Degen Ion Lazarevich: biography, photo

Ion Lazarevich Degen is a famous physician who saved lives of hundreds of people in peacetime, a famous poet and fearless defender of the Motherland, who occupied the 10th place among the tank aces of the Soviet Union.

He is a man with a capital letter, a hero who passed through the whole war, selflessly defended his native land and lost combat comrades who left untimely. Twice represented to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, Ion Lazarevich was never awarded the highest degree of distinction, perhaps on a national basis.

Degen Ion Lazarevich: biography

Ion was born in the Jewish family of paramedics on June 4, 1925 in Mogilev-Podilsky (Vinnytsia region). When the boy was 3 years old, his 65-year-old father, a fine paramedic and a talented specialist, whose experience was adopted by many graduated doctors, died.

The upbringing of the child lay on the shoulders of a 26-year-old mother, who worked as a nurse in a hospital. Her little salary to the family was not enough, so the 12-year-old Degen went to help the blacksmith and in a year he could independently horse his horse.

Folk lines written by Degen

Degen Ion was a diversified adolescent, very fond of botany, zoology and literature. He was delighted with the poems of the French writer Victor Hugo, inspired the works of Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, Vasily Lebedev-Kumach and Vladimir Mayakovsky, whose poems Ion knew almost by heart. Perhaps this was the impetus for the development of his poetic inclinations, and the lines written by Degen were passed from mouth to mouth and were often recognized as folk.

The War Begins

After the end of the 9th grade, the 16-year-old Ion Degen, whose biography arouses genuine admiration of the modern generation, got a job as a counselor in the pioneer camp, and a month later, in July 1941, volunteered for the front with the beginning of the bloody war. From the very childhood the young man disappeared in the territory of the local border detachment, where he learned to own all types of weapons, including a machine gun. He was well versed in grenades, riding confidently, so the front was a well-trained Red Army man. The skills he obtained in childhood fully manifested in wartime, being part of the 130th Infantry Division.

When leaving the environment, he was injured in soft knee tissues. The wound was considered easy, but it did not heal very long: there were no clean bandages, bandages had to be changed rarely. This circumstance provoked blood poisoning. In the Poltava hospital, Degen was given a terrible sentence - an amputation of his leg. But the young man categorically refused surgical intervention. He was overcome by a great desire to live and a young and strong organism.

Service in the 42nd armored train division

After the hospital, Ion Lazarevich was identified in the reconnaissance department of the 42nd armored train battalion, formed from volunteer railwaymen. The division in Georgia consisted of two armored trains: "Sibiryak" and "Railwayman of Kuzbass", as well as a staff train with five passenger cars.

In 1942, before the division, whose commander was Degen Ion, was assigned a responsible task: to cover the roads to Beslan and Mozdok. The Soviet soldier remembers the fighting in the Caucasus as the heaviest and most bloody: a large number of Germans attacked the armored train, and "Junkers" fired from the sky unhindered. From the constant bombardment the crew carried heavy losses. In addition to the massive German attack, the second disaster came - hunger. For three days Degen chewed the strap of the tank helmet, and then a few days at all did not eat anything. Opponents also starved, so after a while came to surrender. The pass, the defense of which was entrusted to the division, was then withheld by Soviet troops: out of 44, 19 remained alive.

Poems of the poet Ion Degen began writing at the front:

"No, I did not keep diaries in the war,

Not to the writings of the diaries of a soldier,

But someone penned poetry in me

About every battle, about every loss. "

These lines were born in the heart, which missed all the horror of wartime through itself. I have tried to capture all my observations and experiences with the purpose of preserving reliable information for descendants on paper by Ion Degen.

Biography: tankman with a capital letter

On October 15, Ion Lazarevich was seriously wounded in the night reconnaissance, whose task was to determine the location of the German reserves and prepare the coordinates for the shooting of the 42nd Division. Getting out of the German encirclement, the young fighter was wounded in the leg, and the pieces riddled his body. After the hospital, Ion did not return to his division (which was transferred to Iran in 1943), but was sent to the 21st training tank regiment stationed in the Georgian town of Shulaveri, and from there to the 1st Kharkov Tank School.

After graduating with honors, Degen Ion was sent to Nizhny Tagil to get a tank and form a crew, the first of which was young, unarmed and never was at the front. The same was the second crew and several more. Almost all the guys, 19-20-year-olds, were killed.

The famous 2nd Panzer

Ion came to the 2nd Panzer Brigade, which was famous at the front, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Yefim Yevseyevich Dukhovny. At its core, it was a suicide brigade, used exclusively for a breakthrough and carrying huge losses in each offensive operation. The newcomers who came to her disposal did not say this sad statistics, so as not to frighten young fighters. For an ordinary tankman to survive two offensive in the composition of this brigade was unrealistic. Degenera was called lucky in it, because he managed to survive in the summer of 1944 after large-scale operations in Belarus and Lithuania.

As part of the 2nd Tank Brigade, the crew of Ion Degen destroyed four self-propelled guns and 12 German enemy tanks.

Miraculously survived

During the war, Degen IL received 22 fragments, a large number of burns and four wounds, the heaviest on January 21, 1945. This happened in East Prussia: the tankman tried to lead the company into an attack by his own example, but to no avail. During that terrible battle his T-34 tank was hit, and the crew, who managed to get out of the burning car, the Germans threw grenades.

Degen survived, despite the severed upper jaw, a fragment in the brain, crippled legs and several bullet wounds of the hand. In the hospital, he developed sepsis, which at the time was considered a death sentence. By his salvation, Ion is indebted to the head physician, who demanded to deliver the injured intravenously penicillin at that time. Ion survived! Then came the rehabilitation period, lifelong disability - all at the age of 19.

The talented doctor Ion Degen

Watching the exploits of the doctors who saved the wounded soldiers, Degen Ion Lazarevich decided to become a doctor after the war and never regretted his choice. In 1951 he graduated with honors from the Chernivtsi Medical Institute, became a successful and sought after doctor, defended his doctoral dissertation. Despite the fact that the wounded hands did not obey Degene (he knitted knots regularly for the flexibility of his fingers, and wore a cane filled with lead for the efficiency of his hands), he achieved it - he became a skilled trauma doctor and orthopedist. For several decades, medical practice in operations did not use the thumb of his right hand (he could not physically), but the patients did not even know about it.

In 1951 Degen Ion worked at the Institute of Orthopedics in Kyiv, then in Kustanai in the Kazakh steppe. Then the doctor returned to Ukraine in Kiev, where he continued medical work. Ion Degen developed a unique surgical technique, wrote more than 90 scientific articles, in 1959, conducted the first surgical engraftment of a severed forearm in medical practice.

Life on Israeli soil

Since 1977, Degen Ion Lazarevich lives in Israel, where he left at the age of 50, feeling that his native state, for the sake of which he risked his life, rejects him, like an unknown alien object.

In his historical homeland, Degen has worked as a doctor for more than two decades; His wife settled in an architect at the University of Jerusalem, and his son successfully defended his thesis at the Weizmann Institute and became a theoretical physicist. About his own life on the land of his ancestors, Ion Degen said in the work "From the House of Slavery". Also from the pen of Ion Lazarevich there were such books as "Portraits of Teachers", "Immanuel Velikovsky", "Holograms", "War never ends," "Heirs of Asclepius", "Inconceived tales of the incredible." The author's works are printed in magazines of many countries, including Israel, Russia, Ukraine, Australia, America.

In Israel, Ion Degen (photos of recent years are presented in the article) continues to work actively, advises fellow orthopedists, writes books, and presents lectures-memoirs in different cities.

This amazing man of tremendous fate with high positive energy left a significant mark in the literature about the Great Patriotic War, which he experienced and carried in his heart.

On the Soviet front-line poet, tanker-ace directors Yulia Melamed and Mikhail Degtyar shot a documentary film "Degen". The picture tells not only about the military biography of the hero, but also life in peacetime, marriage, medical work, relocation to Israel and relations with the Soviet authorities.