BBC Tracks Descendants of Soviet POW Hidden by Jersey Family in WWII

For more than 80 years, no one knew what became of a Soviet prisoner of war who escaped from the Nazis on the Channel Islands and hid from German occupiers with a local family for the rest of World War II.

Known only by his first name, Bokejon, or simply Tom, he was one of about 2,000 Soviet prisoners and forced laborers brought to the island of Jersey to build Nazi fortifications.

After liberation, Tom and the other surviving POWs were sent back to the USSR. He promised to keep in touch, but nothing was heard from him again.

BBC teams tracked down his descendants in Central Asia, in the far east of Uzbekistan.

Tom escaped a Nazi forced labor camp on Jersey in 1943. Exhausted, starving and desperate, he knocked on the door of local farmers John and Phyllis Le Breton. They knew the risk but 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."

The Le Bretons hid him for more than two years. The danger was real. 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 neighbors had reported her to German authorities.

John and Phyllis trusted their escaped soldier so much that they let him read to their children and play with them, including their daughter Dulcie.

"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 was sent back to the USSR like other surviving Soviet POWs. Three letters arrived in Jersey as he traveled home across Europe, but then there was silence.

Ex-prisoners who returned to the Soviet Union faced screening and interrogation in NKVD filtration camps. Authorities often viewed their capture as a sign of possible disloyalty or collaboration with the enemy.

Some returned to ordinary life. Many were branded unreliable, faced barriers to work and advancement, and lived under suspicion. Some were sentenced to labor camps inside the USSR. Even after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, the stigma lingered.

Tom signed his letters to the Le Bretons as "Bokijon Akram," but neither they nor Jersey historians knew his full name or origin.

BBC Russian joined the search. The team checked dozens of records and hundreds of spelling variations, using details from his diary. He appeared to be about 30 when mobilized in 1941, fought and was captured on territory of present-day Ukraine, and had Central Asian origins.

The search narrowed to Bokejon Akramov, born in 1910 and mobilized from Namangan in what is now Uzbekistan. A record showed he received the Order of the Patriotic War decades later, with a home address.

BBC Uzbek traveled to Namangan to check the address, with Le Breton family photos.

"How come you have my grandfather's pictures? Where did you get them from?" asked the man who opened the door. His name was Shamsutdin Akhunbaev, Bokejon Akramov's grandson.

Akhunbaev was moved to tears as he heard the story. The family said Bokejon rarely spoke of his wartime experiences. Despite his intelligence, he was denied skilled jobs and worked as a gardener at a Namangan factory for years.

"Dear Dulcie, we thank your family for your courage and kindness," Shamsutdin Akramov told her. "Our grandfather survived the war and gave us life only because of you. We are so happy that we found you. We invite you to Uzbekistan and will always be waiting for you in our home."

Uzbekistan authorities decided to posthumously award John and Phyllis Le Breton the Order of Friendship for their courage and compassion. The award will go to Dulcie Le Breton on Wednesday.