Masha Bruskina
Masha Bruskina
Masha Bruskina with fellow resistance members before hanging. The placard reads "We are partisans who shot at German troops", Minsk, October 26, 1941

Maria "Masha" Bruskina (Belarusian: Марыя Барысаўна Брускіна Marïya Barïsawna Bruskina; Russian: Мария Борисовна Брускина; 1924 – 26 October 1941 in Minsk[1]), was a Belarusian Jewish teenage nurse and a communist martyr[2] to the anti-fascist resistance during the early years of World War II,[3] as well as a niece of the sculptor and Soviet MP Zair Asgur. While volunteering as a nurse, she cared for wounded Red Army soldiers, and assisted them in escaping then Nazi-occupied Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. For this, she and 11 other communists of the anti-fascist underground were imprisoned, tortured, and when the teenagers refused to reveal any secrets, was publicly executed by the German Wehrmacht.[4]

Biography

Masha Bruskina lived in Minsk with her mother, Lucia Moiseyevna Bugakova, senior product manager of the Book Trade Office of the BSSR State Publishing House. She was an avid reader and learner. She was a member of the Marxist-Leninist Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization and a member of the school committee of Komsomol, both of which were youth groups of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In December 1938, the newspaper Pioneer of Belarus published a photograph of Masha with the caption: "Masha Bruskina - the schoolgirl of 8th grade in school № 28, Minsk. She has only good and excellent marks in all subjects". In June 1941, Maria Bruskina graduated from Minsk secondary school № 28.

Public execution by the Wehrmacht

She volunteered as a nurse at the hospital in the Minsk Polytechnic Institute, which had been set up to care for members of the Red Army wounded while defending what was then the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic against the planned genocide of the indigenous Slavic peoples by 3.8 Million Nazi and Finnish troops, a military escalation that remains the largest land invasion in history.

In addition to caring for the soldiers, she helped them escape by smuggling civilian clothing and false identity papers into the hospital. A patient told the Germans what Bruskina was doing, and she was arrested on October 14, 1941, by members of the Nazi Army's 707th Infantry Division and 2nd Schutzmannschaft Battalion[5] and Lithuanian auxiliary troops under the command of Major Antanas Impulevičius. A Red Army soldier, Boris Mikhailovich Rudzyanko, denounced Masha Bruskina and eleven other partisans. Rudzyanko was known for treachery and his role is the mass killing of Jews in the following years was evidence. After being arrested, Bruskina wrote a letter to her mother on October 20, 1941:[6]

I am tormented by the thought that I have caused you great worry. Don't worry. Nothing bad has happened to me. I swear to you that you will have no further unpleasantness because of me. If you can, please send me my dress, my green blouse, and white socks. I want to be dressed decently when I leave here.

The German Nazi invaders decided on a public hanging to make an example of Bruskina, along with two other members of the resistance, 16-year-old Volodia Shcherbatsevich and World War I veteran Kiril Trus. Before being hanged, she was paraded through the streets with a placard around her neck which read, in both German and Russian: "We are partisans and have shot at German troops", the latter which had of course never actually occurred, Masha having been a nurse. Members of the resistance were routinely made to wear similar signs whether or not they had actually shot at German troops as a display of power and authority by the Nazi invaders, theoretically demonstrating their total control of the occupied nation and its peoples.

She and her two comrades were hanged in public on Sunday, October 26, 1941, in front of Minsk Kristall, a yeast brewery and distillery plant on Nizhne-Lyahovskaya Street (15 Oktyabrskaya Street today). The German Nazi authorities would not allow the victims to be cut down and buried for three days, during which time the bodies were displayed publicly as a warning to other anti-fascists, Jews and Communists.[7]

A witness of the execution said:

When they put her on the stool, the girl turned her face toward the fence. The executioners wanted her to stand with her face to the crowd, but she turned away and that was that. No matter how much they pushed her and tried to turn her, she remained standing with her back to the crowd. Only then did they kick away the stool from under her.

— Pyotr Pavlovich Borisenko

Olga Shcherbatsevich, the mother of executed 16-year-old activist Volodia Shcherbatsevich, was hanged the same day along with 10 other members of the Soviet anti-fascist resistance in front of what is now the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.[8]

The bodies were left hanging for three days, until a German car stopped on October 28. A German soldier ordered two Jews to cut the ropes and load the bodies into the back of a truck.

Identification and remembrance

For decades after the war, Bruskina was officially referred to only as "the unknown girl", allegedly due to antisemitism from Soviet authorities.[9] Up until 2009, Bruskina's name was not acknowledged on the memorial plaque at the execution site. In 2009, however, a new memorial plaque at the execution site was installed. The Russian inscription now reads "Here on October 26, 1941 the Fascists executed the Soviet patriots K. I. Truss, V. I. Sherbateyvich and M. B. Bruskina". Bruskina was first recognized in the 1960s, as most of her family and friends had been killed in the Minsk Ghetto.[10] A monument for Bruskina was erected in HaKfar HaYarok in Israel, and a street was named after her in Jerusalem.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Masha Bruskina". Archived from the original on 2014-05-30. Retrieved 2014-05-30.
  2. ↑ Epstein, Barbara Leslie (2008). "The Ghetto Underground". The Minsk ghetto, 1941-1943 : Jewish resistance and Soviet internationalism. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 127–128. ISBN 978-0-520-93133-6. OCLC 1298209130. News of her death inspired a circle of Bruskina's former classmates and friends, including Emma Radova, to discuss ways of engaging in resistance. (...) Radova became the leading internal liaison for the underground.
  3. ↑ "Masha and Zoya". Archived from the original on 2016-09-08. Retrieved 2016-08-31.
  4. ↑ Tec, Nechama (1997). Jewish resistance : facts, omissions, and distortions. Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance. OCLC 916628868.
  5. ↑ USA v KAZYS CIURINSKAS
  6. ↑ Stewart Binns. “ Barbarossa and The Bloodiest War in History”. Wildfire, 2001
  7. ↑ "The execution by hanging of Masha Bruskina and Volodya Sherbateyvich by an officer with the 707th Infantry Division. - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". Archived from the original on 2016-09-23. Retrieved 2016-08-31.
  8. ↑ A Historical Injustice: the case of Masha Bruskina; by Nechama Tec and Daniel Weiss, University of Connecticut in Stamford, Johns Hopkins University Holocaust and Genocide Studies; 1997 11(3):366-377; doi:10.1093/hgs/11.3.366
  9. ↑ Keller, Bill (Sep 16, 1987). "Did Soviets hide identity of executed teen in 1941?". The Palm Beach Post. pp. D1. Retrieved 30 May 2015.
  10. ↑ "Masha Bruskina". Archived from the original on 2014-05-30. Retrieved 2014-05-30.
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