Grigorii Bronshtein
Not much is known about Grigorii Bronshtein. He was born in 1915 in the town of Pogrebishche, east of Vinnitsa, in Ukraine. In September 1939, on the eve of the Soviet invasion of Poland, he was drafted into the Red Army (apparently, for the second time – he was then 24 years old). His military profession was a relatively peaceful one - repairing tanks. During the Soviet-German war he was the Komsomol (Young Communist League) organizer of the stationary armor repair workshop of the North-Western Front. Later he was assistant head of the 7th Mobile Tank Repairing Factory of the 2nd Ukrainian Front. Although Bronshtein's military documents do not indicate that he served in a combat role until the end of 1944 and during the war his military rank did not rise higher than sergeant-major (starshina), he was awarded a medal For Battle Merit in 1942.
In February 1945 in Budapest, Sergeant-Major Grigorii Bronshtein captured the German commandant of Budapest Wehrmacht Major General Heinrich Remlinger, the former military commandant of Pskov in Western Russia. On that day, Grigorii and another soldier were sent to check out the supposedly abandoned Hans military plant located in Buda. During their examination, the two soldiers found a closed door that led to the basement. They managed to open it and discovered two German guards. The latter opened fire but Grigorii and his comrade succeeded in disarming them. In the basement, Grigorii and his comrade found eight German army men, including two officers. At that point, Bronshtein tried a ruse. He shouted in German: "Surrender! This plant is encircled!" – and shot into the air. The German soldiers surrendered and informed him that there was a general there too. Several Soviet soldiers who had heard the shots rushed into the basement and saved the situation. Leaving them to guard the captured Germans, Bronshtein looked for the general. He found Remlinger hiding in a pipe and wearing the uniform of a private. Bronshtein took the general captive in that basement,which had been his headquarters. For taking the general prisoner Grigorii Bronshtein was awarded the Order of the Red Star.
An article about Bronshtein's action in Budapest was prepared for publication in the Moscow Yiddish newspaper Eynikayt.
Grigorii Bronshtein died in 1989. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Ufa, in the Urals.
