How Tonka the machine gunner became an executioner, and what happened to her family after the war, when it turned out who she was

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The special services were looking for Tonka the machine-gunner for 30 years, but she did not hide anywhere, lived in a small Belarusian town, got married, gave birth to two daughters, worked, was considered a war veteran and even talked about her valiant (fake, of course) exploits to schoolchildren. But no one could have guessed that it was this exemplary woman who was the executioner, on whose account there were more than a thousand ruined lives. The husband of the criminal, with whom she lived under the same roof for 30 years, did not know about this either.

How did Antonina Panfilova become Makarova?

There are many blank spots in the biography of Tonka the machine gunner. According to the widespread version, she was born in 1920, although some sources indicate that the girl was born 2 or 3 years later. She grew up in the village of Malaya Volkovka, Smolensk province, was the youngest of seven children.

At birth, one of the most terrible criminals of the Great Patriotic War was named Antonina Makarovna Panfilova. However, when she went to school, she was ashamed to answer the teacher's question about her name. And then, according to one version, one of the students shouted: "She is Makarov." He probably meant that Tonya is Makar's daughter. But the teacher did not understand this and wrote it down in the journal "Antonina Makarova". This mistake was not corrected, and since then a child with a different surname has appeared in the Panfilov family.

Tonka did not feel much zeal for science, and the remaining two classes graduated from school in Moscow, where her family moved. Makarova wanted to become a doctor, so she entered a medical college. They say her idol was Anka the machine gunner. And so the girl, dreaming of exploits, volunteered for the front.

Vyazemsky boiler

Despite the fact that Antonina herself during interrogations said that she served as a nurse, some historians are sure that at first she was a barmaid in a soldier's canteen and only later was sent to help the wounded. But in October 1941, her regiment fell under the Vyazemsky cauldron, and Makarova herself was captured. But she was lucky: together with the soldier Nikolai Fedchuk, the girl managed to escape.

But that was only the beginning of the test. Later Tonka told investigators that a colleague in misfortune had raped her. Although, most likely, she became a "field wife" in order to survive. For two months, the former prisoners wandered through the forests until they ended up in Fedchuk's native village, Krasny Kolodets, in the Lokotsky district. Then it turned out that the Red Army man had a wife and children, and his fellow traveler was left out of work.

Makarova was sheltered by local residents, but soon they changed their minds about her, as the former captive began to lead a promiscuous sex life. Expelled from the Red Well, she wandered through the forests for some time until she came to the village of Lokot.

This is how Tonka the machine gunner appeared

How she managed to survive is unknown. Although it is believed that Antonina traded her body. At one time, she even wanted to go to the partisans, but, seeing that the Russian collaborators of the so-called Lokot Republic lived freely for themselves, she decided to join them.

Not at a loss, Tonka became the mistress of the chief of local policemen, who hired her to work. Makarova even received a fairly decent salary - 30 German Reichsmarks (an analogy with Judas's 30 silver coins involuntarily suggests itself). Probably the cynical idea of giving Antonina a machine gun to kill people came to the police. True, before that she had to get drunk. And then it became a kind of tradition: after each execution, Makarov invariably won over his conscience with a fair amount of strong drinks.

The execution, as a rule, took place at the ditch. The unfortunate, among whom were not only Soviet prisoners of war, but also old people and children, were lined up. They brought a machine gun, for which Tonka stood up. Those who managed to survive, she personally finished off with a pistol. True, some of the children still managed to escape: the bullets flew over their heads without touching them, and the locals, passing them off as dead, took them out with the rest of the corpses and handed them over to the partisans. So the story of the tough Tonka the machine gunner spread throughout the front.

The executioner herself, having felt the taste of a good life, did not seem to worry about what kind of dirty work she had to do. During the day she stood at the machine gun, and in the evening she had fun dancing with the fascists and policemen and literally walked from hand to hand. She even had a kind of ritual: after each execution, she personally examined the dead and took off the things she liked. True, before putting them on, they had to sew up bullet holes and wash up the ingrained blood.

And she got lucky again

One can only be surprised at the incredible luck of Antonina. In the summer of 1943, she was diagnosed with a venereal disease and was sent to a hospital in the rear, and after a couple of months, Soviet troops liberated Lokot. Makarova left for Poland with another lover. But later the man was killed, and the machine gunner ended up in a concentration camp. When he was released, the girl called herself “her own”, got a military ID somewhere and even managed to serve in the ranks of the Red Army for several months.

Soon she met Viktor Ginzburg, a wounded sergeant, a war hero. He fell in love with a pretty nurse, young people started dating, got married, and had a daughter. This is how Antonina Ginzburg appeared. The family of former front-line soldiers was considered exemplary. The Ginzburgs settled in the Belarusian city of Lepel, and soon another girl was born. Antonina worked at a garment factory, received her awards for participation in the Great Patriotic War, told the younger generation how hard it was at the front. True, her colleagues noted that she was secretive and withdrawn, she practically did not communicate with anyone, and during joint gatherings she did not even touch alcohol.

Luck turned her back on her

Meanwhile, the state security authorities continued to look for the trail of Tonka the machine gunner. The matter was complicated by the fact that in the 70s there were practically no living witnesses to her crimes. But when the special services managed to arrest the very chief of the policemen, whose mistress Tonka was, it would seem that the case should go faster. He described the appearance of the executioner and named the main thing - the criminal's name was Antonina Makarova. True, he confused the middle name - in his memory the machine-gunner remained Anatolyevna.

However, no trace of a woman with that name could be found, and her former lover unexpectedly committed suicide. But this time, luck decided to cheat on Antonina. One of her brothers, the military man Panfilov, was filling out a questionnaire for going abroad. In it, he indicated that one of his sisters is Antonina Ginzburg, who was Makarova in her maiden name.

But even this data was not enough to detain a respected war veteran. Then they began to follow the woman, summoned with the rest of the former front-line soldiers to the military registration and enlistment office, allegedly to clarify the data for the award, as if casually asked about Ginzburg's military past. Antonina, while complaining about memory problems, claimed that she could not say anything about the location of her unit and colleagues. Tonka the machine-gunner was arrested after she was identified by the residents of Lokot, who were specially brought to Lepel.

During interrogations, Ginzburg behaved in cold blood, it seemed that she did not repent of her crimes and claimed that she had to kill in order to survive herself. She told her cellmate that she hoped for a suspended sentence because of her venerable age, the remoteness of the events, and even made plans for the future.

In the meantime, investigators managed to prove Tonka's involvement in the death of 168 people, whose identities were identified. Although in fact, according to independent estimates, there were more than 1,500 victims of the machine gunner.

Last victims

Meanwhile, Antonina's husband tried in vain to secure a meeting with his wife. Viktor was not told why she was detained, and he himself did not even know with whom he had shared shelter for more than 30 years. It was 1976, and the former front-line soldier, being sure that the times of gratuitous arrests had passed, knocked the doorsteps of various authorities in order to get a meeting with his wife. After vain attempts to find out the truth, he threatened to write complaints to Brezhnev himself and to the UN and ask on what basis his wife, a war veteran, was simply imprisoned, and only after that Ginzburg was told the truth. It is said that after this news before that, the youthful man turned gray overnight. And how could the fact that he lived with the executioner for so many years could fit into the head of a former front-line soldier, whose entire family was shot by the Nazis ?!

After this terrible news, Ginzburg and her daughters left the city. Where they settled is unknown. According to some reports, they settled in Israel and changed their names. Their further fate is unknown.

Antonina herself, by the way, has never expressed a desire to meet with her family. Contrary to her hopes for a pardon, the court was adamant - shooting. In August 1979, the sentence was executed. Tonka the machine gunner became one of three women in the USSR who paid for the crimes with their lives. [ANOUNS]