- Zinaida Portnova
Zinaida Martynovna Portnova, commonly known as Zina Portnova ( _ru. Зинаида Мартыновна Портнова, Зина Портнова) (
February 20 ,1926 -January 15 ,1944 ) was a Russian teenager,Soviet partisan andHero of the Soviet Union .Zina Portnova was born in Leningrad and was a seventh grade student spending summer in a children's camp in Vitebsk region when
Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.In 1942 Portnova joined the
Belarusian resistance movement , becoming a member of the local undergroundKomsomol organization in Obol,Vitebsk Voblast , named Young Avengers. The young partisan was distributing Soviet propaganda leaflets in the German occupied Belarus and participated in a number ofsabotage actions.In August of 1943 she became a scout of the partisan unit named after
Kliment Voroshilov . In October 1943 Portnova joinedVLKSM . Two months later she was captured by the Germans. She shot one of her captors whilst trying to escape but was caught, tortured and then executed in aVitebsk jail.In 1958 Zina Portnova was posthumously made a
Hero of the Soviet Union .External links
*ru icon [http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=1966 War Hero Zinaida Portnova]
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