Moshiakh Ustayev, 1941.
Moshiakh Ustayev was born in 1920 in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. He was one of five sons. His father Mushe was a watchman at a factory, while his mother worked as a seamstress at a garment workshop. Both parents died when Moshiakh was young, and in 1934 he left school and became a barber's apprentice. From the age of sixteen, he worked as a barber. In 1940, Moshiakh was drafted into the Red Army. He was sent to the recently annexed Eastern Poland (present-day Western Belarus). He began his military service in the horse artillery in Lida, east of Grodno, and was then transferred to a mechanized artillery regiment in Grodno itself. Ustayev served as the regimental barber; however, after the outbreak of the Soviet-German War in June 1941, he also had to take part in combat.
During the first days of the war, Ustayev's regiment was in retreat. Several days later, the men realized that they had been surrounded by the enemy. In September 1941, after much wandering, Ustayev was taken prisoner by the Germans. In the POW camp, he claimed to be a Muslim Uzbek named Karim Ustayev (his last name could easily fit both Jews and Muslims).
In May 1943, Ustayev and some of his fellow POWs managed to escape from the camp. After a long eastward trek, they crossed the front lines and reached the Red Army's Voronezh Front, in southern Russia. Ustayev was interrogated by the Special Department of the 38th Army, accused of being a "traitor to the Motherland," and handed over to a military tribunal. After a short trial, he was found guilty of treason and, according to paragraph 58-1 of the Criminal Code, sentenced to ten years of imprisonment. Ustayev served his term in the Kolyma region and in Magadan, Eastern Siberia; thanks to his profession of barber, he was able to survive in the inhuman conditions of the Kolyma GULAG camps. In 1953, he was released, but could find work only in a provincial town in Kirghizia. In the following years, he managed to be legally rehabilitated and return to Bukhara.
In 1991, Moshiakh Ustayev and his family immigrated to the USA; he settled in New York City.
