​​Islander Bob Le Sueur, part of a small network of Islanders who found shelter for escaped Soviet workers from the camps, later wrote: ‘He [Fyodor] was taken to a camp at the bottom of Jubilee Hill [Lager Immelmann]…The Kommandant of the camp was notoriously brutal and would march his starving charges to work every day with violent and harsh penalties for those who failed to keep up. Desperate, Bill had escaped, only to be swiftly recaptured. He was stripped naked and ordered to push a wheelbarrow full of stones at the double around the compound while all the other prisoners were made to watch. Every time he slowed or stumbled he was beaten with a stick, until he finally collapsed. Guards then lifted him into a tank of cold water and left him to freeze there all night. Miraculously, given this was November, he survived, and the punishment he received did nothing to dampen his desire to escape. Realising he was likely to die anyway, he resolved to try again just two days later.’ 

​When he escaped on 23 September 1942, Fyodor found shelter for three months with René Le Mottée, a sympathetic farmer. Forced to relocate by the threat of nearby house searches, Fyodor asked Louisa Gould, whom he had already met, to take him in. Louisa’s sister, Ivy Forster, was sheltering another Soviet fugitive, Grigori Koslov.

​By May 1944, Fyodor – whom Louisa re-named ‘Bill’ – had been with her for 18 months. Louisa had become complacent about their safety. Bill accompanied her on excursions and to social events and served in the shop. Louisa was denounced by anonymous letter to German Civil Affairs, but Bill was hastily moved when they received a warning before the house could be searched. However, a forbidden radio, camera and gift labels to Bill from Louisa and Ivy were discovered.

​Multiple arrests followed. Louisa and her brother Harold Le Druillenec were deported to France for imprisonment. Louisa perished in a gas chamber at Ravensbrück concentration camp whilst Harold was the only British man to survive Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. As for Fyodor, or Bill, he was hidden by Dorothy Huelin then by Michael Frowd and René Franoux in St Helier. Shortly after the Liberation, Fyodor acknowledged in the Evening Post newspaper ‘the goodness of the Jersey people who have befriended me, a stranger, at considerable risk to themselves’.

​Visit ‘La Fontaine – Former Home of Louisa Gould’ on the ‘Forced Workers in Jersey Trail’ for more details and locate Louisa and Harold’s Stolpersteine memory stone on the ‘Jersey Stolpersteine Trail’.​