Bryansk security officers about the series "Executioner": The real Tonka-machine gunner in a bunny mask did not go. Tonka the machine gunner - history in photographs

Makarova by mistake

Antonina Parfyonova (according to another version of Panfilov) was born in one of the Smolensk villages in 1920. It is believed that the surname Makarova got her by mistake. Allegedly, when she came to school, out of fear and excitement, she could not give her last name in response to the teacher's question. The classmates sitting nearby told the teacher that she was Makarova - in fact, that was her father's name. However, the error was fixed and then migrated to all other documents - Komsomol card, passport, etc.

The story is rather strange, but still not fantastic - although the inaction of Antonina's parents, who did not correct the mistake of the school teacher, is bewildering. It is quite unusual when an entire large family (she had six brothers and sisters) has one surname, and one child has a completely different name. In the end, this creates a lot of inconvenience. Again, one surname is recorded in the metric, and a different one in all other documents.

But theoretically this can be explained. In those days, the registration of the population was very weak, the peasants were not issued passports, and upon arriving in the city and receiving a passport, a person could call himself any surname, and it was written down from his words.

Antonina's youthful biography is not entirely clear either. According to one version, she came to Moscow with her parents. But in this case, they should have been issued passports together and, of course, the passport officers would have paid attention to the mismatch of surnames.

According to another version, Antonina left alone and lived with her own aunt. In this case, it is easier to explain the change of surname. In addition, she could get married and quickly divorce. In a word, the history of the transformation of Antonina Parfyonova \\ Panfilova into Makarova still remains a mystery.

Front

The war soon began. At that time Antonina was studying to be a doctor. Some sources say that she initially served as a freelance barmaid in one of the military units, and then was transferred to the orderlies.

It is known for sure that she was drafted into the 422nd Regiment of the 170th Infantry Division of the Lenin District Military Commissariat of Moscow on August 13, 1941 with the rank of sergeant. The Soviet army had two 170 divisions: the first and the second formation. The first division perished under Velikie Luki. The division of the second formation was created in 1942 and completed its combat path in East Prussia. Makarova served in the first.

Before the war, the division was stationed in Bashkiria, and mainly local conscripts served there. Makarova got into it as a replenishment. The division in the first days of the war took on a powerful blow from the Germans in the Sebezh area. She was surrounded and managed to break through with heavy losses. In late July - early August, it was replenished and sent to defend Velikiye Luki.

The front path of the future executioner was short-lived. On August 26, the city was taken, and Makarova, who barely managed to arrive, was surrounded. Only a few hundred of her colleagues were able to break through and go out to their own. The rest either died or were captured. Later, the 170th Infantry Division was disbanded due to the fact that it ceased to exist as a combat unit.

The Germans were not able to establish serious control over the huge mass of prisoners (only under Vyazma over 600 thousand people were taken prisoner), who actually lived in an open field. Seizing the moment, Makarova ran away with her colleague Fedchuk. Before winter, they wandered through the forests, sometimes finding shelter in the villages. Fedchuk made his way home to the Bryansk region, where his family lived. And Makarova walked with him, since she had nowhere to go, and she could survive alone in autumn forest It's hard for a 21-year-old girl.

In January 1942, they finally reached the village of Krasny Kolodets, where Fedchuk announced to her that they were parting and he was returning to his family. Further Makarova wandered alone in the surrounding villages.

Elbow

So Makarova got to the village of Lokot. There she found shelter with one local woman, but not for long. The woman noticed that she was looking at her brother-in-law, and even that one seemed to like her. She did not want to put an “extra mouth” on the balance of the family in the troubled wartime, so she drove Makarova away, advising her to go either to the partisans or to serve in the local collaborationist administration. According to another version, the suspicious girl was detained in the village by local police.

It should be noted that Lokot was not quite a typical occupied settlement. Unlike the rest, where power was fully owned by the Germans, self-government existed in Lokot. However, it did not go beyond certain limits. Initially, the Lokot system existed only in the village, but in 1942 it was extended to the whole region. This is how the Lokot district appeared. Local collaborators did not enjoy complete independence, but they had self-government in a much broader framework than in the rest of the occupied lands.

Lokot, as elsewhere, had its own police. Its peculiarity was that at first the line between police officers and partisans was quite illusory. In the ranks of the local police, there were often defectors from among the partisans, tired of the hardships of life in the forest. He even served in the police former boss department of one of the local district executive committees. In the post-war trials of local collaborators, former party members and Komsomol members often acted as defendants. The opposite was not uncommon. The policemen, having eaten on "police rations", fled into the woods to the partisans.

At first, Makarova just served in the police. The moment of her transformation into an executioner is unknown. Most likely, she was offered such a specific job because she was not local. The police could still justify themselves by the fact that they went to the service under duress and that they simply kept order (although this was far from always the case), but the executioner is a completely different story. Few people wanted to shoot their fellow villagers. So Makarova, as a Muscovite, was offered the position of executioner, and she agreed.

The number of victims

This period is most mythologized by modern publicists. Makarova is credited with some absolutely "Stakhanovist" rate of executions. In this regard, the figure of one and a half thousand people shot by her as an executioner during the year of her service was confirmed as the "official" one. In fact, she probably shot less.

On trial Tonka the machine gunner was accused of executing 167 people (in some sources - 168). These are the faces that we managed to establish testimony and according to the surviving documents. It is very likely that several dozen more people have not been included in the lists. The Lokotsky District had its own judicial system and death penalty were sentenced only by the decision of the court-martial.

After the war, a trial took place over Stepan Mosin (deputy chief burgomaster of Kaminsky). He argued that during the entire existence of the Lokotsky district, military courts had sentenced about 200 people to death. At the same time, some of the executed were hanged (in which Makarova did not take part).

Mosin has every reason to underestimate the number of those executed. But even according to archival data most of casualties in the area accounted for punitive anti-partisan actions in the villages, where people were executed on the spot. And in the district prison, where she worked as Makarova's executioner, those sentenced by the local court were executed.

The figure of 1,500 people shot by Makarova, apparently, was taken from the "Act of the Commission for Establishing the Facts of the Atrocities of the German Occupiers in the Brasov Region of October 22, 1945". It says: "In the fall of 1943 in the last days during their stay in the region, the Germans shot 1,500 people in the fields of the horse farm. "

It was in this field that Makarova shot her victims. And the Lokotskaya prison itself was located in a converted building of the horse farm. However, the document says that the executions were carried out in the last days before the retreat of the Germans, in September 1943. By this time, Makarova was no longer there. According to one version, she was admitted to the hospital before the Lokot collaborators left for Belarus, according to another, she left with them. But they left Lokot back in August, a week and a half before the Germans left.

Nevertheless, the executions proved by the court are more than enough to consider her one of the most bloody female murderers. The scale of Makarova's atrocities is apparently exaggerated by the publicists, but still terrifying. One can absolutely confidently speak of at least two hundred people shot by her with her own hand.

Disappearing

In August 1943, in connection with the offensive of the Soviet army, the position of the Lokotsky district became critical. Several thousand people from among the collaborators and their families left for Belarus. Then Makarova also disappeared.

There are versions that describe her disappearance in different ways. According to one of them, she was admitted to the hospital with a venereal disease. And then she persuaded a certain compassionate German corporal to hide her in the train. But it is possible that she simply left with the rest of the collaborators, and then fled to the Germans.

She was not useful to them, so she was sent to a military plant in Königsberg, where she worked until the end of the war. In 1945, the city was taken by Soviet troops. Makarova, among the rest of the prisoners and hijacked to work, was tested in the NKVD test-filtration camps.

In many publications there are allegations that she allegedly either forged or stolen someone's nurse's documents and thus returned to serve in the army. This is the speculation of modern authors. In fact, under her own name, she successfully passed all the checks. An archival document from the base of the Ministry of Defense, in which she appears, has been preserved. It reads: “Antonina Makarovna Makarova, born in 1920, non-partisan, was drafted with the rank of sergeant by the Lenin district military enlistment office of Moscow on August 13, 1941 in the 422nd regiment. Was captured on October 8, 1941. Sent for further service in the marching company of the 212nd reserve infantry regiment on April 27, 1945 ".

At the same time, Makarova met with the Red Army soldier Ginzburg. He just distinguished himself in one of the April battles, destroying 15 enemy soldiers from a mortar (for which he was awarded the medal "For Courage"), and was treated for a slight concussion. They soon got married.

Makarova did not need to compose complex legends. It was enough only to keep silent about his service as an executioner. Otherwise, her biography did not raise questions. A young nurse was taken prisoner in the first days at the front, was sent by the Germans to a factory, where she worked throughout the war. Therefore, she did not arouse any suspicion among those who checked.

Search

At one time, there was a popular anecdote about the elusive Joe, whom no one was looking for. This is fully applicable to Makarova, who lived in the USSR for over 30 years without hiding. Moreover, just a few hours away from the place of his "glory" - after the war, she and her husband settled in Lepel.

At first, the Soviet authorities did not know anything about Makarova at all. Later, they received testimony from the former commandant of the Lokotsk District Prison, who said that a certain Tonya Makarova, a former nurse from Moscow, was involved in the executions.

However, the search was soon stopped. According to one version, bryansk security officers (they were the ones who investigated her case) mistakenly considered her dead and closed the case. According to another, they got confused because of the confusion with her last name. But, apparently, if they were looking for her, it was extremely careless.

Already in 1945, she was "lit up" in army documents under her own name. And are there many Antonin Makarovs in the USSR? Probably several hundred. And if you subtract those who did not live in Moscow and did not serve as a nurse? Much less. The investigators in her case probably did not take into account that she could get married and change her last name, or they were simply too lazy to check her along this line. As a result, Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg lived peacefully for more than 30 years, working as a seamstress and not hiding from anyone. She was considered an exemplary Soviet citizen; her portrait even hung on the local honor board.

As in the case with another famous punisher Vasyura, chance helped to find her. Her brother, a colonel in the Soviet army, is going abroad. In those days, all those leaving were strictly checked for reliability, forcing them to fill out questionnaires for all relatives. And high-ranking military personnel were checked even more strictly. When checking it, it turned out that he himself was Parfyonov, and his own sister, nee Makarova. How can this be? They became interested in this story, along the way it turned out that this Makarova was in captivity during the war years, and her full namesake appeared in the lists of wanted criminals.

Antonina was identified by several witnesses who lived in the village at the time she worked as an executioner. She was arrested in 1978. Then the trial took place. She did not deny and admitted her guilt, explaining her actions by the fact that "the war forced". She was found sane and sentenced to death for the murder of 167 people. All appeals and requests for clemency were rejected. On August 11, 1979, the sentence was carried out.

She became the only female punisher convicted by a Soviet court. In addition, she became the first woman executed in all post-Stalinist times.

Researchers are still racking their brains over what made a young girl choose such a terrible craft. After all, it was not a matter of her survival. According to available data, she originally served in the police in auxiliary positions. There is no evidence that she was forced to become an executioner by death threats. Most likely, it was a voluntary choice.

Some believe that to take up the craft, from which even men who had gone to the service of the Germans shied away, Makarov was forced to lose his mind after the horrors of the environment, captivity and wandering through the forests. Others, that the matter is in banal greed, because the position of the executioner was paid higher. One way or another, the true motives of Tonka the machine gunner remained a mystery.

It was the show that prompted me to delve into the details of the story on which the film is supposedly based. Yes, indeed, the events in which the girl who shot the captured partisans in the occupied territory appears, perhaps became the inspiration for the filmmakers. But not more. I cannot agree that this is a film adaptation of the story about Tonka the machine-gunner. And it certainly cannot be said that the series The Executioner is "based on real events."

THE STORY OF ANTONINA MAKAROVNA GINZBURG (MAKAROVA)

Here I will try to briefly tell you this biography, and you can see how it contrasts with what is shown in the film. I will do this only to make you think - and who, and why is taking pictures and showing you such things?

So, Antonina Makarova was an ordinary barmaid, and then a nurse. In 1941 she was captured. Please note, the girl was 19 years old. That is, it is almost a blank slate. Surely the 19-year-old girl who escaped from captivity was not up to ideologies, fascism and other nonsense. She just wanted to eat and be in a warm and safe place. Simply put, I wanted to live, survive. In general, they escaped with a certain Red Army man. She wandered with him for 3 months, after which he parted with her, said that he had a wife and children. Surely for 3 months the girl had any hopes, for sure there was a much closer relationship between them in their wanderings than ordinary fugitives. And then this comrade announces such news to her. Do you remember yourself at 19?

In the eyes of a young girl, the world is crumbling, she withstands incredible stress, shock. But there is a war going on around, and for a long time to be in any kind of prostration is not the time or place. It was necessary to survive. The girl sticks around in the same village in which she parted with the Red Army soldier. And it gets to the police. They find out that the girl is not a partisan, and offer her a job, appoint a salary of 30 marks. Do you understand? The girl was offered a JOB. Performing it, she could eat normally, dress and have no place where she could warm herself up and cope with basic everyday needs. The girl worked in this unit, whose main task was to fight the partisans.


And somehow, during one of the operations, she almost shot the head of the unit by mistake. However, the belt of the machine gun stuck and nothing terrible happened to the chief. After that, the girl was appointed a machine-gunner in the district prison, to shoot the unwanted. Some sources say that she was drunk before being given the "task" for the first time. Most likely a similar fact influenced. But personally, I do not see anything surprising in the fact that the 19-year-old ordinary girl could have some kind of moral and moral foundations. She somehow just succeeded once, she saw that it was beneficial for her, it allows her to live well. After all, from executions it was sometimes possible to profit from something. Well, what young girl does not want to have some kind of things she likes. Does it have the right modern society of total consumption to condemn for this, whoever? Even without considering gender and age. Think about it. So, it all became a habit and really became regular work... Yes, dirty, but work. That is why the psychiatric commission, as a result of the investigation, recognized Makarova as sane - the woman did not go crazy precisely because she did not try to give any special meaning to her activities. For her, it was just dirty work, which in wartime and Nazi occupation really does not represent anything wild.
Well, after the release, she simply got lost, very gracefully extricating herself from this story, and even benefited from it. It's ok - which one modern women Would you have acted differently? You can lie to anyone, but you better not try to do it to yourself.

Is there a lot of truth in the movie "Executioner"?

Almost no truthful thought. Based on the foregoing, the woman could not spew out such a stream of hatred as shown in the film. In addition, Antonina Makarova never killed anyone after she stopped working for policemen, after she ceased to be an executioner. She was no longer the Tonka-machine gunner. But the Chekists continued to look for her. And they found it by chance, only due to the fact that one of Antonina's relatives, when issuing a passport, indicated Antonin Makarov as own sister being Panfilov (Parfenov, in some sources). Here we reached the very interesting factthat allowed this whole story to take place. Antonina became Makarova due to a trivial mistake of a teacher when she entered school. Thanks to this, the search for the special services was not crowned with success - no one was looking for Antonina Makarova. The Chekists were looking for among the Antonin Panfilovs, who were checked for a minute, about 250 people were suitable. And so, the same circumstance put an end to this whole story - a relative attracted attention by indicating real data, little known to anyone, and the KGB was able to find out our character.

So, Antonina Makarova, was interrogated, to which she reacted quite calmly, not understanding why she could be tried, without expecting any harsh punishment for what she had done. By the way, all sources say that she shot about 1,500 Soviet citizens. However, in the Bryansk court, which considered this case, 160 prisoners appeared, who were shot by Tonka the machine gunner. Just so many “victims” have been proven, and that is how many were included in the verdict. According to the results of interrogations, it is absolutely certain that the executioner woman never experienced any remorse, no nightmares, and so on. Do you understand what work is?
Tonka the machine-gunner became one of three women sentenced to death and shot in the post-war USSR.

HAVE BEEN JUST CONSIDERED TO EXECUTE THE TONKA-BULLETER?

Perhaps some of the readers will find my thoughts cynical. All of the above in no way justifies the "heroine". But how do those who sentenced her to death differ from her? Only because they didn't have to do it. A man lived normally for 20 years, probably benefited Soviet society, created a family, raised children ... Her husband tried to help for a very long time, went and wrote to the authorities, not believing that this could happen. But was it ever a problem to persuade someone in that country?

And was it no less cynical to build such a disturbing plot around a truly dramatic biography? Which makes me feel completely different, very far from those in which this film keeps me.

If you study the details real story Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg (Panfilova), the response and understanding of the motives of this woman's behavior is clearly manifested in my soul. Everything is in accordance with modern human psychology. Sources about Antonina's interrogations say that she sincerely did not understand why she was so severely condemned and reprimanded. For me, these facts raise only questions - how the regime of those times could influence the consciousness of people to such an extent that they blindly, without analyzing and without hesitation, sincerely believed what they were being presented with?

Probably in the same way as the current regime is doing it to you. Yes, non-trivial and tragic story... But why make crap out of it? Why distort a complex biography in such a piercingly eerie manner? I hope the filmmakers think about it someday. It is in these ways that our false history is written, which is not worth a penny. Sometime in the distant future, our descendants will not learn anything useful from such a story. However, on the contrary, they will be able to draw the correct conclusions from this and they will be amazed at the extent to which people could clog their brains with nonsense, as their ancestors were weak and suggestible.
Meditate at least sometimes, it's helpful.

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In the entire post-war history of the USSR, she was sentenced to death the only woman... Executioner woman.

The story of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg - a Soviet girl who personally executed one and a half thousand of her compatriots - is different, dark side heroic history of the Great Patriotic War.

She did not think about those who were shot ...

Tonka the machine-gunner, as she was called then, worked in the Soviet territory occupied by Nazi troops from the 41st to the 43rd years, carrying out the mass death sentences of the fascists to partisan families.

Twitching the bolt of the machine gun, she did not think about those whom she was shooting - children, women, old people - it was just work for her. "What nonsense, that later you suffer remorse. That those you kill come at night in nightmares. I still haven’t dreamed of a single one," she said to her investigators during interrogations. 35 years after her last execution.

The criminal case of the Bryansk punitive woman Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg still rests in the depths of the FSB special guard. Access to it is strictly prohibited, and this is understandable, because there is nothing to be proud of here: in no other country in the world was a woman born who personally killed 1,500 people, writes Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Heroine or killer?

Thirty-three years after the Victory this woman's name was Antonina Makarovna Ginzburg. She was a front-line soldier, a labor veteran, respected and revered in her town. Her family had all the privileges required by status: an apartment, insignia for round dates and a scarce sausage in a grocery ration. Her husband was also a participant in the war, with orders and medals. Two adults
daughters were proud of their mother.

They looked up to her, they took an example from her: still, such a heroic fate: to walk the whole war as a simple nurse from Moscow to Konigsberg. School teachers invited Antonina Makarovna to speak at the lineup, to tell the younger generation that in the life of every person there is always a place for feat. And the most important thing in war is not to be afraid to watch death in
face. And who, if not Antonina Makarovna, knew about this best ...

She was arrested in the summer of 1978 in the Belarusian town of Lepel. Absolutely ordinary woman in a sand-colored raincoat with a string bag in her hands was walking down the street, when a car stopped nearby, inconspicuous men in civilian clothes jumped out of it and said: "You urgently need to go with us!" surrounded her, not giving an opportunity to escape.

"Do you guess why you were brought here?" - asked the investigator of the Bryansk KGB when she was brought in for the first interrogation. "Some mistake," the woman chuckled in response.

"You are not Antonina Makarovna Ginzburg. You are Antonina Makarova, better known as Tonka the Muscovite or Tonka the machine gunner. You are a punitive woman who worked for the Germans, carried out mass executions. Your atrocities in the village of Lokot, near Bryansk, are still being circulated. legends. We have been looking for you for more than thirty years - now the time has come to answer for what we have done. Your crimes have no statute of limitations. "

“So, it’s not for nothing that the last year my heart became anxious, as if I felt that you would appear,” the woman said. “How long ago it was. As if not with me at all. Almost my whole life has already passed.

War has a different moral ...

From the transcript of the interrogation of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, June 78:

“All those sentenced to death were the same for me. Only their number changed. Usually I was ordered to shoot a group of 27 people - there were so many partisans in a cell. I shot about 500 meters from the prison near some pit. The arrested were put in a chain facing to At the place of execution, one of the men rolled out my machine gun. At the command of my superiors, I knelt down and shot at people until everyone fell dead ... "

"Lead into nettles" - in Tony's jargon, it meant lead to execution. She herself died three times. For the first time in the fall of 1941, in a terrible "Vyazma cauldron", a young girl, a sanitary instructor. Hitler's troops then attacked Moscow as part of Operation Typhoon. Soviet generals threw their armies to death, and this was not considered a crime - war has a different morality. Over a million Soviet boys and girls in total
in six days they died in that Vyazma meat grinder, five hundred thousand were captured. The death of ordinary soldiers at that moment did not solve anything and did not bring victory closer, it was simply meaningless. As well as helping a nurse to the dead ...

Tonya and Kolya

She was called to the front from Moscow, where Antonina came shortly before the war from the remote village of Malaya Volkovka, near Smolensk, to study and work. Machine gunner courses, then short medical courses and - forward, to the defense of the capital. Immediately, without taking a breath, the young nurse falls into the Vyazemsky "cauldron", terrible with its bloody meaninglessness, where millions of soldiers abandoned to their fate have perished and where the psyche of a girl surrounded by corpses breaks once and for all.

19-year-old nurse Tonya Makarova woke up after a fight in the forest. The air smelled of burnt flesh. An unknown soldier was lying nearby. "Hey, are you still safe? My name is Nikolai Fedchuk." “And I’m Tonya,” she didn’t feel anything, didn’t hear, didn’t understand, as if her soul had been concussed, and only a human shell remained, but inside there was emptiness. She reached out to him, trembling:
"Ma-a-amochka, how cold it is!" "Well, beautiful, don't cry. We'll get out together," Nikolai answered and unbuttoned the top button of her tunic.

For three months, before the first snow, they wandered through the thickets together, getting out of the encirclement, not knowing either the direction of movement, or their ultimate goal, or where their enemies were, or where. They were starving, breaking the stolen loaves of bread for two. During the day they shied away from the military carts, and at night they warmed each other. Tonya washed both footcloths in cold water, cooked a simple dinner.

Did she love Nikolai? Rather, she drove out, burned out with a hot iron, fear and cold from within.

“I’m almost a Muscovite,” Tonya proudly lied to Nikolai. “There are many children in our family. And we are all the Parfenovs. in the first grade, and forgot her last name. The teacher asks: "What is your name, girl?" And I know that Parfenova, but I'm afraid to say. The children from the back of the school scream: "Yes, she is Makarova, her father is Makar."

So they wrote me down alone in all the documents. After school she left for Moscow, then the war began. I was called up as a nurse. And my dream was different - I wanted to scribble on a machine gun, like Anka the machine gunner from "Chapaev". Don't I look like her? When we get to ours, let's ask for a machine gun ... "

In January 1942, dirty and tattered, Tonya and Nikolai finally reached the village of Krasny Kolodets. And then they had to part forever. "You know, my native village is nearby. I am there now, I have a wife and children," Nikolai said to her at parting. "I could not admit to you earlier, forgive me. Thank you for the company. Then get out somehow yourself." "Don't leave me, Kolya," Tonya begged, hanging on top of him. However, Nikolai shook her off
like ashes from a cigarette and left.

For several days Tonya begged around the huts, prayed for Christ, asked to stay. At first, the compassionate housewives let her in, but after a few days they invariably refused the shelter, explaining that they themselves had nothing to eat. "It hurts to look at her bad, - said the women. - To our peasants, who are not at the front, climbs with them into the attic, asks her to warm her up."

It is possible that Tonya at that moment was really moved by her mind. Perhaps she was finished off by Nikolai's betrayal, or she simply ran out of strength - one way or another, she only had physical needs: she wanted to eat, drink, wash herself with soap in a hot bath and sleep with someone, so as not to be alone in the cold darkness. She didn't want to be a heroine, she just wanted to survive. At any price.

Execution for wages

In the village where Tonya stopped at the beginning, there were no policemen. Almost all of its inhabitants went to the partisans. In the neighboring village, on the contrary, only punishers were registered. The front line here ran in the middle of the outskirts. Somehow she wandered around the outskirts, half-mad, lost, not knowing where, how and with whom she would spend this night. People in uniform stopped her and asked in Russian: "Who is she?" “I'm Antonina, Makarova. From Moscow,” the girl replied.

She was brought to the administration of the village of Lokot. The policemen complimented her, then took turns "loving" her. Then they gave her a whole glass of moonshine to drink, and then shoved a machine gun into her hands. As she dreamed of - to disperse the void inside with a continuous machine-gun line. For living people.

“Makarova-Ginzburg told during interrogations that for the first time she was taken to the execution of partisans completely drunk, she did not understand what she was doing,” recalls the investigator in her case Leonid Savoskin. “But they paid well - 30 marks, and offered cooperation for permanent basis... After all, none of the Russian policemen wanted to get dirty, they preferred that the executions
partisans and their family members were committed by a woman. A homeless and lonely Antonina was given a bed in a room at a local stud farm, where she could spend the night and store a machine gun. In the morning she voluntarily went to work. "

“I didn’t know those whom I was shooting. They didn’t know me. Therefore, I was not ashamed in front of them. Sometimes, you shoot, you come closer, and someone else twitches. Then I shot again in the head so that the person would not suffer. The prisoners had a piece of plywood hanging on their chests with the inscription “partisans.” Some sang something before they died. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardroom or in the yard. There were plenty of cartridges ... "

Things from dead people

Former Redwell landlady Tony, one of those who once also kicked her out of her house, came to the village of Elbow for salt. She was detained by policemen and taken to a local prison, attributing a connection with the partisans. "I'm not a partisan. Just ask your Tonka-machine-gunner," the woman was frightened. Tonya looked at her carefully and grunted: "Come on, I'll give you salt."

The tiny room where Antonina lived was in order. There was a machine gun glistening from machine oil... Nearby, on a chair, clothes were piled neatly: smart dresses, skirts, white blouses with holes ricocheting in the back. And a washing trough on the floor.

“If I like the things of the condemned, then I take them off the dead, why should I be lost,” explained Tonya. “Once the teacher was shot, so I liked her blouse, pink, silk, but it was all stained with blood, I was afraid that I don't wash it - I had to leave it in the grave. It's a pity ... So how much salt do you need? "

“I don’t need anything from you,” the woman backed away to the door. “Fear God, Tonya, he’s there, he sees everything - there’s so much blood on you, you don’t get rid of it!” “Well, since you are brave, why did you ask me for help when they were taking you to prison?” Antonina shouted after him. “So she would die like a hero! So, when the skin needs to be saved, Tonkina’s friendship is good?” ...

Work and leisure

In the evenings, Antonina dressed up and went to a German club to dance. Other girls who worked as prostitutes for the Germans were not friends with her. Tonya lifted her nose, boasting that she was a Muscovite. With her roommate, the village headman's typist, she also did not open up, and she was afraid of her for some kind of spoiled look and for the crease on her forehead that had cut through early, as if Tonya was thinking too much.

At the dances, Tonya got drunk, and changed partners like gloves, laughed, clinked glasses, shot cigarettes from the officers. And she didn’t think about those next 27, whom she was to execute in the morning. It's scary to kill only the first, the second, then, when the count goes to hundreds, it becomes just hard work.

Before dawn, when, after torture, the groans of the partisans sentenced to execution subsided, Tonya quietly climbed out of her bed and wandered for hours through the former stable, hastily converted into a prison, peering into the faces of those whom she was to kill.

From the interrogation of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, June 78:

“It seemed to me that the war would write off everything. I was just doing my job, for which I was paid. I had to shoot not only partisans, but also members of their families, women, adolescents. I tried not to remember this. Although I remember the circumstances of one execution - before by shooting a guy sentenced to death shouted to me: "I won't see you again, goodbye, sister! .."

Lost tracks

She was incredibly lucky. In the summer of 1943, when the battles for the liberation of the Bryansk region began, Tony and several local prostitutes showed up venereal disease... The Germans ordered them to be treated, sending them to a hospital in their distant rear. When Soviet troops entered the village of Lokot, sending traitors to the Motherland and former policemen to the gallows, only terrible legends remained from the atrocities of Tonka the machine gunner.

From material things - hastily sprinkled bones in mass graves in an unmarked field, where, according to the most conservative estimates, the remains of one and a half thousand people were buried. Only about two hundred people who were shot by Tonya were able to restore the passport data. The death of these people formed the basis for the accusation in absentia of Antonina Makarovna Makarova, born in 1921, presumably a resident of Moscow. They didn't know anything else about her ...

"Our employees conducted the search for Antonina Makarova for thirty extra yearspassing it on to each other by inheritance, - told "MK" KGB Major Pyotr Nikolaevich Golovachev, who was engaged in the search for Antonina Makarova in the 70s. - From time to time it fell into the archive, then, when we caught and interrogated another traitor to the Motherland, it again surfaced. Tonka couldn't disappear without a trace ?! It is now possible to accuse the authorities of incompetence and illiteracy. But the work was going on with jewelry. During the post-war years, KGB officers secretly and carefully checked all women Soviet Unionwho bore this name, patronymic and surname and matched their age - there were about 250 such Tonek Makarovs in the USSR
man. But - it's useless. The real Tonka-machine-gunner has sunk into the water ... "

“You don’t scold Tonka too much,” Golovachev asked. “You know, I even feel sorry for her. This is all the war, damn it, it’s to blame, she broke her ... She had no choice - she could remain a human and then she would be among But she chose to live, becoming an executioner. But she was only 20 years old in 41 ".

But it was impossible to just take and forget about her. “Her crimes were too terrible,” says Golovachev. “It just did not fit in my head how many lives she took.

Several people managed to escape, they were the main witnesses in the case. And so, when we interrogated them, they said that Tonka still comes to them in their dreams. Young, with a machine gun, looks intently - and does not avert her eyes. They were convinced that the executioner girl was alive, and asked to be sure to find her in order to end these nightmares. We understood that she could have married a long time ago and change her passport, so we thoroughly studied
life path all her possible relatives by the name of Makarov ... "

However, none of the investigators had any idea that it was necessary to start looking for Antonina not with the Makarovs, but with the Parfenovs. Yes, it was the accidental mistake of the village teacher Tony in the first grade, who wrote down her middle name as a surname, and allowed the "machine gunner" to elude retribution for so many years. Her real relatives, of course, never fell into the circle of interests of the investigation in this case.

Fatal case

But in 1976, one of the Moscow officials named Parfenov was going abroad. Filling out the application form for a foreign passport, he honestly listed the names of his brothers and sisters in a list, the family was large, as many as five children. All of them were Parfenovs, and only one for some reason Antonina Makarovna Makarova, from the 45th year by her husband Ginzburg, living
now in Belarus. The man was summoned to the OVIR for additional explanations. On fateful meeting Naturally, there were also people from the KGB in civilian clothes.

“We were terribly afraid to jeopardize the reputation of a woman respected by all, a front-line soldier, a wonderful mother and wife,” recalls Golovachev. “Therefore, our employees traveled secretly to Belarusian Lepel, whole year watched Antonina Ginzburg, brought there one by one surviving witnesses, a former punisher, one of her lovers, for identification. Only when every last one said the same thing - it was she, Tonka the machine-gunner, we recognized her by the noticeable fold on her forehead - doubts disappeared. "

Antonina's husband, Viktor Ginzburg, a war and labor veteran, promised to complain to the UN after her unexpected arrest. "We did not confess to him what the accusation was against the one with whom he lived happily whole life... They were afraid that the man simply would not survive this, "the investigators said.

Viktor Ginzburg threw complaints at various organizations, assuring that he loved his wife very much, and even if she committed some crime - for example, financial embezzlement - he would forgive her everything. And he also talked about how, as a wounded boy, in April 1945, he was lying in a hospital near Konigsberg, and suddenly she, a new nurse Tonechka, entered the room. Innocent, pure, as if not in a war - and he fell in love with her at first sight, and a few days later they signed.

Antonina took her husband's surname, and after demobilization she went with him to the Belarusian Lepel, forgotten by God and people, and not to Moscow, from where she was once called to the front. When the old man was told the truth, he turned gray overnight. And he did not write any more complaints.

She regretted nothing ...

“The woman who was arrested from the pre-trial detention center did not give a single line to her husband. By the way, she didn’t write anything to the two daughters whom she gave birth to after the war and didn’t ask to see him,” says investigator Leonid Savoskin. to tell everyone. About how she escaped from a German hospital and got into our environment, corrected for herself other people's veteran documents, according to which she began to live. She did not hide anything, but this was the most terrible thing. A feeling was created that she was sincerely misunderstanding: Why was she imprisoned, what was SO terrible she did? It was as if there was some kind of bloc in her head from the war, so that she probably wouldn't go crazy herself. She remembered everything, every execution, but did not regret anything. She seemed to me very cruel woman... I don't know what she was like when she was young. And what made her commit these crimes. Desire to survive? A moment's darkening? Horrors of war? In any case, this does not justify her. She killed not only strangers, but her own family. She simply destroyed them with her exposure. Psychological examination showed that Antonina Makarovna Makarova is sane. "

Investigators were very afraid of some excesses on the part of the accused: before, there were cases when former policemen, healthy men, remembering past crimes, committed suicide right in the cell. The aged Tonya did not suffer from bouts of remorse. “It is impossible to be constantly afraid,” she said. “The first ten years I waited for a knock on the door, and then I calmed down.
sins so that a person would be tormented throughout his life. "

During the investigative experiment, she was taken to Lokot, to the very field where she conducted the executions. The villagers spat after her like a revived ghost, and Antonina just looked askance at them, scrupulously explaining how, where, whom and what she killed ... For her it was a distant past, a different life.

“They disgraced me in my old age,” she complained in the evenings, sitting in a cell, to her jailers. “Now, after the verdict, I will have to leave Lepel, otherwise every fool will poke a finger at me. I think that I will be given probation for three years. Then you have to somehow rebuild your life. And how much is your salary in the pre-trial detention center, girls? Maybe I’ll get a job with you - something familiar ... "

Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was shot at six in the morning on August 11, 1978, almost immediately after the death sentence was passed. The court's decision came as an absolute surprise even for the people who were investigating, not to mention the defendant herself. All of the 55-year-old Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg's petitions for clemency in Moscow were rejected.

In the Soviet Union, this was the last major case of traitors to the Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, and the only one in which a woman punisher was involved. Never later women in the USSR, they were not executed by court verdict.

Antonina Makrova is a real character, famous history a war criminal. In the series "Executioner" she was given a different name - Raisa Safonova, and the cities and dates were slightly changed. In general, her crimes did take place, and remembering them is still creepy.

Antonina, after Parfyonov's father, but mistakenly recorded in school forms Makarova (my father's name was Makar), and remained with this surname. She was born in the Smolensk region, after school she went to study in Moscow. From there she went to the front, meeting the war at the age of 20.

Tonya always admired Anka the machine gunner, wanted to be like her, but the unprepared girl was left with only the work of a nurse. A few months later, the unit in which Makarova served was surrounded - it was the Vyazemsky Cauldron near Moscow, in which many Soviet soldiers died in October 1941. Makarova survived, wandered around the villages for a long time, until she came to the Bryansk region (the Oryol region is indicated in the film). There she was "sheltered" by a police detachment, consisting of collaborators and bringing order to the district for the benefit of the invaders. However, in the unenviable role “ common wifeAntonina did not stay long. One fine day, drunk, they gave her a machine gun and ordered to shoot at the prisoners - local residents, "Accomplices of the partisans." Makarova coped with the task with pleasure. Her dream has come true, now she is Tonka the machine gunner.

In the film, Tonka the machine-gunner is played by Victoria Tolstoganova

After, telling the investigation about her feelings at that moment, Makarova stated: she did not know these people, and therefore she did not feel sorry for them. Moreover - she finished them off "out of compassion", firing bullets from a pistol into their eyes - "so that her face would not remain in them." In total, more than 1.5 thousand people were shot on the account of the female executioner. On the whole: “She was young, stupid, she wanted to live…” - this is how Antonina justified her crimes.

There were terrible rumors about the atrocities of Tonka the machine gunner. Every morning she began with a firing squad, killing 27 inmates in the only cell in her precinct - after all, it was necessary to make room for the next. When the Red Army launched an offensive, Tonka surprisingly "successfully" got into the German rear - to the hospital, to treat syphilis. There, anticipating the imminent arrival of Soviet troops, she stole documents and became .... a Soviet nurse, for the good of the Motherland, who worked all the years of the war in one of the hospitals.

With the end of the war, she married and settled in Lepel (in the series - not far from Moscow). The family has two daughters (according to the film - a daughter and foster-son). Her for a long time was considered dead, but in 1978 Antonina Makarova, now Ginzburg, was exposed. She confessed to the crimes she had committed and was shot.

Despite the fact that in "The Executioner" the action takes place in 1965, the personality of Tonka the machine gunner is historically accurate. All the horrors that are told about her are true. At the same time, military historians admit: fiction only smoothes the colors, while reality turns out to be even more terrible.

The story of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, a Soviet girl who personally executed one and a half thousand of her compatriots, is another, dark side of the heroic history of the Great Patriotic War. Tonka the machine-gunner, as she was called then, worked in the Soviet territory occupied by Nazi troops from the 41st to the 43rd years, carrying out the mass death sentences of the fascists to partisan families. Twisting the bolt of the machine gun, she did not think about those whom she was shooting - children, women, the elderly - it was just work for her ...

"What nonsense, that then there is remorse. That those you kill come in nightmares. I still have not dreamed of any"- she said to her investigators during interrogations, when she was nevertheless identified and detained - 35 years after her last execution.

The criminal case of the Bryansk punitive woman Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg still rests in the depths of the FSB special guard. Access to it is strictly prohibited, and this is understandable, because there is nothing to be proud of here: in no other country in the world has a woman been born who personally killed 1,500 people.

Thirty-three years after the Victory this woman's name was Antonina Makarovna Ginzburg. She was a front-line soldier, a labor veteran, respected and revered in her town. Her family had all the privileges required by status: an apartment, insignia for round dates and a scarce sausage in a grocery ration. Her husband was also a participant in the war, with orders and medals. Two grown daughters were proud of their mother.

They looked up to her, they took an example from her: still, such a heroic fate: to walk the whole war as a simple nurse from Moscow to Konigsberg. School teachers invited Antonina Makarovna to speak at the lineup, to tell the younger generation that in the life of every person there is always a place for feat. And the most important thing in war is not to be afraid to face death. And who, if not Antonina Makarovna, knew about this best ...

She was arrested in the summer of 1978 in the Belarusian town of Lepel. A completely ordinary woman in a sand-colored raincoat with a string bag in her hands was walking down the street, when a car stopped nearby, inconspicuous men in civilian clothes jumped out of it and said: "You urgently need to go with us!" surrounded her, not giving an opportunity to escape.

"Can you guess why you were brought here? "- asked the investigator of the Bryansk KGB when she was brought in for the first interrogation." Some mistake, "the woman smiled in response.

"You are not Antonina Makarovna Ginzburg. You are Antonina Makarova, better known as Tonka the Muscovite or Tonka the machine gunner. You are a punisher, you worked for the Germans, carried out mass executions. Your atrocities in the village of Lokot, near Bryansk, are still legendary. We have been looking for you for over thirty years - now it's time to answer for what we have done. Your crimes have no statute of limitations".

"So, it's not for nothing that the last year my heart became anxious, as if I felt that you would appear, the woman said. - How long ago it was. As if not with me at all. Almost all my life has already passed. Well, write it down ... "

From the transcript of the interrogation of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, June 78:

"All those sentenced to death were the same to me. Only their number changed. Usually I was ordered to shoot a group of 27 people - so many partisans could fit in a cell. I was shooting about 500 meters from the prison near some pit. The arrested were put in a chain facing the pit. One of the men was rolling out my machine gun to the place of execution. At the command of my superiors, I knelt down and shot at people until everyone fell dead ... "

"Lead into nettles" - in Tony's jargon, it meant lead to execution. She herself died three times. For the first time in the fall of 1941, in a terrible "Vyazma cauldron", a young girl, a sanitary instructor. Hitler's troops then attacked Moscow as part of Operation Typhoon.

Soviet generals threw their armies to death, and this was not considered a crime - war has a different morality. More than a million Soviet boys and girls perished in that Vyazma meat grinder in just six days, five hundred thousand were captured. The death of ordinary soldiers at that moment did not solve anything and did not bring victory closer, it was simply meaningless. As well as helping a nurse to the dead ...

19-year-old nurse Tonya Makarova woke up after a fight in the forest. The air smelled of burnt flesh. An unknown soldier was lying nearby. "Hey, are you still safe? My name is Nikolai Fedchuk." “And I’m Tonya,” she didn’t feel anything, didn’t hear, didn’t understand, as if her soul had been concussed, and only a human shell remained, but inside there was emptiness. She reached out to him, trembling: "Ma-a-amochka, how cold it is!" "Well, beautiful, don't cry. We'll get out together," Nikolai answered and unbuttoned the top button of her tunic.

For three months, before the first snow, they wandered through the thickets together, getting out of the encirclement, not knowing either the direction of movement, or their ultimate goal, or where their enemies were, or where. They were starving, breaking the stolen loaves of bread for two. During the day they shied away from the military carts, and at night they warmed each other. Tonya washed both footcloths in cold water, cooked a simple dinner. Did she love Nikolai? Rather, she drove out, burned out with a hot iron, fear and cold from within.

"I'm almost a Muscovite, - Tonya proudly lied to Nikolai. - There are many children in our family. And we are all Parfenovs. I am the eldest, like Gorky's, early in the world. She grew such a beech, taciturn. Once I came to a village school, in the first grade, and forgot my last name. The teacher asks: "What is your name, girl?" And I know that Parfenova, but I'm afraid to say. Children from the back of the school scream: "Yes, she is Makarova, her father is Makar." So they wrote me down alone in all the documents. After school she left for Moscow, then the war began. I was called up as a nurse. And my dream was different - I wanted to scribble on a machine gun, like Anka the machine gunner from "Chapaev". Don't I look like her? When we get to ours, let's ask for a machine gun ... "

In January 1942, dirty and tattered, Tonya and Nikolai finally reached the village of Krasny Kolodets. And then they had to part forever. " You know, my home village is nearby. I am there now, I have a wife, children, ”Nikolai said goodbye to her. - I could not admit to you earlier, forgive me. Thanks for the company. Then get out somehow yourself. "" Don't leave me, Kolya", - Tonya begged, hanging on top of him. However, Nikolay shook her off like ashes from a cigarette and left.

For several days Tonya begged around the huts, prayed for Christ, asked to stay. At first, the compassionate housewives let her in, but after a few days they invariably refused the shelter, explaining that they themselves had nothing to eat. "It hurts to look at her bad, - said the women. - To our peasants, who are not at the front, climbs with them into the attic, asks her to warm her up."

It is possible that Tonya at that moment was really moved by her mind. Perhaps she was finished off by Nikolai's betrayal, or she simply ran out of strength - one way or another, she only had physical needs: she wanted to eat, drink, wash herself with soap in a hot bath and sleep with someone, so as not to be alone in the cold darkness. She didn't want to be a heroine, she just wanted to survive. At any price.

In the village where Tonya stopped at the beginning, there were no policemen. Almost all of its inhabitants went to the partisans. In the neighboring village, on the contrary, only punishers were registered. The front line here ran in the middle of the outskirts. Somehow she wandered around the outskirts, half-mad, lost, not knowing where, how and with whom she would spend this night. People in uniform stopped her and asked in Russian: "Who is she?" “I'm Antonina, Makarova. From Moscow,” the girl replied.

She was brought to the administration of the village of Lokot. The policemen complimented her, then took turns "loving" her. Then they gave her a whole glass of moonshine to drink, and then shoved a machine gun into her hands. As she dreamed of - to disperse the void inside with a continuous machine-gun line. For living people.

"Makarova-Ginzburg told during interrogations that for the first time she was taken out to be shot by partisans completely drunk, she did not understand what she was doing, - recalls the investigator in her case, Leonid Savoskin. - But they paid well - 30 marks, and offered cooperation on a permanent basis. After all, none of the Russian policemen wanted to get dirty, they preferred a woman to carry out the executions of partisans and their family members. A homeless and lonely Antonina was given a bed in a room at a local stud farm, where she could spend the night and store a machine gun. In the morning she volunteered for work".

"I didn’t know those I was shooting. They didn't know me. Therefore, I was not ashamed in front of them. Sometimes, you shoot, you come closer, and some still twitch. Then she again shot in the head so that the person would not suffer. Sometimes a piece of plywood with the inscription "partisan" was hung on the chest of several prisoners. Some sang something before they died. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardroom or in the yard. There were plenty of cartridges ... "

Former Redwell landlady Tony, one of those who once also kicked her out of her house, came to the village of Elbow for salt. She was detained by policemen and taken to a local prison, attributing a connection with the partisans. "I'm not a partisan. Just ask your Tonka-machine-gunner," the woman was frightened. Tonya looked at her carefully and grunted: "Come on, I'll give you salt."

The tiny room where Antonina lived was in order. There was a machine gun, glistening with machine oil. Nearby, on a chair, clothes were piled neatly: smart dresses, skirts, white blouses with holes ricocheting in the back. And a washing trough on the floor.

"If I like the things of the condemned, then I take them off the dead, why should I be lost, - explained Tonya. - Once the teacher was shot, so I liked her blouse, pink, silk, but it was all stained with blood, I was afraid that I would not wash it - I had to leave it in the grave. It's a shame ... So how much salt do you need? "

"I don't need anything from you, ”the woman backed away to the door. - Fear God, Tonya, he is there, he sees everything - there is so much blood on you, you don’t wipe yourself off! ”“ Well, since you are brave, why did you ask me for help when they took you to prison? - shouted Antonina after. - That would die like a hero! So, when the skin needs to be saved, then Tonkina's friendship is good? "

In the evenings, Antonina dressed up and went to a German club to dance. Other girls who worked as prostitutes for the Germans were not friends with her. Tonya lifted her nose, boasting that she was a Muscovite. With her roommate, the village headman's typist, she also did not open up, and she was afraid of her for some kind of spoiled look and for the crease on her forehead that had cut through early, as if Tonya was thinking too much.

At the dances, Tonya got drunk, and changed partners like gloves, laughed, clinked glasses, shot cigarettes from the officers. And she didn’t think about those next 27, whom she was to execute in the morning. It's scary to kill only the first, the second, then, when the count goes to hundreds, it becomes just hard work.

Before dawn, when, after torture, the groans of the partisans sentenced to execution died down, Tonya quietly climbed out of her bed and wandered for hours through the former stable, hastily converted into a prison, peering into the faces of those whom she was to kill.

From the interrogation of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, June 78:

"It seemed to me that the war would write off everything. I was just doing my job for which I was paid. It was necessary to shoot not only partisans, but also members of their families, women, teenagers. I tried not to remember this. Although I remember the circumstances of one execution - before the execution, a guy sentenced to death shouted to me: "We won't see you again, goodbye, sister! .."

She was incredibly lucky. In the summer of 1943, when the fighting for the liberation of the Bryansk region began, Tony and several local prostitutes were diagnosed with a venereal disease. The Germans ordered them to be treated, sending them to a hospital in their distant rear. When Soviet troops entered the village of Lokot, sending traitors to the Motherland and former policemen to the gallows, only terrible legends remained from the atrocities of Tonka the machine gunner.

From material things - hastily sprinkled bones in mass graves in an unmarked field, where, according to the most conservative estimates, the remains of one and a half thousand people were buried. Only about two hundred people who were shot by Tonya were able to restore the passport data. The death of these people formed the basis for the accusation in absentia of Antonina Makarovna Makarova, born in 1921, presumably a resident of Moscow. They didn't know anything else about her ...

"Our employees have been conducting the search for Antonina Makarova for more than thirty years, passing it on to each other by inheritance, '' said KGB Major Pyotr Nikolaevich Golovachev, who was engaged in the search for Antonina Makarova in the 70s. - From time to time it fell into the archive, then, when we caught and interrogated another traitor to the Motherland, it again surfaced. Tonka couldn't disappear without a trace ?! It is now possible to accuse the authorities of incompetence and illiteracy. But the work was going on with jewelry. During the post-war years, the KGB officers secretly and carefully checked all the women of the Soviet Union who bore this name, patronymic and surname and matched their age - there were about 250 such Tonek Makarovs in the USSR. But - it's useless. The real Tonka-machine-gunner has sunk into the water ... "

“You don’t scold Tonka too much,” Golovachev asked. “You know, I even feel sorry for her. This is all the war, damn it, it’s to blame, she broke her ... She had no choice - she could remain a human and then she would be among But she chose to live, becoming an executioner. But she was only 20 years old in 41 ".

But it was impossible to just take and forget about her.

“Her crimes were too terrible, - says Golovachev. - It just did not fit in my head how many lives she took. Several people managed to escape, they were the main witnesses in the case. And so, when we interrogated them, they said that Tonka still comes to them in their dreams. Young, with a machine gun, looks intently - and does not look away. They were convinced that the executioner girl was alive, and asked to be sure to find her in order to end these nightmares. We understood that she was I could have married a long time ago and change my passport, so we thoroughly studied the life path of all her possible relatives by the name of Makarov ... "

However, none of the investigators had any idea that it was necessary to start looking for Antonina not with the Makarovs, but with the Parfenovs. Yes, it was the accidental mistake of the village teacher Tony in the first grade, who wrote down her middle name as a surname, and allowed the "machine gunner" to elude retribution for so many years. Her real relatives, of course, never fell into the circle of interests of the investigation in this case.

But in 1976, one of the Moscow officials named Parfenov was going abroad. Filling out the application form for a foreign passport, he honestly listed the names of his brothers and sisters in a list, the family was large, as many as five children. All of them were Parfenovs, and only one, for some reason, was Antonina Makarovna Makarova, married since 1945, Ginzburg, now living in Belarus. The man was summoned to the OVIR for additional explanations. Naturally, people from the KGB in civilian clothes were also present at the fateful meeting.

"We were terribly afraid to jeopardize the reputation of a respected woman, a front-line soldier, a wonderful mother and wife, - recalls Golovachev. - Therefore, our employees went to the Belarusian Lepel secretly, for a whole year they watched Antonina Ginzburg, brought there one by one surviving witnesses, a former punisher, one of her lovers, for identification. Only when every last one said the same thing - it was she, Tonka the machine-gunner, we recognized her by the noticeable fold on her forehead - doubts disappeared. "

Antonina's husband, Viktor Ginzburg, a war and labor veteran, promised to complain to the UN after her unexpected arrest. "We did not confess to him what the accusation was against the one with whom he had lived happily a whole life. We were afraid that the man simply would not survive it," the investigators said.

Viktor Ginzburg threw complaints at various organizations, assuring that he loved his wife very much, and even if she committed some crime - for example, financial embezzlement - he would forgive her everything. And he also talked about how, as a wounded boy, in April 1945, he was lying in a hospital near Konigsberg, and suddenly she, a new nurse Tonechka, entered the room. Innocent, pure, as if not in a war - and he fell in love with her at first sight, and a few days later they signed.

Antonina took her husband's surname, and after demobilization she went with him to the Belarusian Lepel, forgotten by God and people, and not to Moscow, from where she was once called to the front. When the old man was told the truth, he turned gray overnight. And he did not write any more complaints.

"Arrested to her husband from the pre-trial detention center did not pass a single line. And by the way, she also did not write anything to the two daughters whom she gave birth to after the war and did not ask to see him, ”says investigator Leonid Savoskin. - When we managed to find contact with our accused, she began to talk about everything. About how she escaped from a German hospital and got into our environment, straightened out other people's veteran documents, according to which she began to live. She did not hide anything, but this was the most terrible thing.

There was a feeling that she sincerely misunderstands: why was she imprisoned, what was SO terrible she had done? It was as if a bloc of some kind from the war stood in her head, so that she probably would not go crazy herself. She remembered everything, each of her executions, but she did not regret anything. She seemed to me a very cruel woman. I don't know what she was like when she was young. And what made her commit these crimes. Desire to survive? A moment's darkening? Horrors of war? In any case, this does not justify her. She killed not only strangers, but her own family. She simply destroyed them with her exposure. Psychological examination showed that Antonina Makarovna Makarova is sane. "

Investigators were very afraid of some excesses on the part of the accused: before, there were cases when former policemen, healthy men, remembering past crimes, committed suicide right in the cell. The aged Tonya did not suffer from bouts of remorse. “It is impossible to be constantly afraid,” she said. “The first ten years I waited for a knock on the door, and then I calmed down.

During the investigative experiment, she was taken to Lokot, to the very field where she conducted the executions. The villagers spat after her like a revived ghost, and Antonina just looked askance at them, scrupulously explaining how, where, whom and what she killed ... For her it was a distant past, a different life.

“They disgraced me in my old age,” she complained in the evenings, sitting in a cell, to her jailers. “Now, after the verdict, I will have to leave Lepel, otherwise every fool will poke a finger at me. I think that I will be given probation for three years. Then you have to somehow rebuild your life. And how much is your salary in the pre-trial detention center, girls? Maybe I’ll get a job with you - something familiar ... "

Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was shot at six in the morning on August 11, 1978, almost immediately after the death sentence was passed. The court's decision came as an absolute surprise even for the people who were investigating, not to mention the defendant herself. All of the 55-year-old Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg's petitions for clemency in Moscow were rejected.

In the Soviet Union, this was the last major case of traitors to the Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, and the only one in which a woman punisher was involved. Never later were women in the USSR executed by court verdict.