Yohanan Solomonov

Yohanan (Yukhanan) Solomonov was born in 1901 in Derbent, Dagestan into a family of Mountain Jews. After his father died, he was raised by his uncle, who taught him the profession of cobbler. When he was older, Solomonov moved to work at a large footwear factory in Leningrad.

At the beginning of the Soviet-German war he volunteered to be sent to the front and was assigned to a rifle division. At the time he was registered as being a Tatar, when the clerk, apparently, mistook the word "Tat" (as the Mountains Jews were referred to) for "Tatar." When he was seriously wounded in the late summer of 1941, Solomonov used the time to read up on military tactics. Soon after his release from the hospital, he received a promotion to the rank of sergeant. Subsequently he became a junior lieutenant and was assigned to be commander of a rifle company. He fought on the Leningrad and Belorussian Fronts and was awarded the Order of the Red Star in 1942, the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class in 1943 and 1st class in 1944. On January 27, 1943, after the fighter was wounded yet another time, his physician Professor Nokhem Polinovskii, published an article in Eynikayt about his patient under the title "Der barg-yid afn front" (A Mountain Jew on the Front Lines).

Later Yohanan Solomonov was wounded again and died in a hospital on November 19, 1944.