Tonka-machine-gunner, Nurse, Moskvichka … 20-year-old girl in the territory occupied by the Germans shot more than 1,500 people. They have been looking for her for over 30 years. And they found - a war heroine, a leader in production, a loving wife and mother of two daughters.
Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was able to forget everything. Nothing tormented her, did not disturb her. No feeling of guilt or remorse. Until the last moment she was sure that the statute of limitations had expired and she would be given 2-3 years probation for the massacres. Therefore, she immediately confessed. The murder of 167 people was officially proved. The figure of 1,500 people shot was, apparently, taken from the "Act of the commission for establishing the facts of the atrocities of the German occupiers in the Brasov region of October 22, 1945". It was there, in the fields of the horse farm indicated in the document, that Makarova shot her victims. In 1978 she was sentenced to death. But even then she did not understand anything. She wrote a petition for pardon, sincerely wondering why she was sentenced so harshly.
Salary - 30 marks
… 19-year-old Tonya Makarova went to the front as a nurse. In 1941, she got into the notorious Vyazemsky cauldron. Only a few hundred soldiers were able to break through the fascist ring and return to their own. The rest were killed or taken prisoner.
Antonina, together with the soldier Nikolai Fedchuk, wandered through the forests, finding shelter in the surrounding villages. Fedchuk made his way to the family in the Bryansk region, and Antonina had nowhere to go. Already alone, she reached the Nazi-occupied village of Lokot, the so-called "Lokot Republic" in the Bryansk region - an administrative-territorial formation of collaborators. There Antonina was detained by a police patrol.
The wanderer was fed, watered, raped and assigned to full-time prostitutes. Everything suited her. And soon they handed the Maxim machine gun and put people in front of her - men, women, old people, children …
In addition to nursing courses, Makarova studied at machine gunner courses, so she coped with the task well. And the very next day she received the official executioner's salary of 30 marks and her own bed.
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She was not a maniac or a mentally ill person. I understood and realized everything. The question why she voluntarily (no one forcibly, under the threat of execution, forced her to kill people) became an executioner, and did not go to the partisans, will receive a terrible answer - Antonina strove for everyday comfort, a warm bed, hearty food. And back to the forest - to the partisans, or to the front - she didn't want to. It was cold, hungry and life threatening.
Portrait on the honor roll
Every morning she got up, had breakfast and went to kill. In batches. Each has 27 people. That is exactly how much was placed in one horse stall, where the prisoners were driven. The prison, set up in a former stable, was packed to overflowing with people. New prisoners were constantly brought in, and therefore there were days when Tonka the executioner had to "work" in three shifts …
Tonka took off her favorite things from her victims, put them in the corner of her room and was very worried about dresses and blouses, damaged by bullet holes.
The killer never hid her face. She did not hide at all, even knowing that the partisans had announced a hunt for her. Tonka, apparently, thought little about retribution. She seemed to be patronized by the devil himself. In 1943, a few weeks before the Soviet troops entered the village of Lokot, she was evacuated to a German military hospital with a whole bunch of venereal diseases. And then she got a job at a military plant in Königsberg, where she worked until the end of the war. And here her talent for survival manifested itself again. Makarova, among the rest of the prisoners, was tested in the filtration camps of the NKVD and was demobilized. The interrogators believed that in 1941 she was captured and worked at the factory for the Nazis throughout the war.
In 1945, Makarova met a front-line soldier Viktor Ginzburg. She married him and left for the Belarusian town of Lepel - just a few hours away from the place of her "exploits" … So a respectable Soviet citizen Antonina Ginzburg began a new life of 33 years. Happy and carefree. Antonina's husband adored, she bore him two daughters, worked as a seamstress in a local factory, where her portrait adorned the honor roll, became a veteran of not only war, but also labor, and often spoke to schoolchildren, telling about the ordeals that befell her.
Life turned out like that
The search for Antonina began immediately after the war. During interrogations, many punishers mentioned Tonka the machine-gunner, Moskvichka, Nurse … But only the head of the Lokotsky prison, with whom Tonka had a connection, remembered her last name. Then it was not possible to find the criminal in hot pursuit due to confusion in the papers, where she was listed as Makarova. In 1965, investigators were confused by a German document stating that a certain Makarova was allegedly shot in 1943. The search file was handed over to the archive.
A chance helped to expose the executioner. One of Antonina's brothers, a colonel of the Soviet Army, when traveling abroad in the early 1970s, indicated the names of all his relatives in the questionnaire, specifying separately that he had a sister who lived under the name of Makarova, although in fact she was Parfenova. It turned out that her surname had been “changed” at school. The girl was simply written down by the name of her father - Makar, when the teacher's question: "Whose are you going to be?", She answered: "Makarova."
… For several months, surveillance was conducted. From different parts of the country, witnesses were brought to Lepel, who recognized the cruel Tonka-machine-gunner in the plump woman. Some - by voice, others - by facial features, others - by a characteristic gesture: she constantly straightened her hair. She was arrested right on the street. During the investigation, she frankly did not understand what they wanted from her:
Husband and daughters changed their surnames
The unhappy husband, Viktor Ginzburg, who was not told the real reason for his wife's arrest for a long time, was desperately seeking "justice" and was going to write complaints to Brezhnev and the UN. Then he was allowed to read the criminal case, having called in advance a doctor. And for good reason. Ginzburg, whose family was completely destroyed by the Germans, had a heart attack right in the office of investigators. He and his daughters changed their surnames and left Lepel for good.
Author: Irina Figurina
