Eighth-grader Zina came to the village from Leningrad for the holidays to visit her grandmother. There the war found her. Zina and other schoolchildren worked underground. They walked around the village, seemingly taking a walk, and obtained the most necessary information. Thanks to them, they managed to neutralize a large number of enemies. Then Zina became a scout. For a long time the Germans could not figure out the reason for their failures. The provocateur helped - former student schools. He betrayed Zina and the other guys.
Returning from a mission, Zina was ambushed. A thin girl with two pigtails was arrested. When she was tortured, she was silent. Having failed to obtain any information from her, the girl was handed over to the boss.
The boss used a different tactic: he did not beat Zina, but spoke very kindly. His goal was to obtain information about underground partisans. He offered her chocolates and white bread, but the girl remained stubbornly silent. This torture with food lasted several days, but did not bring desired results. Then he said that he would send her to her parents in Leningrad. At the mention of dad and mom, Zina’s heart sank painfully. She knew that her beloved city was under siege. And besides her parents, there was also a little sister left there.
Meanwhile, the boss pulled out a pistol and twirled it in front of the girl’s nose. He said that there was a small bullet in the gun that would put an end to the girl’s life. A car honked outside the window, the boss turned away. This was enough for Zina to take the gun. She shot point-blank, and also confidently killed another German who ran in at the noise.
The girl jumped out the window and ran, shooting back. The clip has run out of cartridges. A brave schoolgirl with two pigtails was shot without learning any information about the partisans.
The feat of Zina Portnova speaks of Great love to the Motherland and teaches courage and the desire to ensure that there will never be war again!
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Zina Portnova was born on February 20, 1926 in the city of Leningrad into a working-class family. Belarusian by nationality. Graduated from 7th grade.
At the beginning of June 1941, she came for school holidays to the village of Zui, near the Obol station, Shumilinsky district, Vitebsk region. After the Nazi invasion of the USSR, Zina Portnova found herself in occupied territory. Since 1942, member of the Obol underground organization " Young Avengers", the leader of which was the future Hero Soviet Union E. S. Zenkova. In the underground she was accepted into the Komsomol. She participated in distributing leaflets among the population and sabotage against the invaders. Working in the retraining course canteen German officers, at the direction of the underground, poisoned food (more than a hundred officers died). During the proceedings, wanting to prove to the Germans that she was not involved, she tried the poisoned soup. Miraculously, she survived.
Since August 1943, intelligence officer partisan detachment named after K.E. Voroshilov. In December 1943, returning from a mission to find out the reasons for the failure of the Young Avengers organization, she was captured in the village of Mostishche and identified by a certain Anna Khrapovitskaya. During one of the interrogations at the Gestapo in the village of Goryany (now Polotsk district, Vitebsk region of Belarus), she grabbed the investigator’s pistol from the table, shot him and two other Nazis, tried to escape, and was captured. 
The Germans brutally tortured the girl for more than a month; they wanted her to betray her comrades. But, having taken an oath of allegiance to the Motherland, Zina kept it. She was subjected terrible torture and torment.
On the morning of January 10, 1944, a gray-haired and blind girl was taken out to be executed. She was shot in the prison of the city of Polotsk (according to another version, in the village of Goryany).
In memory of Zina's feat in Russian cities memorials have been erected, because her feat will live forever.
Zina Portnova. Dedication
I want to talk about a hero
What during that evil war
I didn’t solve problems at school,
And the countries defended their rear.
She was only sixteen
And I had to grow up in battle.
Fate ordered her to fight,
Defending your homeland.
Even though I was still just a girl,
I didn’t want to wait on the sidelines.
It rang in my soul:
“There is only one way out - to fight!”
Every day is a risk and courage,
After all, she wormed her way into the enemy’s camp.
Not a step from the intended goal,
Her proud name is partisan.
How terrible this must be,
When you are young and pure in your thoughts,
Go into battle, understanding perfectly:
“A terrible fascist is opposite you”
And when she was finally captured,
The adversary began to torture her.
And then the partisan was killed...
The decision was made: shoot!
And I want to repeat it again,
You lined up with the war heroes,
With gratitude, Zina Portnova,
We remember that your feat is holy!
Zina Portnova was born in Leningrad. After the seventh grade in the summer of 1941, she came on vacation to her grandmother in Belarusian village zuya. There the war found her. Belarus was occupied by the Nazis.
From the first days of the occupation, boys and girls began to act decisively, and the secret organization “Young Avengers” was created. The guys are fighting with fascist occupiers led. They blew up a water pumping station, which delayed the sending of ten fascist trains to the front.
While distracting the enemy, the Avengers destroyed bridges and highways, blew up a local power plant, and burned a factory. Having obtained information about the actions of the Germans, they immediately passed it on to the partisans.
Zina Portnova was assigned more and more difficult tasks. According to one of them, the girl managed to get a job in a German canteen. After working there for a while, she carried out an effective operation - she poisoned the food for German soldiers. More than 100 fascists suffered from her lunch. The Germans began to blame Zina. Wanting to prove her innocence, the girl tried the poisoned soup and only miraculously survived.
In 1943, traitors appeared who revealed secret information and handed our guys over to the Nazis. Many were arrested and shot. Then the command of the partisan detachment instructed Portnova to establish contact with those who survived. The Nazis captured the young partisan when she was returning from a mission. Zina was terribly tortured. But the answer to the enemy was only her silence, contempt and hatred. The interrogations did not stop.
"The Gestapo man approached the window. And Zina, rushing to the table, grabbed the pistol. Obviously catching a rustle, the officer turned around impulsively, but the weapon was already in her hand. She pulled the trigger. For some reason she didn’t hear the shot. She only saw the German, grabbing hands on his chest, fell to the floor, and the second one, sitting at the side table, jumped up from his chair and hastily unfastened the holster of his revolver. She pointed the pistol at him. Again, almost without aiming, she pulled the trigger. Rushing towards the exit, Zina pulled the door towards herself. , jumped out into the next room and from there onto the porch. There she shot at the sentry almost point-blank. Running out of the commandant’s office, Portnova rushed like a whirlwind down the path.
“If only I could run to the River,” the girl thought. But behind them there was the sound of a chase. “Why don’t they shoot?” The surface of the water already seemed very close. And beyond the river the forest turned black. She heard the sound of machine gun fire and something spiky pierced her leg. Zina fell onto the river sand. She still had enough strength to rise slightly and shoot. She saved the last bullet for herself.
When the Germans got very close, she decided it was all over and pointed the gun at her chest and pulled the trigger. But there was no shot: it misfired. The fascist knocked the pistol out of her weakening hands.”
Zina was sent to prison. The Germans brutally tortured the girl for more than a month; they wanted her to betray her comrades. But having taken an oath of allegiance to her homeland, Zina kept it.
On the morning of January 13, 1944, a gray-haired and blind girl was taken out to be executed. She walked, stumbling with her bare feet in the snow.
The girl withstood all the torture. She truly loved our homeland and died for it, firmly believing in our victory. Zinaida Portnova was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
The exploits of Zina Portnova USSR. The feat of intelligence officer Zina Portnova
On January 10, 1944, Zina Portnova (17 years old) was executed. During interrogation, she shot the investigator and 2 other Germans.
Zina Portnova was born on February 20, 1926 in Leningrad into a working-class family. She graduated from 7th grade. In June 1941, a girl came to the village of Zuya, near the Obol station in the Vitebsk region, for the school holidays. After the Nazi invasion of the territory of the Soviet Union, Zina found herself in occupied territory. She did not want to leave with the refugees, so she decided to stay in the city of Obol. In 1942, patriotic youth organized the Obol underground Komsomol organization “Young Avengers”. Zina Portnova immediately became its member, the leader of this organization was E. S. Zenkova, the future Hero of the Soviet Union. Later Zina joined her committee. She was accepted into the Komsomol while underground. The “Young Avengers” distributed and posted anti-fascist leaflets, and also obtained money for Soviet partisans action information German troops. With the help of this organization, it was possible to organize a number of sabotages on railway. The water pump was blown up, which delayed the sending of dozens of trains of German soldiers to the front. The underground blew up a local power plant, disabled a couple of trucks, and burned a flax factory. Zina Portnova managed to get a job in a canteen for German personnel. After working there for a while, she carried out a cruel, but very effective operation - she poisoned the food. More than 100 Germans were injured. In response to this, the Nazis unleashed a wave of mass terror on the city. During the proceedings, Zina, wanting to convey to the Germans that she was not involved, tried the poisoned soup herself. Miraculously she survived. Portnova, in order to avoid arrest, had to go to the partisans. In August 1943, Zina became a scout for a partisan detachment. The girl takes part in the bombing of trains. The Obol underground was practically destroyed in 1943. With the help of provocateurs, the Gestapo collected all necessary information, and also carried out mass arrests. The command of the partisan detachment ordered Portnova to establish contact with the survivors. She managed to establish contact, but did not report this to the detachment. Having found out the reasons for the failure of the Young Avengers organization and already returning back, in the village of Mostishche Zina was identified by a certain Anna Khrapovitskaya, who immediately informed the police. The police detained the girl and transported her to Obol. There the Gestapo was closely involved with her, since she was listed as a suspect in sabotage in the canteen. During interrogation by the Gestapo, Zina grabbed the investigator's pistol and instantly shot him. Two Nazis came running to these shots, whom the girl also shot. The girl ran out of the building and rushed to the river in the hope of swimming to safety, but did not have time to reach the water. The Germans wounded Zina and captured her. She was sent to Vitebsk prison. The Germans had no doubts about the girl’s involvement in the underground, so they did not interrogate her, but simply methodically tortured her. The torture lasted more than a month, but Zina did not give up the names of other underground fighters. On January 13, 1944, she was shot in prison. On July 1, 1958, Zina Portnova was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Larisa Mikheenko - short biography
The future partisan was born on November 4, 1929 in Lakhta, a suburb of Leningrad, into a working-class family. Studied at Leningrad school No. 106. When did it start Soviet-Finnish war, her father Dorofey Ilyich, who worked as a mechanic at the Krasnaya Zarya plant, was mobilized and did not return from the front. On Sunday, June 22, when the battles of the Great Patriotic War had already begun, she and her grandmother went to summer holidays to visit his uncle in the village of Pechenevo, Pustoshkinsky district, Kalinin region (today it is the Pskov region). Two months later, Wehrmacht troops entered the village, and her uncle became the village mayor. Since there was no way to return to besieged Leningrad, Larisa and her grandmother remained to live in Pechenevo.
In the spring of 1943, one of Larina’s friends, Raisa, turned sixteen years old, and she received a summons to appear at the assembly point to be sent to work in Germany. To avoid this fate, Raisa, Larisa Mikheenko and another girl, Frosya, went into the forest to join the partisans. Thus began Larisa’s combat career in the 6th Kalinin Brigade under the command of Major Ryndin. At first they were accepted reluctantly, because the leadership would like to see trained men in their squad, not teenage girls, but soon they began to trust them combat missions. Because Larisa, like her fighting friends, due to her age, could, without arousing suspicion among the Germans, get close to military targets; she served in the detachment as a reconnaissance officer. Thanks to the data she obtained in the village of Orekhovo, the partisans, knowing the location of the firing points and the rotation time of the sentries, were able to steal livestock from the Germans, requisitioned from the population for the needs of the Wehrmacht. In the village of Chernetsovo, having hired a nanny to care for a small child, Larisa collected detailed information about the German garrison stationed there, and a few days later the partisans raided the village. Also, in case of large crowds of people during church holidays, she distributed Soviet propaganda leaflets.
Utah Bondarovskaya. Bondarovskaya, Utah
Utah Bondarovskaya (Bondarovskaya Iya V.) (January 6, 1928 (1928-01-06), village of Zalazy, Leningrad region- February 28, 1944, Roostoya farm, Estonia) - pioneer hero, partisan of the 6th Leningrad Partisan Brigade.
In the summer of 1941, Yuta Bondarovskaya came from Leningrad to a village near Pskov. Here she found the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Utah began to help the partisans: she was a messenger, then a scout. Dressed as a beggar boy, she collected information from the villages that the partisans needed.
Utah died in a battle near the Estonian farm of Roostoya.
She was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, and the medal “Partisan of the Patriotic War,” 1st degree.
Zina Portnova truth and fiction. Hero or traitor?
Let's start in order. The first pioneer hero, on whose example hundreds of Soviet children were brought up long before the Great Patriotic War, was Pavlik Morozov. Back in the years of glasnost, when it became open information about Stalin’s policy of repression and mass dispossession, the story of this boy was immediately remembered and analyzed taking into account new facts. And then they quickly pushed it “to the margins of history”; this truth was too shameful. Yes, informing on your father is a terrifying fact, but if dear person was an enemy, such an act is at least somehow justified. But, when it became clear that Timofey Morozov was not an enemy, but in fact a hero in the eyes of the public, saving fellow villagers from the ax of unjust dispossession, the more or less justifiable motive disappeared, and the accents changed polarity. This raises a lot of questions. Suppose a boy, imbued with the ideas of a new ideology, decides to show consciousness, not caring about family ties and general condemnation. For a small village, which was Gerasimovka, the act was not typical for a teenager, but - taking into account new trends - it was quite acceptable. However, were the elder Morozovs really so angry with the boy that they decided to punish him for betrayal following the example of Taras Bulba, killing him as an unwanted witness, and younger brother Pavla - Fedya? At the same time, knowing full well that such a step would immediately attract the attention of the security officers and put the whole family under attack?
Valya Kotik is one of the teenage heroes who fought during the Great Patriotic War against German occupiers. Valentin glorified his name as courageous defender their land and faithful son Motherland.
Valya Kotik biography briefly
Valentin came from a simple background peasant family. He was born in the Khmelnitsky region of Ukraine. When the Germans occupied Ukrainian soil in 1941, Valya was a simple schoolboy. At that time the boy was eleven years old.
The young pioneer immediately took an enthusiastic part in helping Soviet front. Together with his classmates, Valya collected ammunition: grenades, rifles, pistols that remained on the battlefields and transported all these weapons to the partisans.
The children hid weapons in haystacks and transported them quite freely, because it did not occur to the Germans that children were also assistants to the partisans.
In 1942, Valya was accepted into the number of intelligence officers of the underground Soviet organization, the following year, 1943, the boy became a full member of the partisan detachment. Valentin Kotik went through a long and difficult two and a half years of war; he died from mortal wounds received in battle in February 1944.
Description of the exploits of Valentin Kotik
The hero Valentin Kotik was immediately remembered by his comrades for his courage and ingenuity. The boy accomplished his most famous feat in the fall of 1943: he discovered a secret radio line of the Germans, which they carefully concealed (later the partisans destroyed this line, leaving the Nazis without communication). Valentin took part in many partisan operations: he was a good demolitionist, signalman and fighter. He went on reconnaissance missions, and once in 1943 he saved the entire detachment.
It happened this way: Valentin was sent on reconnaissance, he noticed in time the Germans who had begun a punitive operation, shot one of the senior commanders of this operation and made a noise, thereby warning his comrades of the danger that threatened them. The story of the death of Valentin Kotik has two main versions. According to the first of them, he received mortal wound in battle and died the next day. According to the second, the slightly wounded Valentin died during German shelling of evacuees. Soviet soldiers. The young hero was buried in the city of Shepetivka.
Posthumous fame
After the war, the name Valentin Kotik became a household name. The boy was awarded with orders and partisan medals. And in 1958 he was awarded the title of Hero. Pioneer detachments, streets, parks and public gardens were named after Vali Kotik. Monuments were erected to him throughout the Soviet Union. The most famous of all the monuments is the sculptural monument erected in 1960 in the center of Moscow.
Another monument is still located in the city of Simferopol on the Alley of Heroes, where there are sculptures of adults and children who heroically defended their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War. Valentin's feat was glorified in the feature film about the war "Eaglet", in which main character- the courageous young pioneer blew himself up with a grenade so as not to be captured by the Nazis.
They were ordinary boys and girls. But they were born at an extraordinary time. In a tragic time. And it made them become heroes. Children-Heroes... In memory of them... One of the names that one cannot help but remember is Zina Portnova. The girl who became posthumously Hero of the Soviet Union...
Zinaida Martynovna Portnova (Zina Portnova)
The young partisan is a member of the underground Komsomol and youth organization “Young Avengers”; scout of the partisan detachment named after K.E. Voroshilov in temporarily occupied territory Byelorussian SSR. Born in the city of Leningrad (since 1965 a hero city, now St. Petersburg) in a working-class family. Belarusian by nationality. Member of the Komsomol since 1943. Graduated from 7th grade.
During the Great Patriotic War, being in the summer school holidays in the village of Zuya near the Obol station (now within the urban village of Obol, Shumilinsky district) of the Vitebsk region of Belarus, Zina Portnova found herself in temporarily occupied territory. In 1942, the young patriot joined the Obolsk underground Komsomol youth organization “Young Avengers” (leader - Hero of the Soviet Union E.S. Zenkova), and actively participated in distributing leaflets among the population and sabotage against the Nazi invaders.
Since August 1943, Komsomol member Zina Portnova has been a scout in the partisan detachment named after K.E. Voroshilov. In December 1943, she received the task of identifying the reasons for the failure of the Young Avengers organization and establishing contacts with the underground. Upon returning to the detachment, Zina was arrested. During the interrogation, the brave girl grabbed the fascist investigator’s pistol from the table, shot him and two other Nazis, tried to escape, but was captured and brutally tortured in January 1944 in the village of Goryany, now the Shumilinsky district of the Vitebsk region of Belarus.
For heroism in the fight against German fascist invaders By Decree of the Presidium Supreme Council USSR on July 1, 1958, Zinaida Martynovna Portnova was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Awarded the Order of Lenin. In 1969, in the village of Zuya, on the house where Zina Portnova lived from 1941 to 1943, a Memorial plaque. On the Vitebsk - Polotsk highway, the Museum of Komsomol Glory and a school are named after her. Many pioneer squads and detachments in schools in Belarus bore the name of the young Heroine. A school in the urban village of Obol, a street in the hero city of Leningrad, and a motor ship are named after Zina Portnova. In the capital of Belarus - the hero city of Minsk, a bust of Zina Portnova was erected, and near the village of Obol there is an obelisk.
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The Gestapo man approached the window. And Zina, rushing to the table, grabbed the pistol. Apparently catching the rustle, the officer turned around impulsively, but the gun was already in her hand. She pulled the trigger. For some reason I didn’t hear the shot. I just saw how the Gestapo man, clutching his chest with his hands, fell to the floor, and the second one, sitting at the side table, jumped up from his chair and, with shaking hands, hastily unfastened the holster of his revolver. She pointed the pistol at this Gestapo man and again, almost without aiming, pulled the trigger.
Rushing to the exit, Zina pulled the door open, jumped out into the next room and from there through the half-open door of the corridor onto the porch. There she shot at the sentry almost point-blank. Running out of the commandant's office building, Zina rushed like a whirlwind down the path to the river.
"Just to run to the river."
And from behind you could already hear the sound of a chase...
"Why don't they shoot?"
Very close by, the lead-gray surface of the water rippled from the wind. Across the river the forest turned black.
She heard the sound of machine gun fire and something spiky pierced her leg. Zina fell on the river sand. She still had enough strength to rise slightly and shoot... She saved the last bullet for herself.
When they got very close, she decided it was all over and pointed the gun at her chest. She pulled the trigger. But there was no shot: it misfired. The fascist knocked the pistol out of her weakening hands.
The case of the Obol underground partisan was now handled by Gestapo men of a higher rank than in Goryany. Zina was immediately transported to Polotsk. She was interrogated by the most sophisticated brutal torture executioners. For more than a month, Zina was beaten, needles were driven under her nails, and she was burned with a hot iron. After the torture, as soon as she came to her senses a little, she was again brought in for interrogation. They were interrogated, as a rule, at night. They promised to save her life if only the young partisan confessed everything and named the names of all the underground fighters and partisans known to her. And again the Gestapo men were surprised by the unshakable firmness of this stubborn girl, who in their protocols was called a “Soviet bandit.”
Zina, exhausted by torture, refused to answer questions, hoping that they would kill her faster. Death now seemed to her the easiest way out of torture. Once, in the prison yard, prisoners saw how a completely gray-haired girl, when she was being led to another interrogation and torture, threw herself under the wheels of a passing truck. But the car was stopped, the gray-haired girl was pulled out from under the wheels and again taken for interrogation.
At the beginning of January, it became known in the Polotsk prison that the young partisan was sentenced to death. She knew that she would be shot in the morning.
Once again transferred to solitary confinement, Zina spent her last night in semi-oblivion. She can't see anything anymore. Her eyes are gouged out... The fascist monsters cut off her ears... Her arms are twisted, her fingers are crushed... Will there ever be an end to her torment!.. Tomorrow everything must end. And yet these executioners got nothing from her. She swore an oath of allegiance to the Motherland and kept it. She swore to take merciless revenge on the enemy for the grief he brought to the Soviet people. And she took revenge as best she could.
The thought of her sister again and again made her heart flutter. “Dear Galochka! You are left alone... Remember me if you remain alive... Mommy, father, remember your Zina.” Tears, mixing with blood, flowed from the mutilated eyes - Zina could still cry...
The morning came, frosty and sunny... Those sentenced to death, there were six of them, were taken to the prison yard. One of her comrades grabbed Zina’s arms and helped her walk. Old men, women and children had been crowding around the prison wall, surrounded by three rows of barbed wire, since early morning. Some brought a package to the prisoners, others expected that among the prisoners who were taken to work, they would be able to see their loved ones. Among these people stood a boy in worn-out felt boots and a quilted jacket torn to shreds. He didn't have any transmission. He himself had only been released from this prison the day before. He was detained during a raid while making his way from the partisan zone to the front line. They put him in prison because he had no documents on him.
A cart with a barrel drove along a street covered with white snowdrifts - they brought water to the prison.
A few minutes later the gates opened again, and machine gunners escorted six people out. Among them, in a gray-haired and blind girl, the boy hardly recognized his sister... She walked, stumbling with her bare blackened feet in the snow. Some black-moustached man supported her by the shoulders.
"Zina!" - Lenka wanted to shout. But his voice was interrupted.
Zina, along with other people sentenced to death, was shot on the morning of January 10, 1944 near the prison, on the square...
Epilogue
About the exploits of the young Avengers Soviet people I found out fifteen years later, when in July 1958 the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was published. For the exploits and courage shown during the Great Patriotic War, large group members of the Obol underground Komsomol organization "Young Avengers" were awarded orders of the Soviet Union. And on the chest of the head of the organization, Efrosinya Savelyevna Zenkova, sparkled Golden Star Hero of the Soviet Union.
This high award The youngest underground worker, the brave daughter of Leningrad, the legendary Romashka, Zina Portnova, was also awarded the Motherland posthumously...
Near Obol, near the highway, among green young trees and flowers, there is a tall granite monument. The names of the dead young avengers are carved on it in gold letters:
Zinaida Portnova
Nina Azolina
Maria Dementieva
Evgeniy Ezovitov
Vladimir Ezovitov
Maria Luzgina
Nikolay Alekseev
Nadezhda Dementieva
Nina Davydova
Fedor Slyshenkov
Valentina Shashkova
Zoya Sofonchik
Dmitry Khrebtenko
Maria Khrebtenko
In Leningrad, on a quiet Baltiyskaya street, the house in which the legendary Romashka lived has been preserved. Nearby is the school where she studied. A little further away, among the new buildings, a wide street named after Zina Portnova, on which there is a marble wall with her bas-relief.
Years go by, but the memory of young heroes is forever alive.
At the turn of the 1980s-1990s, during the period of debunking Soviet heroes, for each of those who were recognized and glorified Soviet power, were looking for incriminating evidence.
Find anything compromising the underground woman Zina Portnova, it turned out to be difficult. And therefore the main complaint against her was that she, glorified among the “pioneer heroes,” was not a pioneer!
This is actually true. Zina died as a Komsomol member. But she began her short but fierce struggle against fascism as a pioneer.
About her, like about many young heroes war, one might say a banal phrase - her pre-war childhood was the most ordinary.
Zina was born in Leningrad, into a working-class family, on February 20, 1926. I studied at school, studied in a circle and didn’t think about exploits.
At the beginning of June 1941, few people in Leningrad thought about the war. And therefore, the parents calmly sent Zina and her younger sister Galya to their grandmother in Belarus for the summer.
In the village of Zui, in the Vitebsk region, the rest did not last long. The Nazis' advance was rapid, and very soon the threat of occupation loomed over the village where Zina and her sister lived.
The grandmother gathered her granddaughters for the journey and sent them along with the refugees. However, the Nazis cut the road, and there was no chance of returning to Leningrad. This is how 15-year-old Zina Portnova ended up under occupation.
"Young Avengers"
Resistance to the Nazis on the territory of Belarus was especially fierce. From the first days of the war, partisan detachments and underground groups were created here.
A youth group was created in the Shumilinsky district of the Vitebsk region underground organization"Young Avengers", the story of which is similar to the story of the legendary "Young Guard". The leader of the Young Avengers was Fruza (Efrosinya) Zenkova, which rallied local youth around themselves, ready to resist the fascists.
Fruza had connections with “adult” underground fighters and with a local partisan detachment. The Young Avengers coordinated their actions with the partisans.
Fruza Zenkova, the leader of the Komsomol resistance, was 17 years old at the beginning of the war. Zina Portnova, who became one of the most active participants in the Young Avengers, is 15.
What could these children do against the Nazis?
They started with posting leaflets and minor sabotage like damaging the property of the Nazis. The further it went, the more serious the shares became. The blowing up of a power plant, the burning of factories, the burning of wagons with flax at the station intended for shipment to Germany - in total, the Young Avengers were responsible for more than 20 successful acts of sabotage.
Zina Portnova, an active member of the group, who was a pioneer at the beginning of the war, joined the Komsomol underground.
Sabotage in the dining room
Hitler's counterintelligence followed the trail of the underground. The Nazis managed to introduce a provocateur into their ranks, who would betray the majority of the organization’s members.
But that will happen later. Before this, Zina Portnova will carry out one of the largest sabotage acts in the history of the Young Avengers. A girl who worked as a dishwasher in the canteen of a retraining course for German officers poisoned the food prepared for lunch. As a result of sabotage, about a hundred Nazis died.
Enraged Nazis arrested the entire canteen staff. Zina escaped arrest that day by accident. When the first signs of poisoning appeared, the Nazis burst into the dining room and came across Portnova. They forced a plate into her hands and forced her to eat the poisoned soup. Zina understood that if she refused, she would give herself away. Maintaining amazing self-control, she ate several spoons, after which the Germans, releasing her, were distracted by other kitchen workers. The Nazis decided that the dishwasher knew nothing about the poisoning.
Zina was saved from death by her strong body and grandmother, who managed to soften the effect of the poison with folk remedies.
Defeat of the underground
Since the summer of 1943, Zina Portnova was a fighter in the Voroshilov partisan detachment, participating in many operations against the Nazis.
On August 26, 1943, German counterintelligence carried out mass arrests of members of the Young Avengers organization. By luck, only a few activists and the leader of the Avengers, Fruza Zenkova, did not fall into the hands of the Nazis.
Torture and interrogation of underground fighters continued for three months. On October 5 and 6, all of them, more than 30 boys and girls, were shot.
When it became known in the partisan detachment about the defeat of the youth underground, Zina Portnova was instructed to try to restore contact with those who escaped arrest and find out about the reasons for the failure.
However, during this task, Zina herself was identified and detained as a member of the underground.
The provocateur did a good job - the Nazis knew almost everything about her. And about her parents in Leningrad, and about her role in the Young Avengers organization. The Germans, however, did not know that it was she who poisoned the German officers. Therefore, she was offered a deal - life in exchange for information about the whereabouts of Fruza Zenkova and the base of the partisan detachment.
But the carrot and stick method did not work. It was impossible to buy Zina or intimidate her.
Step into immortality
During one of the interrogations, a Nazi officer became distracted, and Zina reacted instantly, grabbing a pistol lying on the table. She shot the Nazi, jumped out of the office and began to run. She managed to shoot two more Germans, but was unable to escape - Zina was shot in the legs.
After that, the Nazis were driven only by rage. She was no longer tortured for information, but in order to give her the most terrible torture possible, to make the girl scream and beg for mercy.
Zina endured everything steadfastly, and this steadfastness infuriated the executioners even more.
During the last interrogation in the Gestapo prison in the city of Polotsk, the Nazis gouged out her eyes.
Early in the morning in January 1944, the crippled but not broken Zina was shot.
Her grandmother died under German bombs during a large-scale punitive operation Nazis. Little sister Galya was miraculously saved, being able to be taken by plane to the mainland.
The truth about the fate of Zina and other underground fighters became known much later, when Belarus was completely liberated from the Nazis.
By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated July 1, 1958, Zinaida Martynovna Portnova was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for her heroism in the fight against the Nazi invaders.