Yefim Fomin

Yefim Moiseevich Fomin (Russian: Ефим Моисеевич Фомин), (15 January 1909 – 30 June 1941), was a Soviet political commissar. He is known for his part in the 1941 Defense of Brest Fortress, at the end of which the German Army captured and immediately executed him).

Fomin was born into a Jewish family in Kolyshki in Vitebsk Governorate (present-day Liozna Raion, Belarus) in 1909. He lost his parents as a young boy and was raised in orphanages. In 1924, Fomin joined the Komsomol, at the age of 15. He worked at a shoe factory in Vitebsk and then moved to Pskov. There, he was sent to the Communist Party school to prepare for a career as a professional party worker. In 1930, at age of 21, while at the party school, Fomin was formally accepted as a member of the Soviet Communist Party. When he returned from the school, he was assigned to be a propagandist of the Pskov City Committee of the Communist Party.

Army career

In 1932 the Party assigned Fomin to the Soviet Army, where he became a political commissar and began a nomadic life of the military: Pskov - Crimea - Kharkiv - Moscow - Latvia.