Anatoly Barash was born in 1920 in Petrograd. His father, Mikhail Barash, had been one of the founders of the Petrograd Bar Association.
In 1929, the family lost its apartment in the center of the city: The formerly separate dwelling was converted into a communal apartment, which now housed several families. The Barashes moved into the apartment of Anatoly's grandmother. However, it, too, was "communalized" shortly thereafter, and the two families were allowed to retain only two of its rooms. In 1937, Mikhail Barash was arrested on false charges. He was released after spending several months in prison. However, he was now a broken, sickly person.
After finishing school, Anatoly enrolled in the Leningrad Construction Institute, and later switched to the Polytechnic Institute, where he studied at the Department of Hydrotechnics.
In late June 1941, the Soviet-German War broke out. By that time, Barash had completed three years of study. A battalion was being formed out of students of the Polytechnic Institute, and Anatoly volunteered to enlist in it. He wished to serve in the navy, but was sent instead to the Leningrad Armor School. In the next nine months, Anatoly Barash completed an accelerated officer training course. In March 1942, he finished his studies, and was sent to an armored brigade on the Western Front, in the rank of lieutenant.
In the autumn of 1942, Barash fought in the bloody battles over the city of Rzhev. For his role in this operation, he was nominated for the Order of the Red Banner by his superiors. In the end, however, he received the less prestigious medal "For Courage." For a time, as the tank that he commanded was away being repaired (it had been seriously damaged in the fighting), Anatoly served in a different armored brigade. There, he quarreled with the deputy political officer of the battalion, who was a rabid antisemite:
He hated Jews, and made no attempt to hide it. He decided to "victimize" me, and began to nag at me over various trifles. He could not stand a "stuck-up Jew," and kept trying to "push me over the edge." However, he could not break me. Kostenko was furious, and so was I. I decided to shoot him. I didn't care whether I would be executed for killing this commissar, or court-martialed and sent to a penal battalion. I told this Kostenko to his face, in front of all the others, that he was living his last days on this sinful earth, and that I would shoot him no matter what. I was immediately "shipped" out of this brigade to the personnel department of the Main Automobile Directorate. I ended up in the 95th Armored Brigade (if I'm not mistaken)."
From: An Interview with Anatoly Barash - The tankmen/ iremember.ru
When his tank failed to arrive, Anatoly Barash was sent to Moscow for redeployment. In fairly short order, he was appointed "communications officer of a brigade headquarters." His duties included maintaining communications between battalions during battle, relaying the orders of the high command, and making sure that these orders were carried out properly. Apart from that, Barash had to guide columns of tanks along preset routes, and engage in reconnaissance. In the summer of 1943, he took part in the battles on the Kursk salient. Most of his comrades were killed in action, but he miraculously survived:
"I kept being dispatched with orders from one battalion to the next. The enemy fire did not let up for a minute, but one experience in particular has stuck in my memory: A "flock" of bombers were bombing the field through which I ran toward the forward battalion; the bombs were falling very thickly, and I hopped between the blasts, like a hare. Later, I found it hard to believe that none of the fragments had hit me."
From: An Interview with Anatoly Barash - The Tankmen/ iremember.ru
For his performance in the battles for the Kursk salient, Anatoly Barash was awarded the Order of the Red Star in late October 1943. For the Melitopol operation, which took place in the autumn of 1943, Barash was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class. By the spring of 1944, Barash had been promoted to captain and appointed deputy brigade chief of staff for operational work. That same year, he was sent to study at the Moscow Tank Academy, despite his express desire to remain on the front.
For his role in the battles for the Crimea, which took place in April-May 1944, Anatoly was nominated for the Order of the Red Banner once again, but he did not receive the award this time, either.
After the end of the war, Anatoly Barash served in Berlin, and then, until 1955 – in the Soviet Far East. He was then posted to the Leningrad Military District, where he worked at a tank repair base. Barash retired from the army in 1972, but continued to work as a technical engineer at a tank factory, now as a military pensioner.
Related Resources
Anatoly Barash memoirs
Anatoly Barash recalls the anti-Jewish stereotypes that existed in the Red Army:
The brigade column was always on the move. For some reason, I find one incident particularly memorable: During a night stop, I lay down to sleep on the snow, under a maintenance truck. Suddenly, I heard the armorer start ranting about the "accursed yids in Tashkent." I got up from beneath the car and came over, intending to beat him up, but the armorer began to offer "excuses" for his behavior: "Lieutenant, you got me wrong. You are 'our' Jew, good and proper – not like all the others…"
