Sinaida Martynovna Portnowa

A Soviet envelope depicting Portnova (1978)

Sinaida (Sina) Martynovna Portnova ( Russian: Зинаида Мартыновна Портнова , scientific transliteration Zinaida Martynovna Portnova ; * February 20, 1926 in Leningrad ; † January 10, 1944 in Polotsk ) was a Soviet partisan in the war , the German-Soviet underground Received honorary title Heroine of the Soviet Union .

Sinaida Portnowa was born in Leningrad into a working-class family that originally came from Belarus . When the war broke out in June 1941, she had school holidays and was with her grandparents in Obol near Vitebsk , which quickly came under the German occupation. She radicalized against the occupiers after her grandmother was beaten up when her cattle were confiscated. In 1942 she joined the underground organization The Young Avengers ( Юные мстители ) by Efrossinja Senkova . In the underground she was taken into the Komsomol . The young avengers had contacts with the Voroshilov Partisan Association.

Sinaida Portnowa initially distributed leaflets calling for resistance to the occupiers. She later carried out attacks on the occupation forces. She took a job as a dishwasher in the canteen of a military school where German officers were trained. On behalf of the underground, she poisoned the soup in the canteen in the summer of 1943, which subsequently resulted in deaths of over 100 officers. Then she fled to the partisans.

In December 1943, she was given the task of clarifying the fate of the Young Avengers who fell into the hands of the occupiers through treason. She was caught by the Nazis in the village of Mostischtsche . During one of the interrogations by the Gestapo in the village of Gorjany , she snatched an investigator's pistol lying on the table, shot him and two soldiers, but was then caught again. Portnova was then tortured for over a month and was shot dead on January 10, 1944 in Polotsk prison.

Sinaida Portnowa was given the title Heroine of the Soviet Union in 1958. A street in Saint Petersburg and a street and school in Obol, where there is also a Portnowa Museum, are named after them. A ship belonging to the Far Eastern Shipping Company bore her name between 1968 and 2000.

Web links

Commons : Zinaida Portnova  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Zinaida Portnova: The Teenage Partisan Who Became A Soviet Hero During World War II
• Thesis 12 Tragic and Triumphant Teenagers Who Fought in WWII
• Ufarkin, Nikolai: Портнова Зинаида Мартыновна . warheroes.ru. Retrieved September 2, 2011.
• Galinsky, Anna: Герой Советского Союза: ПОРТНОВА ЗИНАИДА МАРТЫНОВНА . Belarusian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War. Retrieved September 2, 2011 ..
• Вениамин Лыков: «Мама, мы в партизанском отряде. Бьём немецко-фашистских оккупантов » . December 28, 2015. Accessed January 13, 2020.

literature

• Henry Skaida : Heroines of the Soviet Union 1941-45 . Osprey, Oxford 2003, ISBN 978-1-84176-598-3 .