Ibrasch Kuntajew (1907 – 1944)

Ibrasch Kuntajew grew up in the village of Krutaya in the west of Kazakhstan. At times, he worked on a farm in the Russian Cossacks. There, he learned to read and write and even the Russian language. Ibrasch Kuntajew married in 1932 and the marriage resulted in four children. He had successfully led his village's agricultural cooperative (kolkhoz) since 1937. With the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Wehrmacht in 1941, he had to go to war. After fighting at Smolensk in August 1943, Ibrasch Kuntajew was long reported as missing.

Only in 2009 did his family find out that he had been interned in the Kaisersteinbruch POW camp in Burgenland. In 1944, he was taken to Mauthausen concentration camp. According to preserved documents, he had died of »poor circulation« in the hospital camp of Mauthausen in early November 1944. In actual fact, he was selected there as part of »Aktion 14f13« and gassed to death in the Hartheim killing centre in July 1944.

In 2011, two children and a granddaughter of Ibrasch Kuntajew visited the Hartheim Castle – Place of Learning and Remembrance, where they mounted a plaque for their father.