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A Ballerina Who Stabbed an SS Guard With a Stiletto and Other Historic Rebels

Khalid Elhassan August 10, 2020 34 min

22. A Young Resistance Martyr

Zinaida Portnova during her interrogation. Agenda Communista

In 1943, Zinaida Portnova got a job in a kitchen that served the German garrison of Obol, and poisoned the food. When suspicion fell upon her, she demonstrated her “innocence” by eating the food to prove that it was not poisoned. When she did not exhibit immediate ill effects, she was released. She became violently ill soon thereafter, but survived.

Zinaida Portnova monument in Russia. Wikimedia

Fleeing Obol, she joined another partisan unit and served as its scout. In late 1943, contact was lost with the Obol partisans, and Zinaida was infiltrated back into the city to investigate. She was captured almost immediately but managed to grab a pistol her German interrogator had carelessly left lying atop his desk and shot him to death. She also shot guards who came rushing in upon hearing the gunfire. Zinaida escaped the building, but was eventually tracked down and captured. She was tortured and executed on January 15^th, 1944, aged seventeen.

Also Read: These Tragic and Triumphant Teenagers Who Fought in World War II.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.