were driven on foot across the frozen Oder. The weakest and most exhausted, no longer fit for hard labor - there were about 3,000 such prisoners - were to be destroyed.

“Doctor, they won’t touch you...” the guards told Sinyakov, who remained in the camp. They also confirmed his guesses about the future fate of the prisoners. Then the “Russian doctor” decided that he would not leave his people. Together with a translator, he went to the barracks to talk with the camp leadership.
What Sinyakov said and what the translator conveyed to the Nazis is unknown, but the Nazis left the camp without firing a single shot. And soon the soldiers of Major Ilyin from the 5th Shock Tank Army of General Berzarin entered Kustrin.

After the war

Georgy Sinyakov reached Berlin and signed the Reichstag in victory in May. After the war, he moved to Chelyabinsk, where he worked as the head of the surgical department of the ChTZ medical unit and taught at the medical institute.
Sinyakov’s war and camp past became known only in the 60s, when the essay “Egorushka” was published about the fate of the pilot Anna Egorova and the amazing “Russian doctor” who saved her. Letters of gratitude from former prisoners saved by the surgeon began to arrive in Chelyabinsk from all over the Soviet Union and Europe.
“I owe a lot to the wonderful Russian doctor Georgiy Fedorovich Sinyakov,” wrote Anna Egorova. “It was he who saved me from death in Küstrin.”
Unfortunately, Sinyakov’s feat was not noted by the state. Pilots, tank crews, and former prisoners of Küstrin tried to obtain military awards for him, believing that he was worthy of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. But in vain. Sinyakov himself said: “Captivity is a disaster, a misfortune. Is there a reward for misfortune? My reward is life, returning home, to family, to work, these letters from people whom I helped in their hour of great grief.”

In the Küstrin camp, he was appointed as a surgeon in the infirmary (the so-called Revere), where he brilliantly passed the “exam”, performing a gastric resection in front of the German camp doctors led by Dr. Koschel, as well as French, English and Yugoslav specialists from among the prisoners.

He performed many operations, tirelessly operating on numerous patients. True to the Hippocratic Oath, Sinyakov also operated on the Germans - for example, he saved the son of a Gestapo man who was suffocating from a foreign object lodged in the trachea (according to one version, the boy choked on a bone). This is how the camp guards began to trust the surgeon, and the doctor was able to move around the camp freely, to go where prisoners were not allowed, which later helped in his underground activities. He also received enhanced rations, which he shared with the wounded: he exchanged lard for bread and potatoes, which could be fed to a larger number of prisoners.

Together with a German translator, Corporal Helmut Chakher, who sympathized with the Russians (he studied in the USSR, was married to a Russian woman, Claudia Alekseevna Osipova, with whom he came to Germany before the war), he helped many prisoners escape: Chakher, who knew the area well, developed an escape route from Küstrin, drew a map, which was given along with a watch and a compass to those who decided to escape. Most often, Georgy Fedorovich used imitation of death: he taught patients to pretend to be dead, he declared death, the “corpse” was taken out with other truly dead people and thrown into a ditch nearby, where the prisoner was “resurrected.”

In January 1945, when Soviet troops were already approaching the camp, it was disbanded: the prisoners were divided into three parts - some were loaded onto trains to be sent to Germany, others were driven on foot across the frozen Oder, and a third group of about 3,000 sick and wounded, They were left in a camp where they were to be destroyed by SS soldiers. Sinyakov, through an interpreter, convinced the soldiers not to destroy the prisoners, and the camp was abandoned without firing a single shot. Soon, Soviet tanks entered the camp - a group of Major Ilyin from the 5th Shock Army of General Berzarin, and Sinyakov organized a field hospital in the camp, operating on more than seventy tankers in a few days.

Georgy Fedorovich celebrated the victory in Berlin and signed the Reichstag building.

Notable survivors

Rescued a Soviet soldier of Jewish origin Ilya Zelmanovich Erenburg, according to one version, first hiding him in the bathhouse, then in the barracks, and when Ilya was finally found and sent to work in a stone quarry, Sinyakov transferred him to the infectious diseases department (according to another version, he came up with the pseudonym Ilya Belousov and passed him off as a Russian ). Soon Ehrenburg “died”, was taken out of the camp along with the corpses, got out safely and ended the war in Berlin with the rank of lieutenant.

Saved from death and helped escape the famous pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union Anna Egorova, who was shot down in August 1944 near Warsaw after her 277th flight. Burnt, Anna ended up in the Küstrin concentration camp, where she was placed in solitary confinement with a cement floor; Georgiy Fedorovich insisted that the treatment be entrusted to him and Belgrade University professor Pavle Trpinac. During the examination and dressing, Egorova asked Sinyakov to keep the awards and party card hidden in the cache of the boot, which Helmut Tschakher had kept in a jar of poison. Sinyakov lubricated her purulent wounds with fish oil and a special ointment, which made the wounds look fresh, but in fact healed well. Then Anna recovered and, with the help of Sinyakov, escaped from the concentration camp

Sixteen years after the end of the Great Patriotic War, in 1961, the pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union Anna Egorova-Timofeeva, was shown on television. Speaking about her military fate, Anna Alexandrovna said that in the Küstrin concentration camp she was saved from death by the Russian doctor Georgy Fedorovich Sinyakov.

Soon after this, an interview with Anna Alexandrovna, and then an essay “Egorushka” was published in several newspapers. The pilot spoke in detail about the feat of a doctor who, while a prisoner of the same concentration camp, saved several thousand Soviet soldiers. “Georgy Fedorovich, fortunately, is alive,” said Egorova-Timofeeva. “Now he works in the city of Chelyabinsk.”

Soon after this, hundreds of letters flew to Chelyabinsk - news with words of gratitude from soldiers who had once been saved, former prisoners of the Küstrin camp. On the envelopes there was only “Chelyabinsk. To Doctor Georgy Sinyakov” - but the letters, nevertheless, found an addressee. What a surprise the hospital staff, who had never heard that their doctor was a hero, felt when they saw these piles of envelopes! After all, Georgy Fedorovich never told anyone about his feat. He generally believed that Victory was not forged in captivity.

Sinyakov was born in April 1903 in the village of Petrovskoye, Ivanovo volost (today the territory of the Voronezh region). In 1928 he graduated from the medical faculty of Voronezh University and volunteered on June 23, 1941. He served on the Southwestern Front, in the 119th Medical Battalion of the 171st Infantry Division. Georgy Fedorovich was a surgeon and devoted every minute of his life during the war to the sick. However, the fight on the Southwestern Front did not last long: on October 5, 1941, near the village of Borshchevka (located near Kiev), doctor Sinyakov, along with many of his wounded who were surrounded, was captured. Moreover, at this time he was literally under fire, in a dilapidated hospital, performing an operation. First, Georgy Fedorovich ended up in the Boryspil camp, then in Darnitsy. And in May 1942 - in the Küstrin international camp (it was located 90 kilometers from Berlin). The prisoner was assigned the number 97625.

There were prisoners of war from many countries here. Hunger, terrible food, unbearable living conditions - all this made people so weak that the prisoners could barely stand on their feet. But many of them were also wounded. At first, the Nazis did not pay any attention to the terrible mortality rate. But they needed free labor, and therefore there was a need for the help of a doctor, which almost everyone needed. The news that there was a prisoner doctor in the concentration camp quickly reached the Nazis. To test the doctor’s “professional suitability,” the Germans arranged an exam: he had to undergo a gastric resection. Several prisoners of war doctors from European countries and German camp doctors led by Dr. Koschel were appointed as examiners. The barefoot, hungry, tired Russian doctor spent several hours performing the operation. But he did it so clearly, confidently and competently, as if he was in the best health and in the conditions of a wonderful hospital. But his assistants’ hands were shaking...

The “professional suitability” of the Russian doctor, who previously, according to the fascists, “was not worth even one German orderly,” was no longer in doubt. And soon such an incident happened. The son of one of the Gestapo choked on a bone. His mother first took the child to a German doctor, but he could not do anything - the bone was stuck deep. The boy was choking and losing consciousness. In desperation, the woman brought him to a concentration camp. They brought Sinyakov. He immediately realized that he could not do without surgery. And he carried it out, and brilliantly. Then the mother knelt before the Russian doctor...

After this, the Nazis provided Georgy Fedorovich with additional rations and allowed him to move freely around the concentration camp. Sinyakov took advantage of the privileges in his own way. The rations were divided among the wounded, and when he was given lard, he exchanged it for potatoes and bread so that there would be enough for more people. He distributed leaflets where he talked about the advancement of the Red Army - Georgy Fedorovich understood: we must not allow the prisoners to completely lose heart. Not for a moment did he let go of the thought of how to help people escape. And he came up with a method that, perhaps, will remind someone of the famous novel by Alexandre Dumas...

Sinyakov, literally using improvised means, created ointments that perfectly healed wounds, but at the same time created such a terrible appearance and emitted such a pungent smell that no one could even imagine that the wound had actually almost healed. He taught his patients to imitate agony and their own death: hold their breath, keep their muscles completely still, monitor the position of their eyes, and so on. The escape pattern was most often the same: the patient “faded away”, Sinyakov announced his death to the Nazis. Together with others who actually died, the soldier was thrown into a large ditch - the Germans did not bother to bury the soldiers. This ditch was unguarded, behind the keys with wire. At night, the “dead” got up, got out of it and left.

This is how pilot Anna Egorova was saved, who was shot down by the Nazis near Warsaw in August 1944 during her 277th flight. “All the prisoners were herded into a column,” the pilot recalled. - Surrounded by brutal German guards and shepherd dogs, this column reached towards the Kostryukinsky camp. I was carried on a stretcher, as comrades in trouble carry the dead to a cemetery. And suddenly I hear the voice of one of the stretcher bearers: “Hold on, little sister! Russian doctor Sinyakov resurrects from the dead!

Although Sinyakov managed to hide the awards and Anna Alexandrovna’s party card, the Germans knew that they had captured the “flying witch” and wanted to stage a show execution to intimidate the others. But Sinyakov intervened. He managed to convince the Germans that the execution of a sick, exhausted pilot would look like a brutal reprisal, and not a victory for fascism. Therefore, first it was necessary to cure Anna Alexandrovna. However, the treatment “did not bring any benefit”, the patient “died” before our eyes... And “died”, but in fact she was saved. But there, at the front, the legendary pilot was already considered dead.

For a long time, Georgy Fedorovich hid among the wounded ten Soviet pilots, officers who would have been threatened with immediate execution. Among them was attack aircraft Nikolai Mayorov, whose jaw was broken in several places. Moreover, the pilot began to develop gas gangrene on his arm. Sinyakov literally assembled the jaw piece by piece and saved his hand. And all ten of them were placed in turn in the infectious diseases department (the Germans did not meddle here), where they “died”...

Our Victory was approaching. In January 1945, the underground (Sinyakov led an underground organization in the camp) were already preparing to start an uprising. Soviet tanks (General Berzarin's 5th Shock Army) were approaching Küstrin. And the Nazis made a quick and unexpected decision. The prisoners who were able to stand were herded into trains at night and sent to Germany. Those who were sick but could walk were driven on foot across the frozen Oder. And they decided to shoot the seriously ill - three thousand people - in the camp. The Germans were not going to touch Sinyakov. And he was not going to give them his patients. And he did an act before which one can kneel. Georgy Fedorovich took a translator and went to the fascist authorities. He said something like this: “Soviet tanks will come here soon, that’s certain. Don’t take on another sin on your soul, don’t increase self-hatred. At least somehow soften your fate - release the prisoners.”

And the incredible happened - the Nazis released the wounded without firing a single shot!

Sinyakov was again among his own people. But even when the terrible ordeal of imprisonment was behind us, the doctor did not give himself a single day of rest. On the very first day he operated on more than seventy tankers!

He reached Berlin and signed the Reichstag building. After the war, he moved to Chelyabinsk and got married (Sinyakov’s wife, Tamara Sergeevna, is also a doctor). Georgy Fedorovich raised his adopted son as his own. For almost thirty years he worked as the head of the surgical department of the medical unit of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, and became an Honored Doctor of the RSFSR. He also taught at the Chelyabinsk Medical Institute. And he didn’t tell anyone about what he experienced in the war.

Georgy Sinyakov, who graduated from Voronezh Medical University, went to the Southwestern Front on the second day of the war. During the battles for Kyiv, the doctor provided assistance to wounded soldiers who were surrounded until the last second, until the Nazis forced him to give up this “unnecessary occupation.” Having been captured, the young doctor went through two concentration camps, Boryspil and Darnitsa, until he ended up in the Küstrin concentration camp, ninety kilometers from Berlin. Prisoners of war from all European countries were driven here. People died from hunger, exhaustion, colds and wounds. The news that there was a doctor in the camp quickly spread among the Germans.

It was decided to give the Russian doctor an exam - he, hungry and barefoot, performed a gastric resection for several hours in a row. Sinyakov’s assistants’ hands were shaking, and Georgy performed the necessary manipulations so calmly and clearly that the Germans lost the desire to test the specialist in the future. Since that time, Sinyakov operated on wounded soldiers 24 hours a day. The news about the brilliant doctor spread far beyond the concentration camp. The Germans began to bring their relatives and friends in especially extreme cases to the captured Russian.

Once Sinyakov operated on a German boy who had choked on a bone. When the child came to his senses, the boy’s tearful mother kissed the hand of the captured Russian, kneeling in front of him. After this, Sinyakov was assigned additional rations, and also received some benefits, such as free movement around the territory of the concentration camp, fenced with three rows of mesh with iron wire. From the first day, the doctor shared part of his reinforced rations with the wounded, exchanging lard for bread and potatoes, which could be fed to a larger number of prisoners.

Georgy headed the underground committee. The doctor helped organize escapes from Küstrin. He distributed leaflets telling about the successes of the Soviet army and raised the spirit of Soviet prisoners: even then the doctor assumed that this was also one of the methods of treatment. Sinyakov invented medicines that perfectly healed wounds, but at the same time he smeared them with a certain ointment, so that in appearance these wounds looked fresh. It was this ointment that Georgy used when the Nazis killed the legendary Anna Egorova. The Nazis waited for the brave pilot to recover in order to arrange a demonstration execution, but she kept “fading away and fading away.” When Anna recovered, Sinyakov helped her escape from the concentration camp.

The methods of saving soldiers were different, but most often Georgy began to use imitation of death. Georgy Fedorovich taught patients to pretend to be dead. The “corpse” was taken out with other truly dead people, thrown into a ditch not far from Küstrin, and when the Nazis left, the prisoner was “resurrected” to make his way to his own people.

When the Nazis managed to bring Russian pilots to the camp, they were especially happy. The Nazis especially feared and hated them. One day, ten were brought to Küstrin at once. Georgy Fedorovich managed to save everyone. And here the reception with the “dead” prisoner helped. Later, when Anna Egorova spoke about the feat of the “Russian doctor,” the living legend pilots found Georgy Sinyakov and invited him to Moscow. Hundreds of other prisoners of Küstrin, who had been saved by him, and who managed to survive thanks to the smartest and brave Sinyakov, arrived there for the most heartfelt meeting in the world.

Sinyakov accomplished his last feat in the camp just before Russian tanks liberated Küstrin. The Nazis threw those prisoners who were stronger and could still work into trains, and decided to shoot the rest in the camp. Three thousand prisoners were doomed to death. Sinyakov found out about this by chance. They told him, don’t be afraid, doctor, you won’t be shot... Sinyakov persuaded the translator to go to the fascist authorities and began to ask the Nazis not to kill exhausted prisoners, not to waste bullets and precious time on them, convincing them that many of them were so weak that and they themselves will die after a while.

The Nazis left the camp without firing a single shot, and soon Major Ilyin’s tank group entered Custine. Once among his own, the doctor continued to operate. It is known that in the first 24 hours he saved seventy wounded tank crews. In 1945, Georgy Sinyakov signed his name to the Reichstag.

After the war, Georgy Fedorovich moved to Chelyabinsk. He worked as the head of the surgical department of the medical unit of the legendary ChTZ, and taught at the medical institute. Didn't talk about the war. Students recalled that Georgy Fedorovich was a kind, emphatically polite and calm person. Many did not even imagine that he was in the war, and did not think about the concentration camp at all." Now the stand of the heroic surgeon is open in the museum of medicine of the Chelyabinsk hospital. The authorities of the Southern Urals plan to perpetuate the memory of the legendary fellow countryman, name a street after him or establish an award for medical students named after Georgy Sinyakov.

“I owe a lot to the wonderful Russian doctor Georgy Fedorovich Sinyakov, - said Hero of the Soviet Union, pilot, in 1961 Anna Egorova-Timofeeva. “It was he who saved me from death in the Küstrin concentration camp.”

After this interview, rumors about the brilliant but modest Chelyabinsk surgeon Georgy Sinyakov, who, risking his own life, helped thousands of soldiers, spread all over the world. Egorova told in detail how she was shot down by fascist fighters, wounded, taken to a concentration camp, and how the fascists rejoiced that the “flying witch” herself had fallen into their hands. Soviet soldiers called the brave girl Egorushka, and according to the Sovinformburo reports, information was received that Anna Egorova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. No one knew that the Soviet pilot, who had flown more than three hundred combat missions, was captured, but was alive and miraculously saved. To tell about the feat of the modest doctor Sinyakov 20 years later.

Until the pilot Egorova told the story of the brilliant doctor, Sinyakov did not tell anyone about the front. Photo: AiF/ Nadezhda Uvarova

From all over the world, letters were immediately sent to Chelyabinsk with the inscription on the envelope: city of Chelyabinsk, doctor Georgy Sinyakov. Surprisingly, they reached the recipient! Hundreds of people touchingly thanked the doctor who saved them, cried when they remembered their stay in the camp, laughed when they wrote about how Sinyakov deceived the Nazis and organized escapes, and talked about how their future lives turned out. And the modest doctor-surgeon, who even in the concentration camp received the name “wonderful Russian doctor”, had never spoken about the war before, only said that he was doing his duty, and “victory was not achieved in captivity.”

The meeting of war veterans is led by Georgy Sinyakov. Photo: From the family archive

Aptitude exam

Georgy Sinyakov, who graduated from Voronezh Medical University, went to the Southwestern Front on the second day of the war. During the battles for Kyiv, the doctor provided assistance to wounded soldiers who were surrounded until the last second, until the Nazis forced him to quit this “unnecessary occupation.” Having been captured, the young doctor went through two concentration camps, Boryspil and Darnitsa, until he ended up in the Küstrin concentration camp, ninety kilometers from Berlin.

Prisoners of war from all European countries were driven here. But the hardest thing was for the Russians, whom no one had ever treated. People died from hunger, exhaustion, colds and wounds. The news that there was a doctor in the camp quickly spread among the Germans. It was decided to give the Russian doctor an exam - he, hungry and barefoot, performed a gastric resection for several hours in a row. Several prisoners of war doctors from European countries were assigned to examine the young Russian. Sinyakov’s assistants’ hands were shaking, and Georgy performed the necessary manipulations so calmly and clearly that even the Germans lost the urge to test the specialist in the future. Although some of them had previously quipped that the best surgeon from the USSR was not worth a German orderly.

Photos of rescued Russian soldiers occupy a separate folder in the Museum of the History of Medicine in Chelyabinsk. Photo: AiF/ Nadezhda Uvarova

Die to live

Sinyakov did not leave the operating table. He operated on wounded soldiers 24 hours a day. The news about the brilliant doctor spread far beyond the concentration camp. The Germans began to bring their relatives and friends in especially extreme cases to the captured Russian. Once Sinyakov operated on a German boy who had choked on a bone. When the child came to his senses, the tear-stained wife of the “true Aryan” kissed the hand of the captured Russian and knelt before him. After this, Sinyakov was assigned additional rations, and also received some benefits, such as free movement around the territory of the concentration camp, fenced with three rows of mesh with iron wire. From the first day, the doctor shared part of his reinforced rations with the wounded: he exchanged lard for bread and potatoes, which could be fed to a larger number of prisoners.

The Museum of the History of Medicine has a stand dedicated to Sinyakov. The authorities of the city where the hero worked after the war decided to perpetuate the memory of Georgy Sinyakov. Photo: AiF/ Nadezhda Uvarova

And then Georgy headed the underground committee. The doctor helped organize escapes from Küstrin. He distributed leaflets telling about the successes of the Soviet army and raised the spirit of Soviet prisoners: even then the doctor assumed that this was also one of the methods of treatment. Sinyakov invented medicines that actually healed the wounds of patients very well, but in appearance these wounds looked fresh. It was this ointment that Georgy used when the Nazis knocked out the legendary Anna Egorova. The Nazis were waiting for the brave pilot to recover in order to arrange a demonstrative death, but she kept “fading away and fading away.” In fact, several prisoners who admired Anna’s courage, including Sinyakov, helped the girl as best they could. A Polish tailor sewed a skirt for her from a tattered robe, someone collected fish oil drop by drop, Sinyakov treated her, pretending that the medicine was not helping her. Then Anna recovered and, with the help of Sinyakov, escaped from the concentration camp. Soviet soldiers, who heard about the death of the legendary pilot, hardly believed in her miraculous resurrection.

The hero’s relatives gave Georgy Fedorovich’s awards, letters, certificates, and certificates to the museum. Photo: AiF/ Nadezhda Uvarova The methods of saving soldiers were different, but most often Georgy began to use imitation of death. Fortunately, it never occurred to any of the Nazis to think about why most of the wounded prisoners who managed to escape were treated by a “Russian doctor” beforehand. Georgy Fedorovich taught patients to imitate their own death. Having loudly stated to the fascists that another soldier had died, Georgy knew that the life of another Soviet man had been saved. The “corpse” was taken out with other truly dead people, thrown into a ditch not far from Küstrin, and when the Nazis left, the prisoner “resurrected” to make his way to his own people.

Rescued pilots

When the Nazis managed to bring captured pilots to the camp, they were especially happy. The Nazis especially feared and hated them. One day, ten Soviet pilots were flown to Küstrin at once. Georgy Fedorovich managed to save everyone. Here his favorite technique with the “dead” prisoner helped. Later, when Anna Egorova spoke about the feat of the “Russian doctor,” the living legend pilots found Georgy Sinyakov and invited him to Moscow. Hundreds of other former prisoners of Kustrin, who had been saved by him, and who managed to survive thanks to the smartest and brave Sinyakov, arrived there for the most heartfelt meeting in the world. They idolized the doctor, thanked him, hugged him, invited him to visit him, took him to monuments, and also cried with him and remembered the prison hell.

Ilya Ehrenburg, like hundreds of other Soviet prisoners of war, would have died if not for the efforts of the “Russian doctor.” Photo: AiF/ Nadezhda Uvarova

To save an eighteen-year-old captured Soviet soldier of Jewish origin named Ilya Erenburg, Georgy Fedorovich had to improve his technique with resurrection. The overseers asked Sinyakov, nodding at Ehrenburg: “Yude?” “No, Russian,” the doctor answered confidently and clearly. He knew that with such a surname, Ilya had no chance of salvation. The doctor, having hidden Ehrenburg’s documents, just as he hid the awards of the pilot Egorova, came up with the name Belousov for the wounded young guy. Realizing that the death of a recovering “youde” could raise questions among the supervisors, the doctor spent a month thinking about what to do. He decided to imitate Ilya’s sudden deterioration in health and transferred him to the infectious diseases department, where the Nazis were afraid to poke their noses. The guy "died" here. Ilya Erenburg “resurrected”, crossed the front line and ended the war as an officer in Berlin.

Exactly a year after the end of the war, the doctor found the young man. Miraculously, a photograph of Ilya Ehrenburg, which he sent to the “Russian doctor,” was preserved, with an inscription on the back that Sinyakov saved him in the most difficult days of his life and replaced his father.

Exactly one year after the war, Ilya Erenburg, saved by Sinyakov, sent a photo card with thanks. Photo: AiF/ Nadezhda Uvarova

Without a single shot

Once among his own people, the doctor continued to operate. It is known that in the first 24 hours he saved seventy wounded tank crews. In 1945, Georgy Sinyakov signed his name to the Reichstag.

Sinyakov knew how to “resurrect” people from the dead. Photo: AiF/ Nadezhda Uvarova

A mug of beer for the victory

Adopted son of Georgy Fedorovich, Sergey Miryushchenko, later told such a curious incident. As a doctor, Sinyakov never liked beer. But one day in the camp I witnessed an argument between another captured Soviet doctor and a fascist non-commissioned officer. The brave doctor told the fascist that he would see him again in Germany, in Berlin, and would drink a glass of beer for the victory of the Soviet people. The non-commissioned officer laughed in his face: we are advancing, taking Soviet cities, you are dying in the thousands, what kind of victory are you talking about? Sinyakov did not know what happened to that captured Russian, so he decided, in memory of him and of all the unbroken soldiers, to go into some Berlin tavern in May 1945 and drink a glass of foamy drink for the victory.

After the war, Georgy Fedorovich moved to Chelyabinsk. He worked as the head of the surgical department of the medical unit of the legendary ChTZ, and taught at the medical institute. Didn't talk about the war. Students recalled that Georgy Fedorovich was a very kind, emphatically polite, interesting and calm person. Many did not even imagine that he was in the war, and they did not think about the concentration camp at all.

Portrait of Sinyakov by his colleague, surgeon Ustyuzhanin. Photo: AiF/ Nadezhda Uvarova

They said that after Egorova’s interview they tried to nominate Sinyakov for awards, but the “captive past” was not valued in post-war times. Thousands of those saved by Georgy Fedorovich said that he was truly a doctor with a capital D, a real “Russian Doctor”. It is known that Sinyakov celebrated his birthday on the day he graduated from Voronezh University, believing that he was born when he received his doctor’s degree.

Until now, the feat of the Russian doctor has been forgotten. He did not have any high-profile titles in his life, nor was he awarded any major awards. Only now, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory, the public of the Southern Urals remembered the heroic surgeon, whose stand was opened in the museum of medicine of the Chelyabinsk hospital. The authorities of the Southern Urals plan to perpetuate the memory of the legendary fellow countryman, name a street after him or establish an award for medical students named after Georgy Sinyakov.