Boris Nikolaevich
Dmitrievsky
1922-1945
Boris Nikolaevich Dmitrievsky was the commander of the tank company of the 3rd Guards Tank Brigade of the 3rd Guards Kotelnikovsky Tank Corps of the 2nd Belorussian Front, a Guard senior lieutenant. He was born on May 3, 1922 in Moscow in the family of an employee. Since 1936, he studied at secondary school No. 39 (now it is School No. 40) and finished it in 1941. With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he was drafted into the Soviet Army and sent to Saratov Tank School, from which he graduated in 1942 with the rank of lieutenant of tank troops. He was a member of the CPSU since 1943. He was in the active army since May 1943. In the autumn of 1943 Dmitrievsky participated in the breakthrough of the German defence in the area of Poltava. With the fire and tracks of his tank, he killed up to 100 fascists, destroyed 5 guns, burned 3 vehicles with ammunition, a fuel tank, captured 7 mortars and other equipment. In 1944 Dmitrievsky’s tank company, as a part of its brigade, liberated the cities of Minsk, Vilnius, and many settlements in Belarus, Lithuania and East Prussia. Dmitrievsky especially distinguished himself at the beginning of 1945. It was the victorious spring of 1945. The troops of the 2nd Belorussian Front, having cut the armies of the Vistula group from north to south, entered the territory of Pomerania with a tank wedge. The point of the wedge was the 3rd Guards Tank Brigade. On February 25, 1945 a company under the command of Dmitrievsky engaged in a battle to break through enemy defences in the Bischofswalde area near the German city of Danzig (now it is Gdansk, Poland). Soon it destroyed 8 guns, 2 tanks and killed up to 100 Hitlerite soldiers and officers. Then the tank company successfully operated south of Lake Elsenau. The tank of the company commander, guard senior Lieutenant Dmitrievsky broke into enemy artillery firing positions, destroyed 4 guns, 8 cover vehicles and killed more than 80 Nazis. Pursuing the retreating enemy, the company destroyed another 70 cars, 200 wagons, killed more than 150 fascists and, without direct artillery support, carried out a breakthrough of the enemy’s defence to a depth of 50 km. On March 1, 1945 the company captured the Shuben-Tsanov station with a fight, captured 4 military echelons and destroyed 3 guns, 8 vehicles and killed up to 80 enemy soldiers and officers. On March 10, as a part of one of the battalions of the brigade, the guard company of Senior Lieutenant Dmitrievsky was moving towards the city of Lauenburg. Suddenly, from the top of the hill marked on the map as the height of “11.39”, the Nazi guns hit. The front tank caught fire. In the column of the battalion there was the tank of the brigade commander. Dmitrievsky noticed that it was badly damaged and slowed down. Under the hurricane fire of the fascists, Boris Dmitrievsky covered the commander’s car with his tank and took it to a safe place. And then he hit the German firing points on the hill from the rear. Less than an hour later, Dmitrievsky performed another feat, defeating together with his comrades a motorized column of the enemy, consisting of more than 200 tanks, self-propelled artillery units and vehicles. On March 11, 1945 during the attack on the city of Neustadt, a blow of terrible force turned the tank tower of the company commander Dmitrievsky. The brave tankman was mortally wounded. Without regaining consciousness, he died on the way to the hospital. He was buried at the military cemetery in Lembork, the Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated June 29, 1945 Senior Lieutenant Boris Nikolaevich Dmitrievsky was posthumously awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union for exemplary performance of combat missions of the command at the front of the struggle against the German invaders and the courage and heroism of the Guard shown at the same time.
Address: Moscow, Kholzunova lane, 8
