Date of birth:

October 24th, 1919 (Saitz/Sudetenland, Germany)

Date of death:

July 1943 (Oryol/Oryol Oblast, Soviet Union)

Nationality:

German

Otto Chowanetz is missing in action since July 1943. Some sources give as the date of being killed, March 17th, 1943.

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Period:

Second World War (1939-1945)

Rank:

Feldwebel (Staff Sergeant)

Unit:

Zugführer 1. / Grenadier-Regiment 17 / 31.Infanterie-Division

Awarded on:

August 8th, 1943

The following wartime excerpt describes why Chowanetz was awarded the Knight’s Cross…

“Following four days of heavy fighting, Feldwebel Otto Chowanetz broke into a commanding enemy hill position at the head of a Zug of Grenadiers and thereafter held the hill against several Soviet battalion-sized attacks.”

• - FELLGIEBEL, W.P., Elite of theThird Reich, Helion & Company Limited, Solihull, 2003.
  - THOMAS, FRANZ & WEGMANN, GÜNTER, Die Ritterkreuzträger der Deutschen Wehrmacht 1939-1945, Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück, 1998.
  - Die träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eiserne Kreuz 1939 - 1945
  - Ritterkreuz Archiv III/2010, Veit Scherzer, Ranis, September 2010, ISSN 1866-4709