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07-23-2009, 12:05 PM
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Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Soviet Partisan Hanged at Petrishchevo, 1941
Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, an 18 year old Komsomol volunteer in a Soviet sabotage unit, was captured on the evening of November 28, 1941 after setting fire to buildings billeting German troops in the village of Petrishchevo near Moscow. Interrogated and tortured through the night, she gave only the false name Tanya, which is how the first Pravda account named her. She was publicly hanged the next morning, November 29, 1941, before villagers driven out to watch. Her body was left on the gallows for about a month and was mutilated by passing soldiers, who cut it with knives and cut off a breast, before the Germans allowed burial. On February 16, 1942 she was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union, the first woman so honored in the war. The execution photos were found on the body of a dead German soldier; the famous picture of her frozen body was taken by a Soviet photographer and ran in Pravda in January 1942. |