← Back to the front page

The Night Witches and Other Warrior Women of World War II

Khalid Elhassan December 8, 2019 31 min

Lyudmila Pavlichenko - World War II — WWII Red Army snipers. Pintrest

24. Radicalized by Nazi Brutality

Young Zinaida Portnova endured life under the brutal German occupation, but became radicalized when a German soldier struck her grandmother while confiscating the family’s cattle. So she joined the underground Komsomol – the youth division of the communist party – and its resistance group, dubbed “The Young Avengers”.

Zinaida started by distributing anti-German propaganda leaflets, collecting and hiding weapons for the partisans, reporting on enemy troop movements, and engaging in opportunistic acts of sabotage of enemy vehicles. After learning the use of weapons and explosives, she took part in raids and sabotage operations against power plants, pumps, and a brick factory in the vicinity of Vitebsk, during which an estimated 100 German soldiers were killed.

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.