Finding soldier Tom: Solving family mystery of WW2 Soviet prisoner of war

Key developments are emerging from the global stage. Finding soldier Tom: Solving family mystery of WW2 Soviet prisoner of war20 minutes ago Share Save Add as preferred on GoogleBBCThe Le Breton family held on to this picture of Soviet prisoner of war "Tom" in the hope of finding out what had happened to himOlga IvshinaBBC News RussianFor more than 80 years, no-one knew what happened to a Soviet prisoner of war who escaped from the Nazis on the Channel Islands and spent the rest of World War Two hiding from the German occupiers with a local family. Known only by his first name, Bokejon, or simply Tom, he was one of about 2,000 Soviet prisoners and forced labourers brought to the island of Jersey to build Nazi fortifications. After liberation, Tom and the other surviving PoWs were sent back to the USSR and although he promised to keep in touch, once he had returned nothing was heard from him again.

That was until teams tracked down his descendants in Central Asia, far away from Jersey in the far east of Uzbekistan. It was in 1943 that Tom escaped one of the Nazis' forced labour camps on Jersey. Exhausted, starving and desperate, he knocked on the door of local farmers John and Phyllis Le Breton.

The Details

They knew the risk, but they took him in and saved his life. Conditions in the camps were harsh. "We were digging stone from the quarry, from six in the morning to six at night, our food consisting of soup at midday and a very meagre portion of bread and some butter at tea-time.

We had no breakfast," Tom later wrote in his diary. "For the slightest thing, we were brutally beaten… and if we could not work, we were starved and beaten again; they would never believe we were sick. "For more than two years he was hidden by the Le Bretons.

Another Jersey resident, Louisa Gould, was deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp, and murdered in a gas chamber for sheltering a Soviet escapee named Fyodor Burriy. Her neighbours had reported her to German authorities. Atlantic-Press/Ullstein bild via Getty ImagesA German occupation soldier stands on the Jersey coast in the summer of 1940John and Phyllis Le Breton trusted their escaped soldier so much that they allowed him to read to their children and play with them, including their daughter Dulcie.

What Experts Say

"Our dear Uncle Tom, we loved him so much. He is my main memory of the war, and his photo is still by my bedside," said Dulcie, who turns 90 in June. "But I am still mystified what happened to him after the war.

"After the Channel Islands were liberated in May 1945, Tom, like other surviving Soviet PoWs, was sent back to the USSR. Three letters arrived in Jersey as he was taken home across Europe, but then there was silence. What happened in the Channel Islands during WW2?

The concrete reminders of five years of occupationEx-prisoners of war who returned to the Soviet Union were typically subjected to screening and interrogation in so-called NKVD filtration camps.

The development has drawn wide international attention, with diplomatic circles watching closely.