Researchers at the Victory Museum revealed the fate of a Nizhny Novgorod man who went missing in the war.

      29 November 2025, 11:38 — Society. Employees of the Center for the Preservation of the Memory of Soviet Prisoners of War, operating at the Krasnogorsk branch of the Victory Museum, have established the fate of Ivan Dmitrievich Lapshin — a native of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast who had been considered missing since 1941, the institution's press service reported.

      Red Army soldier Lapshin was born in 1913 in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) Oblast. In the first months of the Great Patriotic War he was mobilized to the front. At home were his wife and four children, the youngest of whom was only a few months old.

      From the front Lapshin managed to send only one letter. In it he wrote to his wife: "I probably won't return from here." The message came from near Smolensk. After that the family heard nothing more from him.

      Specialists from the Center were able to establish that on 13 July 1941 Ivan Lapshin was taken prisoner near Orsha. He was transferred to the German POW camp Stalag 215, located in Hammerstein in northern Poland.

      "The camp was not prepared to receive prisoners of war. Until November they had to sleep in dugouts, and in winter seek shelter in unheated barracks. People were dying en masse from hunger, cold, unsanitary conditions and lack of medical care," the museum said.

      Ivan Lapshin died in the camp on 3 November 1943.

      Today his descendants are alive. The 87-year-old daughter of the soldier, Lyudmila Ivanovna Kolchugina, thanked the Center for the fact that after 80 years the family finally learned what happened to their father and where his grave is. And his granddaughter Tatyana Skameykina shared her memories.

      "Grandmother used to say that grandfather was a tall, powerful man. He worked on a collective farm with horses, he could tame any of them. But he did not even know how to fight or shoot," she said.

      The Center for the Preservation of the Memory of Soviet Prisoners of War is engaged in restoring the names of Soviet soldiers who died in Nazi camps and in searching for their relatives. The project is carried out by the Victory Museum with the support of the Presidential Grants Fund.

      Earlier it was reported that the traveling exhibition "Home Front Heroes. Pages of Memory" (12+) opened in Kstovo. NIA "Nizhny Novgorod" has a Telegram channel. Subscribe to stay up to date with the main events, exclusive materials and timely information.

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