Her soul did not flinch once.Not when executed or when she was dying.Only in the last year, when after decades of searching went on her trail, she felt fear.Fear not for the soul - for his life.In his second life, bought at a terrible price.
In the entire post-war history of the Soviet Union was sentenced to death only woman.Woman executioner sobstvenoruchno shot more than 1,500 people.
Tonka-machine-gunner, as it was called then, worked in the occupied Soviet territory by Hitler's troops from 41 th to 43 rd years, resulting in the mass execution of death sentences fascist partisan families.
distorting the bolt gun, she did not think about those shooting - children, women, old people - it was just a job for her."What nonsense, then what remorse. What do those who kill, come at night into a nightmare. I still have not had a no" - she said his investigators during interrogation, when it still calculated and detained - through35 years after its last execution.
criminal case Bryansk karatelnitsy Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg still rests in the bosom spetskhran FSB.Access to it is strictly forbidden, and this is understandable, because there is nothing to be proud of: in no other country in the world not yet born woman who killed himself and a half thousand people.
Thirty-three years after winning this woman named Antonina Makarovna Ginsburg.She was Frontovichka, veteran labor respected and revered in his town.Her family had all put on the status of benefits: an apartment, a circular insignia dates and sausage in scarce food rations.Her husband was also a participant in the war, with orders and medals.Two adult daughters were proud of their mother.
On equaled her, took off her example has to such a heroic destiny: the war striding simple nurse from Moscow to Konigsberg.School teachers were invited to speak at the Antonin Makarovna line, tell the younger generation, that every human life is always a place feat.And the most important thing in war - is not afraid to look death in the face.And who, if not Makarovna Antonina knew it best ...
She was arrested in the summer of 1978, in the Belarusian town of Lepel.It is an ordinary woman in a raincoat with a sand-colored shopping bag in hand walking down the street when a car stopped next, she jumped out of inconspicuous men in civilian clothes with the words: "You need to urgently come with us!"They surrounded her, making it impossible to escape.
"Can you guess what brought you here?"- I asked an investigator Bryansk KGB when it led to the first interrogation."Failed some" - the woman smiled in response.
"You do not Antonina Makarovna Ginsburg. You - Antonina Makarova, better known as Tonka-Muscovite or Tonka-machine-gunner. You - karatelnitsa worked for the Germans, mass executions. On your atrocities in the village of Elbow, that under the Bryansk, sothen, is legendary. We were looking for you for more than thirty years - is now time to answer for what he did. The statute of limitations are not your crimes. "
"So no wonder the last year on the heart became anxious, as if feeling that there will be, - she said. - How long ago it was. As if not to me at all. Almost all life is gone. Well, burn ..."
From the interrogation protocol Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, June 78 of the year:
"All those sentenced to death were the same to me. I only have their number. Usually, I was ordered to shoot a group of 27 people - many guerrillas holds a camera. Ishot about 500 meters from the prison at some of the pit. The prisoners were put chain facing the pit. In place of the execution of one of the men roll out my gun. According to team boss, I knelt down and fired on people as long as the dead are notAll fell ... "
" in the dome of the nettles "- jargon Tony is meant to lead to the execution.She herself died three times.First time in the fall of the 41st, in the terrible "Vyazma pot", young girl-saninstruktorshey.Hitler's troops were advancing on Moscow in Operation "Typhoon".Soviet generals threw their armies to death, and it is not considered a crime - have another war morality.More than a million Soviet boys and girls in only six days were lost in that Vyazemskaya grinder, five hundred thousand were captured.Death of ordinary soldiers at the moment nothing is decided and not to approach victory, it was just pointless.As well as helping nurses dead ...
19-year-old nurse Tonya Makarova, woke up after the fight in the woods.The air smelled of burned flesh.Nearby lay an unknown soldier."Hey, you're still intact? My name is Nicholas Fedchuk.""And I Tonya" - she did not feel anything, did not hear, did not know if her soul concussion, and there was one human shell, and inside - the void.Reached out to him, trembling: "Ma-a-amochka cold it is!""Oh, beautiful, do not cry. We will be chosen together," - said Nikolai and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse.
Three months before the first snow, together they wandered through the thicket, getting out of the environment, not knowing the direction of movement or their ultimate purpose or where his or where enemies.Starving, breaking double steal loaves of bread.During the day shied away from military convoys, and at night warmed to each other.Tonya both footcloths washed in icy water, preparing simple lunch.Did she love Nicholas?Rather, kicked, burns with a hot iron, fear and cold at the inside.
"I almost Muscovite - proudly lied Tonya Nicholas. - In our family a lot of kids. And we all Parfenov. I - older, like Gorky, sooner came into the world. This surly grew taciturn. I came once in schoolvillage, in the first class, and the name of his forgotten. The teacher asks, "What's your name, little girl?" And I know that Parfyonov, just say I'm afraid. The children from the back of the desk shouting: "Long Makarov she her father Makar."So I have one in all the documents and recorded. After school in Moscow left, then the war began. I was in the nurse called. And I have a dream the other was - I wanted to machine gun scribbling as Anka-machine-gunner of the "Chapaev". However, Ilike her? That's when our get out, let's ask for a machine gun ... "
January 42nd, dirty and ragged, with Nicholas Tonya came, finally, to the village of Red Well.And then they had to leave for ever."You know, my native village nearby. I go there now, I have a wife and children - said her goodbye to Nicholas. - I could not have you before to admit you really forgive me. Thank you for your company. Then she somehow choose.""Do not leave me, Kolya," - pleaded Tonya, hanging on it.But Nicholas shook her off as the ash from his cigarette and left.
few days Tonya begged alms for the huts, hristaradnichala, we ask at the post.Compassionate mistress allowed her first, but after a few days, always denied by the orphanage, explaining that there is nothing to himself."It hurts to look at it bad, - she said. - By adhering to our peasants, who are not at the front, climbing with them in the attic, he asks her to warm up."
It is possible that at the time Tonya really went mad.Perhaps it dobilo betrayal of Nicholas, or simply run out of power - either way, it were only physical needs: like to eat, drink, wash with soap and water in a hot bath and go to bed with someone else, so as not to be alone in the cold darkness.She did not want to be a heroine, she just wanted to survive.At any cost.
In that village, where Tonia stood at the beginning, there were no policemen.Almost all its inhabitants went to the guerrillas.In the neighboring village, on the contrary, we have registered some punitive.The front line was here in the middle of the outskirts.Once she wandered on the outskirts, half-mad, lost, not knowing where, how and with whom she would spend the night.She was stopped by people in uniform and asked in Russian: "Who is this?""I Antonina Makarova. From Moscow", - said the girl.
It led to the administration of the village of Elbow.The policemen told her compliments, then turns "loved" it.Then she was given a drink a glass of vodka, and then put it in the hands of a machine gun.As she dreamed of - to disperse the continuous stitching machine gun emptiness inside.By living people.
"Makarova-Ginzburg told during interrogation that the first time she was taken to the execution of partisans completely drunk, she did not know what to do, - says the investigator in her case Leonid Savoskin. - But the pay is good - 30 marks, and offered cooperation on a permanentbasis. In fact none of the Russian policemen did not want Mara, they prefer that the execution of partisans and their families made by women. homeless and lonely Antonina gave a cot in a room at a local horse farm where you can spend the night and keep the gun. In the morning she voluntarily went to work".
interrogation of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, June 78 of the year:
"I did not know those were shot. They did not know me. Therefore, I feel ashamed in front of them was not. Sometimes you shoot, you approach closer, and someoneeven twitch. Then again shot in the head, that man did not suffer. Sometimes several prisoners on his chest was suspended a piece of plywood with the inscription "partisans." Some of death something to sing. After the execution, I was cleaning the gun in the guard room or in the courtyard.Patrons were in abundance ... "
former landlady of the Red Well Tony, one of those that had once kicked her out of his house, he came to the village of Elbow salt.She was detained policemen and taken to the local jail, attributing connection with the guerrillas."I'm not a partisan. Ask your Tonka though machine-gunner" - frightened woman.Tonya looked at it carefully and grunted: "Come on, I'll give you the salt."
in a tiny room where she lived Antonina, reigned order.It was a machine gun, shining machine oil.Near a neat pile on the chair was folded clothes: fancy dresses, skirts, white blouses with holes in the back of the rebound.And the washing trough on the floor.
"If I do things at the condemned like them, so I take then with the dead, what good to disappear - explained Tonia. - Once a teacher were shot, so I was her blouse like, pink, silk, but it was too covered in blood smeared, afraidthat does not wash out - had to leave her in the grave. It's a pity ... So how much salt you need? "
"Nothing from you I do not need - backed up to the door of the woman. - Fear God, Tonya, he's there, he sees everything - so much blood on you, do not wash out!""Well, if you're brave, what do you help, then I asked, when you are in jail were? - Screamed Antonina go. - That was dying to is a hero! So when the skin is necessary to save, then Tonkina friendship is good?".
the evening Antonina dress up and is sent to the German club to the dance.Other girls, moonlighting Germans prostitutes with her friends.Tonya putting on airs, bragging that she Muscovite.With roommate, typist village chief, confided she did not, and that it feared for some spoiled look for early and cut through the crease on his forehead as if Tonya thinks too much.
At dances Tonya gets drunk, and change partners as gloves, he laughed, clinked glasses, cigarette shot at officers.And I do not think about the next 27, and that she was to be executed in the morning.It is terrible to kill only the first, second, and then, when the bill goes to the hundreds, it becomes a chore.
Before dawn, when after torture fell silent groans sentenced to death guerrillas Tonya quietly get out of his bed and spend hours wandering through the former stables, hastily converted into a prison, peering into the faces of those she zpredstoyalo kill.
interrogation of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, June 78 of the year:
"It seemed to me that the war will write everything. I was just doing her job, for which I paid. I had to shoot not only the guerrillas, but also members of their families, women, teenagers. This is what I was trying not to think. Although the circumstances of the execution of a recall - before being shot the guy, who was sentenced to death, called out to me: "Do not see you, good-bye, my sister! .."
She amazingly lucky. In the summer 43rd,when they started fighting for the liberation of Bryansk, Tony and several local prostitutes revealed venereal disease. The Germans ordered them to be treated by sending them to the hospital in a distant rear. When the village of Elbow Soviet troops entered, sending to the gallows traitors and former policemen from crimesTonka-machine-gunner remained alone terrible legend.
From material things - a hastily sprinkled bones in mass graves on the ring box, where, according to the most conservative estimates, the remains of a thousand people.It was possible to restore the passport data, only about two hundred people were shot Tonya.The death of these people, and was the basis of the charges in absentia Antonina Makarova, born in 1921, allegedly a resident of Moscow.More about it knew nothing ...
"search case Antonina Makarova our staff conducted more than thirty years, passing it to each other in succession, - told the" MK "KGB Major Pyotr Golovachyov held in the 70s tracing AntoninaMakarova. - From time to time it gets to the archive, and then, when we were caught and interrogated another traitor, it floats to the surface again. I could not as Tonka disappear without a trace ?! It is now possible to accuse the authorities of incompetence and ignorance. But the work was jewelry.During the postwar years, the KGB secretly and carefully checked all the women of the Soviet Union, that name and surname and the approach of age - such Tonek Makarov found in the Soviet Union about 250 people. But - it is useless. This Tonka-machine-gunner in the water sank... "
" You do not scold too Tonka - asked Golovachyov. - You know, I feel sorry for her. It's a war, damn, guilty, she broke her ... She had no choice - she could remain a man herselfthen I would have been among those shot.But I prefer to live, becoming the executioner.But it was in the 41 th year only 20 years old ".
But just forget about it was not." It's too terrible were her crimes - says Golovachyov.- It's just in my head did not fit, how many lives it has claimed.A few people managed to escape, they were the main witnesses in the case.And so, when we questioned them, they said that Tonka still comes to him in dreams.Young, with a machine gun, looking intently - and looks away.They were convinced that the girl is alive, the executioner, and asked to be sure to find it in order to stop these nightmares.We knew that she could get married for a long time and change the passport, so thoroughly studied the way of life of all its possible relatives by the name Makarov ... "
However, none of the investigators had no idea what to start looking for Antonina had not Makarov, and withParfenov. Yes, it is a random error village teacher Tony in first class, recorded her first name as a surname, and allowed the "machine-gunner" escape retribution for so many years. Her real home, of course, never got to the interests of the investigation in this case.
But in the 76th year of the Moscow official surnamed Parfenov was going overseas. Filling out the form on the passport, he honestly enumerated a list of the names of their siblings, the family was large, as much as five children. All of them were Parfenov, andOnly one reason Antonina Makarova, a 45-year husband for Ginsburg, now living in Belarus. A man called to the visa department for further explanation.On the fateful meeting was attended, of course, and people from the KGB in civilian clothes.
"We are terribly afraid to jeopardize the reputation respected by all women Frontovichka, a beautiful wife and mother - recalls Golovachyov. - So the Belarusian Lepel our staff went secretly for a year watching Antonina Ginsburg, brought there by one surviving witness, formerPunisher, one of her lovers, for identification. Only when every one said the same thing - this is it, Tonka-machine-gunner, we found her noticeable crease on her forehead - doubts have disappeared. "
Antonina husband, Victor Ginzburg, a veteran of war and work, after her unexpected arrest promised to complain to the UN."We do not recognize it, what the accused, with whom he lived happily lifetime. They were afraid that this guy just will not survive," - told investigators.
Victor Ginzburg threw complaints by various organizations, assuring him that he loved his wife, and even if she had committed some crime - for example, money embezzlement, - he will forgive her.And he talked about how the wounded boy in April 45th in hospital at Konigsberg, and suddenly it came to the House, the new nurses Tonya.An innocent, pure, as if not at war - and he fell in love with her at first sight, but after a few days they were married.
