Yosif Pesin was born in 1919 in the town of Bolshoi Tokmak (near Zaporozhye, Ukraine). He received a medical education. In 1939, he began to serve in the Red Army as a military physician. At the time of the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, his anti-tank brigade was stationed on the western border of the USSR, near Brody (the Lvov region, Ukraine), and it became involved in combat from the very first day of the war. In his first battle, Pesin personally evacuated seventeen wounded soldiers from the battlefield.
Like many other Soviet units in 1941, Pesin's artillery brigade was surrounded by the enemy, and broke out of the encirclement with heavy casualties. The brigade was later reformed, and Pesin found himself among the defenders of Kiev, in a howitzer regiment of the 5th Army. He remained there for two difficult months, from July to September 1941. He was eventually forced to retreat with the other troops, accompanying a transport with the wounded soldiers.
As a military doctor in wartime, Pesin had to take care of many problems, apart from his strictly professional duties – e.g., procuring food for the wounded soldiers, and finding fuel for the ambulances that had to transport these wounded to the hospital as quickly as possible. Pesin took part in many of the most important battles of the Soviet-German War, including Stalingrad and Kursk. In 1942, he was awarded the medal “For the Defense of Stalingrad”. He met V-E Day in Prague, in the rank of captain.
After the end of the war, Pesin wished to study at a military academy, but was rejected – both because of his Jewish nationality, and due to having twice been in enemy encirclement during the war. For the next four years, Pesin continued his military service in Austria. He then moved to Brest (Belorussia), and lived there for thirty years. He retired from the army in the rank of major in 1960.
In the 1990s, Yosif Pesin immigrated to Israel and settled in the city of Ariel.
