Kirov residents learned the story of a fellow countryman who commanded partisans behind enemy lines

      Vitaly Averkievich Trefilov was born on May 30, 1922 in the village of Kolosovo, Shabalinsky district. In 1940, he entered the Novosibirsk Institute of Military Railway Engineers, but after the first year he was enrolled in the special department of the NKVD. Already in November 1941, a young Kirov resident went to the front and fought in the Volkhov direction as part of the 2nd Shock Army.

      In the battles Trefilov was wounded and captured. In the prison camps, he established contacts with the underground, conducted anti-fascist agitation, organized escapes, and in October 1943 he escaped. In the woods, together with other escaped prisoners, he formed a partisan detachment of 33 people. Trefilov himself became the commander.

      The detachment carried out sabotage, undermined enemy targets, assisted in escapes from camps and participated in armed resistance. According to the archives, the partisans killed more than 200 German soldiers, blew up two railway bridges, warehouses and equipment, and helped eleven Soviet prisoners of war escape.

      In the spring of 1944, the detachment became part of the partisan brigade "For the Motherland". Vitaly Trefilov was appointed commander of one of the detachments, and then became deputy commander of the brigade for material support and political work. After the arrival of the Allied forces in Belgium in the autumn of 1944, the brigade was repatriated to the USSR.

      The story of Vitaly Trefilov became known thanks to the materials of the archive of the regional directorate of the FSB, which were previously classified as classified.