Died in Nazi captivity: the fate of a native of the Kirov region has become known.

      The specialists from the Museum of Victory managed to find the niece of the Red Army soldier Konstantin Zaitsev, a native of the village of Gonyba. The man went to the front at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, leaving behind a wife and three children. A month after Konstantin went to the front, his wife — Varvara Zaitseva — received news that her husband was missing in action during battles in the village of Zelva in Belarus, reports "Evening Moscow."

      “She never remarried. For a long time after the war, she still waited for Konstantin and raised three children,” said the niece of junior lieutenant Konstantin Zaitsev, Tatyana Busygina.

      Tatyana shared that her uncle's mother — Maria Zaitseva lost her husband long before the Great Patriotic War — he died from a cold. She raised and educated four sons and three daughters on her own. The most industrious was Konstantin: he plowed, tended to the garden, and cared for the apple orchard.

      Maria Nikiforovna sent all her sons to the front, two of whom did not return. The eldest — Nikolai — died near Smolensk. And Maria Nikiforovna waited her whole life for Konstantin.

      According to the publication, Konstantin's mother died in 1975, never knowing that her son died in Nazi captivity. Specialists from the Center for the Preservation of the Memory of Soviet Prisoners of War found out that Konstantin Zaitsev was captured on July 2, 1941, in the village of Zelva near Grodno. He was then sent to Stalag, which was located on the territory of Germany. There he died in January 1942 and was buried in the local cemetery.

      Now, on that site, there is a memorial complex "Erenhain Zeithein," which is dedicated to the victims of the Nazi camp.