Orest Dvornikov (1916-2000) after his return from Siberia, December 1954.
©Familie Kuznetsowa
Deathly ill, the doctor Orest Dwornikow reached occupied Kirovograd at the end of 1941. His Red Army unit had been broken up. Relatives took him in and obtained employment for him in a hospital. He joined the “Patriotic Group”, a circle of friends who supported Ukrainian partisans. An informer betrayed the group. In 1943, after several months in custody, the SS deported Dwornikow to the Buchenwald concentration camp. In the Wansleben subcamp he self-sacrificingly tended to sick fellow inmates. Back in Ukraine, he was sentenced to ten years of forced labour for alleged treason. He was not rehabilitated until the mid-1960s. From then on he worked in Cherson as a highly respected physician.
