Tonka the machine gunner. At the mention of the name and nickname of this woman, you can shudder. After all, she is known for having shot about 1, 500 of her compatriots during the war from a machine gun.
As a child, Antonina revered the heroine of the Civil War Anka the machine gunner. But with the same weapons during the Great Patriotic War, she shot captured Soviet military, civilians and partisans.
Biography of Antonina Makarova
She was born in one of the Smolensk villages in 1921 in the Parfenov family. When the time came, Tonya went to first grade. At first she was shy, could not even clearly pronounce her last name. Then the guys screamed that she was Makarova. They meant that this is Makar’s daughter. But the teacher thought it was the name of the child. So Tonya Parfyonova turned into Antonina Makarova. Such an unexpected change of name was useful to her in the future.
After graduation, the girl went to study in Moscow. Here she found war. She herself filed documents to volunteer for the front. Makarova graduated from the courses of nurses and machine gunners.
Wanderings
But the war was not as heroic for Antonina as the girl imagined. After exhausting battles near Vyazma, only she and Nikolai Fedchuk survived. So a nineteen-year-old girl and soldier began to roam the forests. Without ceremony, he made Tonka his traveling wife. But she did not particularly resist, as she simply wanted to live.
The couple did not have a clear goal to break through to their own. Apparently Fedchuk wanted to get home. When he was near his village, Tonke admitted that he was married and went to his family.
At first she tried to make love with one of the remaining local men, but the women quickly drove her out of the settlement.
Antonina went on to wander on. Then she came to the so-called "Lokot Republic", where German henchmen (near the village of Lokot) founded their own "republic". There were policemen who gave her a drink and fed the girl, and she became their cohabitant.
Executioner's career
Once, when Antonina was completely drunk, she was brought to an easel machine gun and ordered to shoot. On the other side stood about three dozen people, including women, children and the elderly. Makarova quickly complied with the order.
So she turned into Tonka the executioner. She was officially accepted for the position, even a salary of 30 German marks was set.
Almost every day, the girl shot about three dozen people. In the evenings there were dances, schnapps, and at night she shared a bed with someone from a German warrior or with another police officer.
In total, she shot about one and a half thousand people. But some children managed to survive, as bullets from a machine gun flew above their heads. These children, along with the corpses, were taken to the forest by local residents, where the dead were buried, and the children were transferred to partisans.
Peaceful time
In 1944, the troops of the Soviet army came to this settlement, but Tonka was “lucky" that shortly before that she got syphilis and was assigned to the hospital. Then she fled from there, got other people's documents for herself, and then she began to work as a nurse.
There, a woman met a Soviet soldier, then married him. So she became Antonina Ginzburg. Together with her husband, Tonka left for his homeland, where she gave birth to two daughters. She worked as a supervisor of the quality department in the clothing industry.
