It's happened that he found himself in captivity, like millions of Soviet soldiers and officers in the first year and a half of the war with the Nazis. He inevitably had to die, being a Bukharian Jew, but he was saved by taking on the guise of a Tajik. And then-concentration camps, escape, joining the partisans of Italy, Albania, Yugoslavia, participation in combat operations of the Resistance. Life and death were separated by a thin, shaky line...