From Norway to Azerbaijan: Hero's journey unfolds with help from Housing Office PHOTO

In a remarkable turn of events, a Norwegian resident has uncovered new leads in the search for the family of a fallen soldier from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku.

While the Azerbaijani embassy remained silent, the Housing and Utility Office in Baku came to the rescue, assisting in piecing together the story of a hero lost in history. A story previously covered by Caliber.Az has taken a new and touching turn.

In the small Norwegian town of Gjøvik, a local resident of Russian origin, Tatyana Toresen (Zatolokina), uncovered the burial site of two Soviet soldiers from World War II. Since then, she has been tirelessly working to piece together information about their lives and locate their surviving relatives.

Toresen, who contacted Caliber.Az, shared a significant update in her search: she has successfully traced the widow of one of the Soviet prisoners of war—Ivan Alexandrov, who was executed by German forces on September 16, 1944, near the village of Kolberg in the Vardal region.

“Ivan Alexandrov was born on August 22, 1909, and lived in the Sabunchi settlement of Baku,” she said. “His address was 228 Dzerzhinsky Street (now Asif Asadullayev Street), apartment 11. He worked as a lathe operator at the ‘Bakinsky Rabochy’ machine-building plant in Sabunchi. He was drafted into the Red Army on June 25, 1941, by the military enlistment office of the Lenin (now Sabunchi) district. His rank was private.”

Toresen’s discovery adds a deeply personal dimension to a story of sacrifice and remembrance, and her continued efforts are helping restore dignity and recognition to forgotten heroes of the war. In August 1942, Ivan Alexandrov was captured by enemy forces (his military records list him as missing in action as of September 1942) and was sent to the Vågård prisoner-of-war camp near the town of Hønefoss, Norway. 

Together with another soldier, Aleksandr Kalistratov, he managed to escape from the camp. After trekking over 100 kilometers, the two found shelter in a barn belonging to a Norwegian family. Unfortunately, the Germans eventually tracked them down, and both men were executed by firing squad on September 16, 1944. Ivan Alexandrov was 35 years old at the time of his death. 

For 79 years, he was listed as missing in action.

"We’ve made progress in tracing Ivan Alexandrov’s family—specifically, we’ve uncovered new information about his wife, Maria Alexandrova, born in 1906. Volunteers in Baku visited the Housing and Utility Office at the address where the soldier lived before the war and found archival documents mentioning his wife. According to these records, Maria Alexandrova was officially listed as a war widow. She never remarried after Ivan's death, and the couple had no children. She worked as a stoker at a meat-processing plant and eventually left Baku in 1975, relocating to Saratov. We managed to trace her to the Saratov region, in the city of Engels, where she passed away in 1983. There is a 1984 inheritance case on file with a notary in the city of Engels. Someone claimed the inheritance after Maria's death," said Tatyana Toressen, who has been leading the search. 

"The inheritance case number is 2932417-144/1986, and the notary handling it was Vera Babaitseva. The notary's office is located at: 410056, Saratov Region, Saratov City, Frunzensky District, Pugachev Street, 85/93. The notary is still practicing today, but after 40 years, she has no recollection of this particular case. We are now searching for the archive where this inheritance case is stored. If we manage to find it, it will bring us closer to locating the soldier’s family. Maria surely kept photographs of her late husband Ivan, and it is likely that she brought them with her when she moved to Engels in 1975,” Toressen added. 

She said that the search has been aided by ordinary residents of Baku and workers from the Housing and Utility Office in the Sabunchi district, while the Azerbaijani embassy in Norway did not respond to her letter. “We, my husband and me, want to find a photograph of soldier Ivan Alexandrov and install an informational memorial plaque near his grave,” Toressen shared with us. It is often said that a war does not end until the last soldier is buried.

But we would like to add—until the fate of all the heroes is known, both the living and the dead... As we can see, thanks to the dedication of people in both Norway and Azerbaijan, the ongoing search for the relatives of a World War II soldier, who left Baku to fight and remained forever in the distant Scandinavian "Land of a Thousand Fjords" is still progressing. The mission continues successfully to honour him with the recognition he rightfully deserves, albeit belatedly. 

Caliber.Az will continue tracking the developments of this story.

By Naila Huseynova