Below are images of Zoya’s hero of the SU Diploma, and her grave, with memorial statue. The statue is particularly striking, and shows her, bare-breasted, head back, as she is in the photo of her dead body…
A month later Zoya’s body was brought to Moscow and buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery. A monument has been [...]
This is the cover to the pamphlet. A mother holds the booklet while her four children look on. The father is presumably at the front. Page 2 introduces the pamphlet: “Dear German mother! Christmas has always been particularly a festival for children. War and destruction may rage in the world, and everyone, man or woman, [...]
During the Siege of Leningrad, the ice road across lake Ladoga was used to supply the city and evacuate citizens/scientists/armaments etc. (from September 9, 1941, to January 18, 1943, when a narrow land corridor to the city was established. The total lifting of the siege occurred at January 27, 1944)
It was known as the Road of Life, [...]
Click the pictures for a larger view
Let the Living Remember: Ed. L. Lazarev
The Story of Zoya and Shura: Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya
Glory to the partisans, who destroy the rear of the Fascists
Partisans, be ruthless!
SHE DEFENDED HER MOTHERLAND
By Olga Troshina
Six decades have passed since the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War. That war, which lasted four long years – from June 1941 to May 1945 – was the bloodiest in the history of mankind. In those harsh times those who rose to defend their Motherland [...]
It is estimated that more than 4,000 women of various ages were hanged by Nazi forces between 1939 and 1945. Many more were shot or guillotined and many were tortured before minimal or non-existent trials. They could be sentenced to death by People’s Courts and executed within prisons, by the commandants of concentration camps or [...]
Work on the home front seemed routine, nothing out of the ordinary. No blood, no deaths. But daily heroism became part of everyday life. Peaceful life was a thing of the past. Special courage was required to preserve marks of peacetime in the trials and tribulations of war. In the autumn of 1941, when the [...]
‘Heavenly angel is singing’, – the nuns would say of little Lida Ruslanova, performing the solo part in the church choir. The ‘angel’ had no special musical education.
Born into a poor peasant family in a small village near Saratov town on the banks of Volga River, she went into an orphanage after the death of her [...]
Red Army Serviceman, Save!
V. Koretsky
Motherland Calls! I. Toidze
The Sons of Russia Are Pushing Forward!
A. Kokorekin
This is a remarkable story from the Great Patriotic War!
The Icon of Our Lady of Kazan
In 1941, during World War II against Nazi Germany, the Virgin appeared to Metropolitan Ilya of the Antiochian Church, who prayed wholeheartedly for Russia. She instructed him to tell the Russians that they should carry the Icon of Our Lady [...]
It’s not for us to calmly rot in graves.
We’ll lie stretched out in our half-open coffins
And hear before the dawn the cannon coughing,
The regimental bugle calling gruffly
From highways which we trod, our land to save.
We know by heart all rules and regulations.
What’s death to us? A thing that we despise.
Lined up in graves, our dead [...]
This is something I read about in Antony Beeovor’s book Stalingrad, which really moved me…
The Stalingrad Madonna was drawn by a Wehrmacht Senior Medical Officer, Dr. Kurt Reuber, on the back of a map, to celebrate Christmas outside Stalingrad, 1942. In his last letter home, Reuber wrote:
“Christmas week has come and gone. It has been [...]
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who was a Russian female partisan. She joined the partisan movement at the age of 17, and carried out acts of sabotage behind enemy lines. She was captured in 1941 in German territory, and tortured in the village of Petrischevo. She gave away no information, and was executed by hanging. She was left [...]
Welcome to Comrade Zoya’s Blog!
This is a personal collection of thoughts, pictures, photos and poems about the Great Patriotic War, between Russia and Germany, 1941-45, named by Hitler as “Operation Barbarossa” [Red Beard], but which I will refer to as the GPW.
I will also be blogging about related subjects, such as the history of Nazi [...]
