soldiers seized the collective farm's livestock. The Nazis captured Klushino on 18 October 1941. On their first day in the village, they burned down the school, ending Yuri's first year of education. The Germans also burned down 27 houses in the village and forced the residents including the Gagarins to work the farms to feed the occupying soldiers. Those who refused were beaten or sent to the concentration camp set up at Gzhatsk. A Nazi officer took over the Gagarin residence. On the land behind their house, the family was allowed to build a mud hut measuring approximately , where they spent 21 months until the end of the occupation. During this period, Yuri became a saboteur, especially after one of the German soldiers, who the children called "the Devil", tried to hang his younger brother Boris on an apple tree using the boy's scarf. In retaliation, Yuri sabotaged the soldier's work; he poured soil into the tank batteries gathered to be recharged and randomly mixed the different chemical supplies intended for the task. In early 1943, his two older siblings were deported by the Germans to Poland for slave labour. They escaped and were found by Soviet soldiers who conscripted them into helping with the war effort. They did not return home until after the war, in 1945. The rest of the Gagarin family believed the two older children were dead, and Yuri became ill with "grief and hunger"; he was also beaten for refusing to work for the German forces and spent the remainder of the war at a hospital as a patient and later as an orderly. His mother was hospitalized during the same period, after a German soldier gashed her leg with a scythe. When the Germans were routed out of Klushino on 9 March 1944, Yuri helped the Red Army find mines buried in the roads by the fleeing German army. Education and early career In 1946, the family moved to Gzhatsk, where Gagarin continued his education. Yuri and Boris were enrolled at a crude school built in the town and run by a young woman who volunteered to be the teacher. They learned to read using a discarded Soviet military manual. A former Soviet airman later joined the school to teach maths and science, Yuri's favourite subjects. Yuri was also part of a group of children that built model aeroplanes. He was fascinated with