 At the time of the Battle of Stalingrad, Filippov lived in the Stalingrad suburb of Dar-Gora with his father, mother, and a younger brother who was born in 1932.Physically, Sasha was frail and short statured.When the initial Wehrmacht assault on Stalingrad resulted in battalions of the German 6th Army quickly overrunning suburbs of the city, many Russian families were caught unaware and found themselves unable to flee in time.