Photos of the World War I from a family archive

The photos from the series published were taken in 1915-1916 a the Northern Front by a battalion doctor Alexander Zusmanovich. The photos are sorted  in three thematic parts: “Everyday life”, “Landscapes”, “Portraits”.

Alexander Zusmanovich was born in 1883 in Oddesa in the family of a doctor. In 1911 he graduated from the university and in 1912-1913 worked as a district doctor in Volynskaya and Moscow provinces. In 1913 he had a contractual work in Egypt.

In 1914 after the break out of the world war he was called up to the service in the acting army where he served as a doctor in the second Caucasian engineer battalion.

In 1919 he entered the Bolshevik Party, was member of the Odessa Soviet of Working deputies. In 1920-s and 1930-s he occupied various positions in the People's Commissariat for Health of the USSR. In 1929 he was sent to Mongolia to fight epidemics. Headed a hospital during the Great Patriotic War. After the war he lived in the Moscow region, died in 1956.

During the WW I, when he served at the engineer battalion, which was located not far from the towns of Smorgon and Oshmyany, he took photos of everyday war life with his Leica camera.

His grandson Alexander Scherbakov's family archive contains more than 300 photos, some of them (dating back to the 95^th anniversary of the beginning of the war) can be found on our web site. The given photos are published for the first time.