Petya Klypa: biography. Zigzags of the fate of Peter Klypa

Although more than 75 years have passed since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, and to this day in many parts of the world, the memory of the heroes who fearlessly embarked on fighting fascism and saving the world from the Brown plague has been honored. Among those whose feat will forever remain in the memory of the peoples, a special place is occupied by the defenders of the Brest Fortress, who were the first to take the enemy's blow.

Along with the adults, the citadel was kept by very young patriots. One of them was Petya Klypa, to whom this article is devoted.

Life before the war

The young hero of the defense of the Brest Fortress - Petr Sergeevich Klypa - was born in 1926 in Bryansk in the family of a working railway. His father passed away when the boy was still very small. Care for the younger brother took on Nikolai Klypa. At that time, he was already commander of the muscovisation of the 333rd Infantry Regiment. At the age of 11 Petya was enrolled in the same unit as a pupil. In 1939, the regiment participated in the RKKA march to Western Belorussia, and then it was placed in the Brest Fortress.

Soldier's childhood

Petya Klypa in all strived to resemble his brother, so from a young age he dreamed of a career as a military man. In addition, studying at school seemed to him a boring occupation, and she preferred rehearsals in musical composition and drill training. Like all the boys, Petya liked to hang around and watch the life of the people in the fortress, so he knew every corner of it.

June 21, 1941

Although the brother, as he could, looked after Peter, his office did not allow the boy to be kept under proper control. On June 21, the young pupil of the musical ensemble was seriously guilty. He escaped from the fortress to the city to replace the adult musician of the orchestra, who was supposed to provide musical accompaniment of sports competitions.

His absence was noticed, and when he returned to the unit, the angry brother-commander punished Peter, ordering him to learn the trumpet part from the opera Beze "Carmen".

While other fighters watched the movie in the club of the fortress, Klypa was forced to work hard at music. After that he met another young fighter of the musical block - Kolya Novikov, who at that time was 12 years old. Friends agreed to escape in secret in the morning for fishing.

The first day of the war

June 22, Petya Klypa woke up from the rumble of the explosion. Around him in the dilapidated barracks lay dead and wounded. He did not understand that he was shell-shocked, and although his head was aching with pain, he grabbed someone's rifle and prepared to take the fight along with the older companions.

Since the structures inside the fortress were at a considerable distance from each other, and the enemy attacked in several places, several foci of defense arose. As it became clear after the war, in the morning from the citadel, several units with the total number of servicemen of 6,000 people left. The remaining fighters (9,000 soldiers and officers) continued to fight, having detained significant enemy forces heading deep into the country.

The beginning of fortress defense

Children in the war (and in the fortress, apart from Petya and Kolya Novikova, there were a few pupils of the musical colony and about two dozen sons and daughters of officers) - this is something that can not be allowed. However, there was no opportunity to organize their evacuation, and the older guys tried, than they could, to help adults. They penetrated into places not accessible to other fighters, and carried out various assignments of commanders.

During the defense of the Brest Fortress, Klypa Kapa repeatedly acted as a liaison between the disparate units of the garrison and observed the actions of the enemy.

On the second day after the storm began, the children - the heroes of the war - Pyotr Klypa and Kolya Novikov - discovered an ammunition depot. They reported this to the commander. The defenders of the fortress took with delight the news that the boys found boxes with cartridges, since these ammunition allowed them to continue their resistance to the enemy before they came. Today we know that there was nowhere to wait for the help of the defenders of Brest, but then the soldiers and commanders besieged in the citadel did not yet know this and thought they had been the victim of a powerful and well-prepared sabotage operation.

Further exploits

The young hero was eager to fight, although the adult fighters struggled to save the brave boy. He even went to bayonet attacks, armed with a pistol, from the found warehouse.

Where did not Petya Klyp show himself ?! The feat of the boy who delivered the medicines shocked all the defenders of the fortress. When bandages ended in an improvised infirmary, he found medicines and bandages in the ruins of the medical unit and dragged them to the basement, where the wounded were hiding.

Children in the war suffered from deprivation along with adults. Toddlers and the wounded were especially difficult because of thirst. Although the Bug was nearby, the enemy with continuous fire suppressed all attempts to deliver water to the defenders and civilians who had taken cover in the defensive works, which were still held by the Red Army soldiers. Desperate Petya Klypa, whose biography is presented after the war, repeatedly made sorties and returned with a full flask. In addition, in the ruins of empty buildings, the boy found food, and once he even reached the warehouse of Voentorg and got a roll of cloth there. It was very necessary for women and children who, during the first minutes of the fascists' invasion of the USSR, still slept and ran out of the apartments in their underwear.

Breakthrough

When the commanders who led the defense of the Brest Fortress realized that the situation was hopeless, they ordered women and children to surrender, because they hoped to save their lives in this way. The soldiers began to persuade Petya and other young fighters to go beyond the fortress with civilians, but the boy was indignant, since he considered himself a fighter of the Red Army.

In early July it became clear that the cartridges would soon be over, and the command decided to try to break through in the direction of the Western Island and try to get to the environs of Brest.

I could not do this. A significant part of the fighters died, but Pyotr Klypa, who was not even 12 years old at the time, was among the few who managed to reach the outskirts of the city. However, he, along with several comrades, was captured by the fascists and driven into a column of prisoners of war.

In a concentration camp

When the column crossed the Bug, a car with German cameramen, who shot newsreels for a demonstration in Berlin, drove up to her. They photographed the dull prisoners of war and suddenly noticed a boy in uniform, who shook his fist at them. He was cheerful Petya Klypa. Operators and escorts beat the child to death, and the rest of the way to the concentration camp in the Polish town of Byala Podlaska the prisoners carried him in their arms. On arrival, Petya Klyp met Kolya Novikova. There were other children, heroes of the war from the Brest Fortress.

Escape and send to Germany

The boys from the muscovets were going to continue the fight. Soon they managed to escape, in Brest the guys learned that the front had already gone very far. Of all the pupils of the musical groups, only Volodya Kazmin agreed to make his way to the front along with Petya. They managed to pass only a couple of hundred kilometers, and in one of the Belarusian villages were captured by policemen, who were sending Soviet youth to work in Germany.

So Pyotr Sergeevich Klypa got to the village of Hohenbach in the territory of Alsace, where he began to work as a farmer in the wealthy peasant family of Kotsel Friedrich, who was engaged in the production of wine.

After the arrival of Americans

Petra, along with other teenagers, hijacked from the USSR, was liberated in 1945 by the Americans. They began to seize the values and wine from the Germans. Klyp showed them where his owner hid the wine, and then found out and told to the headquarters of the tank section of the US Army the whereabouts of the German officer Friedrich was hiding. The Americans gave Peter a rifle and sent a group of soldiers to catch the fritz. Then they began to give him instructions to find out where the members of the NSDAP live in the district. As subsequently Peter himself pointed out during interrogation in the USSR, he received no reward for cooperation with the allies, but he was supplied with food and cigarettes and even presented a wristwatch. In addition, Klype was invited to move to the US, but he refused, expressing a desire to return to his homeland.

The feat and crime of the hero of Brest

Zigzags of the fate of Peter Klypa can shock anyone. Little is known that the one who performed many feats by a teenager who put him on a par with many adult heroes of the Second World War, after the war was convicted on a "criminal" article.

Returning to Bryansk, Peter met the former classmate Levu Stotik, and they became inseparable. Soon it turned out that a childhood friend was a speculator. He bought shoes in the capital and resold in his native Bryansk. Such actions were considered illegal and punishable by imprisonment. Pyotr Klypa loved the risk and felt offended, since no one around him considered him a hero, and nothing was known about the feat of the defenders of the Brest Fortress.

He began to travel "on the flights" with Stotik and received part of the profits. Once Lyova lost the cards, and they decided to return the amount, attacking the passer-by, who had a thick wallet. Lyova deployed weapons, killed a stranger and took all his valuables from him. In 1949, the investigators who investigated this crime went to Klyp and arrested him as a bandit accomplice.

Punishment

The laws of the postwar period were harsh. For his participation in armed robbery and speculation, Pyotr Klypa was sentenced to 25 years in the camps. Shame broke the 26-year-old yesterday's hero of the defense of the Brest Fortress. In the Magadan camp, Peter even made an attempt to commit suicide. In a frigid frost, when the prisoners left the construction site, he lay down on the ground, hoping to freeze to death. However, the escorts found the absence of one of their wards, and thinking that he had escaped, they went to look for him. Soon Peter was found and he was taken to the infirmary, where he had amputated several frostbitten fingers.

The book by Sergei Smirnov

Probably, Peter would have spent most of his life in custody, had it not been for the "Brest Fortress". The book by Sergei Smirnov opened for the people of the USSR the truth about the events that occurred in the first hours and days after the outbreak of the war. From it, millions of people have learned that Petya Klypa is a pioneer hero who has performed many incredible feats.

When the "Brest Fortress" (book) was created, its author came to Bryansk and began to look for the young defender of the citadel. There he learned the tragic story of Peter and did everything to achieve a mitigation of the verdict.

At large

In 1956, after serving 7 years of imprisonment in the camps, Pyotr Klypa returned to Bryansk and found a job at the factory. Soon he married, he had children.

Thanks to S. Smirnov's book, he became a celebrity, and he was often invited to solemn events.

Despite his previous conviction, Petr Klypu was even awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the first degree.

Tests experienced during the years of military childhood, in German captivity and in the Magadan camp, could not but affect the health of the hero, and he died at the age of 57 years. So ended his life the one that for many residents of the USSR was known as the pioneer-hero of Petya Klyp.

"The Brest Fortress" (film)

Pyotr Klypa became the prototype of the main character of the film "The Brest Fortress", directed by Alexander Cott, shot in 2010.

The story in the film is from the person of Sasha Akimov, who, according to the script, is a pupil of the musket squad of the 333rd Infantry Regiment. His role was played by Alexei Kopashov, who at the time of filming was 14 years old, and he studied for two years at the Moscow Cadet Corps of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Actor's work of the teenager has received a lot of laudatory responses both from critics, and from spectators. Suffice it to say that he was even nominated for the "Nika" award for the best debut of 2011. After the film, Alexei Kopashov abandoned the career of a military or police officer and today is a student of VGIK.

The premiere of the painting "The Brest Fortress" took place exactly 69 years after the events presented in the film - June 22, 2010 - in Brest, on the territory of the Memorial Complex, at the Terespolsky Gate. Upon completion of the filming of the picture, many items of props, including the trumpet of the protagonist, whose prototype was Peter Klypa, were transferred to the museum of the Brest Fortress.

Young hero Petya Kotelnikov

By the way, one of the first films was watched by the only surviving defenders of the Brest Fortress. Pyotr Kotelnikov was born in 1929 and, like his namesake and childhood friend, was a pupil of the muzvzvod, but another, the 44th regiment. On the first day of defense of the fortress, the boy was wounded in the head, but continued to help his older comrades. In the evening of the same day, he was in the barracks of the 333 regiment, where he was Petya Klypa, Volodya Kazmin, Volodya Izmaylov and Kolya Novikov, who also were pupils of the musical ensembles of the Brest Fortress.

In an interview, Peter Kotelnikov told reporters how he crawled into remote barracks, collected ammunition in a bag from a gas mask and brought fire-fighting fighters. Together with his comrades, he often went to the shore of the Bug and brought water to the wounded and toddlers. This was real salvation. The fact is that in the only well that the defenders managed to dig in the basement of the barracks, the water was mixed with gasoline and absolutely unfit for consumption.

It was from Peter Kotelnikov was received information about how the children-heroes of Brest fled from the concentration camp. According to the veteran, they were very lucky. The fact is that on the tenth day of their stay in Poland they were driven to Brest. When the prisoners were taken out for a walk, the inhabitants of the city brought them food and clothing. One day the prison director, who noticed several boys in civilian clothes among the servicemen, asked them how they got to prison. The children said that they happened by chance when they were looking for relatives among the prisoners and wanted to give them bread. The officer did not want to mess with the teenagers and ordered them to be thrown out of the gate. Petya Kotelnikov waited for the arrival of Soviet troops, and after passing the service he became an officer and gave the Soviet Army 30 years of his life.

Now you know who Peter Klypa is. War is not a child thing. However, during the serious trials that fell to the lot of the Soviet people in the first half of the 1940s, even quite young boys and girls showed courageous wonders, bringing the long-awaited Victory closer.