Andrey Pogozhev was born in 1912 at Dontsk in the Ukraine, and before the war he worked as a miner and mining engineer. He was mobilized in June 1941 and fought as a platoon commander of regimental artillery, but he was captured in September. He spent a year at Auschwitz, escaped, was recaptured, and then escaped from the Germans again. He finally reached the Soviet lines in 1943. After the war he went back to his work as a mining engineer. Andrey Pogozhev died in 1990.