What Really did the Germans with Captured Female Soviet soldiers? – Part 7

Women contributed in large numbers to the Soviet partisan movement, mainly because they saw it as an opportunity to finally fight for their country after the recruitment offices of the Red Army usually turned them down.

In fact, many women were among the most famous and heroic partisans, especially very young ones.

In October 1941, an 18-year-old high school student from Moscow named Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya volunteered for a partisan unit.

Together with other partisans, Kosmodemyanskaya marched southwest toward Naro Fomin, crossing the front line into territory occupied by the Germans.

They mined roads and cut communication lines.

On November 27th, 1941, Kosmodemyanskaya received an assignment to burn the village of Peto, where a German cavalry regiment was stationed.

Together with fellow partisans Boris Kof and Vasili Kbov, she set fire to three houses in the village.

But this was not enough, and she was caught alone trying to burn a fourth house.

After being arrested, Kosmodemyanskaya was stripped, beaten, interrogated, and savagely tortured with 200 lashes.

Her body was also burnt in several places, but she refused to give any information.

The following morning, she was marched to the center of the village with a board around her neck bearing the inscription “house burner.

” At the central square, she was hanged and left for everyone to see.

Kosmodemyanskaya was the first woman to become Hero of the Soviet Union during the war on February 16th, 1942.

Young as she might have been, Kosmodemyanskaya was not the youngest woman to become Hero of the Soviet Union.

This honor belongs to another brave resistance fighter, Zenida Portnova.

In 1942, at the age of 16, Portnova joined the Belarusian resistance movement, becoming a member of the local underground organization named Young Avengers.

She began by distributing Soviet propaganda leaflets in German-occupied Belarus, collecting and hiding weapons for Soviet soldiers, and reporting on German troop movements.

After learning how to use weapons and explosives from the older members of the group, Portnova participated in sabotage actions at a gas pump, a local power plant, and a brick factory.

It was later estimated that these acts may have killed upwards of 100 German soldiers.

In 1943, Portnova became employed as a kitchen aid in Obal.

In August, she poisoned the food meant for the Nazi garrison stationed there.

She was interrogated by a Gestapo officer in the village of Gorani.

The officer, convinced that she was only a harmless girl, left his guard down.

Portnova took the investigator’s pistol off the table, then shot and killed him.

When two German soldiers entered after hearing the gunshots, she shot them as well.

She then attempted to escape the compound and ran into the woods, where she was caught near the banks of a river.

After being recaptured, Portnova was tortured.

She was later driven into the forest and executed.

She was not 18 at the time.