The headdress belonged to Modest Markov, native of Anzhero-Sudzhensk, a prisoner of concentration camps. The exhibit was donated to the museum by Sergey Budko — his sister Elena was married to Markov’s son.

Even before the war Modest Markov went into the Red Army as a volunteer. At first, he studied at the tank school, and then served as a deputy commander of the company on the technical part. Markov met the beginning of the war in Minsk and almost immediately was taken prisoner, and then to a concentration camp.

Modest Markov wrote about the war:

Markov was first sent to the Flossenburg camp in western Germany, in Bavaria, not far from today’s border with the Czech Republic. There, he and his comrades organized a strike against the working conditions and the barbaric attitude: prisoners were forced to stand in the square for 10 hours, and then those who survived and did not fall down were formed into groups and forced to dig the earth on the banks of the Danube. Then, as one prison guard put it, Markov ‘got involved in politics’.

Markov received ten days in the punishment cell for the strike, and then he was sent to hard labor. He worked at the quarry, where he had to pile 24 tons of stone in a day — a huge amount. Markov again organized a protest and due to this was transferred to a camp in Amberg, along with his comrade Sergey Bogdanov.

But Modest Markov did not stay there for long: one evening, during a search in his bed, they found a pack of cigarettes, which were strictly forbidden. A few hours later, Markov’s fate was decided:

In Buchenwald, Markov was a member of a group that was preparing an underground uprising: they studied the camp’s security system, a map, and prepared bottles of self-flammable liquid and crowbars. On the morning of April 11, 1945, the prisoners set out on a plan and began storming guard towers and weapons depots. When American troops entered Buchenwald at lunchtime, the camp was already free.