Victor Ginzburg is Tonka's husband. The main facts from the inhuman life of the executioner Antonina Makarova, nicknamed “Tonka the Machine Gunner.” In peacetime

Story Antonina Makarova-Ginsburg- a Soviet girl who personally executed one and a half thousand of her compatriots - the other, dark, treacherous side of the Great Patriotic War.

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

Pulling the bolt of the machine gun, she did not think about those she was shooting - children, women, old people - it was just work for her.

“What nonsense, that later you suffer from remorse. That those you kill come in nightmares at night. I still haven’t dreamed of a single one,” she told her investigators during interrogations, when she was finally identified and detained - 35 years after her last execution.

The criminal case of the Bryansk punisher Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg still rests in the depths of the FSB special storage facility. 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 one and a half thousand 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 benefits required by their status: an apartment, insignia for milestone dates, and scarce sausage in their food rations. Her husband was also a participant in the war, with orders and medals. The two adult daughters were proud of their mother.

They looked up to her, they took an example from her: what a heroic fate: to march throughout the war as a simple nurse from Moscow to Koenigsberg. School teachers invited Antonina Makarovna to speak at the line, to tell the younger generation that in the life of every person there is always a place for heroic deeds. And the most important thing in war is not to be afraid to look death in the 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. 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 and inconspicuous men in civilian clothes jumped out of it and said:

“You urgently need to travel with us!” surrounded her, not allowing her 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 kind of mistake,” the woman grinned 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, you worked for the Germans, carried out mass executions. There are still legends about your atrocities in the village of Lokot, near Bryansk. We have been looking for you for more than thirty years - now it is time to answer for what we have done. Your crimes have no statute of limitations.”

“So it’s not in vain Last year“I felt anxious in my heart, as if I felt that you would appear,” the woman said. - How long ago it was. It’s as if it’s not with me at all. Almost my whole life has already passed. Well, write it down..."

From the interrogation protocol of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, June 1978:

“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 - that’s how many partisans the cell could accommodate. I shot about 500 meters from the prison near some pit. Those arrested were placed in a line facing the pit. One of the men rolled my machine gun to the execution site. At the command of my superiors, I knelt down and shot at people until everyone fell dead..."

“Lead into nettles” - in Tony’s jargon this meant leading to execution. She herself died three times. The first time was in the fall of 1941, in the terrible “Vyazma cauldron,” as a young girl-medicine instructor. Hitler's troops were then advancing on Moscow as part of Operation Typhoon. Soviet commanders abandoned their armies to death, and this was not considered a crime - war has a different morality. More than a million Soviet boys and girls died in that Vyazemsk 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. Just like a nurse helping the dead...

19-year-old nurse Tonya Makarova woke up after a battle in the forest. The air smelled of burnt flesh. An unfamiliar soldier lay nearby. “Hey, are you still okay? 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 shell-shocked, and only a human shell was left, and inside there was emptiness. She reached out to him, trembling:

“Mommy, it’s so cold!” “Well, beautiful, don’t cry. “We’ll get out together,” Nikolai answered and unbuttoned the top button of her tunic.

For three months, until the first snow, they wandered together through the thickets, getting out of the encirclement, not knowing either the direction of movement, or their final goal, or where their friends were, or where their enemies were. They were starving, breaking stolen slices of bread for two. During the day they shied away from military convoys, and at night they kept each other warm. Tonya washed both of their foot wraps in cold water and prepared a simple lunch. 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, I came out into the public early. She grew up like such a beech, taciturn. Once I came to a village school, in first grade, and forgot my last name. The teacher asks:

"What's your name, girl?"

And I know that Parfenova, I’m just afraid to say. The kids from the back row shout:

“Yes, she is Makarova, her father is Makar.”

So they wrote me down alone in all the documents. After school I went to Moscow, and then the war began. I was called to be a nurse. But I had a different dream - I wanted to shoot a machine gun like Anka the Machine Gunner from Chapaev. Do I really look like her? When we get to our people, let’s ask for a machine gun...”

In January 1942, dirty and ragged, Tonya and Nikolai finally came to the village of Krasny Kolodets. And then they had to part forever.

“You know, my home village is nearby. “I’m going there now, I have a wife and children,” Nikolai told her goodbye. “I couldn’t confess to you earlier, forgive me.” Thanks for the company. Then get out on your own somehow.” “Don’t leave me, Kolya,” Tonya begged, hanging onto him. However, Nikolai shook it off like ash from a cigarette and left.

“Her look is painful and not good,” the women said. “Whoever is not at the front pesters our men, climbs into the attic with them, asks them to warm her up.”

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

In the village where Tonya stopped at the beginning, there were no policemen. Almost all its inhabitants joined the partisans. In the neighboring village, on the contrary, only punitive forces were registered. The front line here ran in the middle of the outskirts. One day she wandered around the outskirts, half-mad, lost, not knowing where, how and with whom she would spend that night. People in uniform stopped her and asked in Russian:

"Who is she?"

“I’m Antonina, Makarova. From Moscow,” the girl answered.

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, after which they put a machine gun in her hands. As she dreamed of - to disperse the emptiness inside with a continuous machine-gun line. For living people.

“Makarova-Ginzburg said during interrogations that the first time she was taken out to be shot by the partisans she was 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 an ongoing basis. After all, none of the Russian policemen wanted to get dirty; they preferred that the executions of partisans and members of their families be carried out by a woman. 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 I was shooting. They didn't know me. Therefore, I was not ashamed in front of them. It happened that you would shoot, come closer, and someone else would twitch. Then she shot him in the head again so that the person would not suffer. Sometimes several prisoners had a piece of plywood with the inscription “partisan” hung on their chests. Some people sang something before they died. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardhouse or in the yard. There was plenty of ammunition..."

“I’m not a partisan. Just ask your Tonka the machine gunner,” the woman got scared. Tonya looked at her carefully and chuckled:

“Come on, I’ll give you salt.”

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

“If I like things from the condemned, then I take them from the dead, why would they go to waste,” explained Tonya. “Once I shot a teacher, I liked her blouse so much, it was pink, silk, but it was too covered in blood, I was afraid that I wouldn’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 towards the door. “Fear God, Tonya, he’s there, he sees everything—there’s so much blood on you, you can’t wash it off!”

“Well, since you are brave, why did you ask me for help when they were taking you to prison? - Antonina shouted after her. - So I would have died like a hero! So, when you need to save your skin, then Tonka’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 turned up her nose, boasting that she was a Muscovite. She also did not open up with her roommate, the typist for the village elder, and she was afraid of her for some kind of spoiled look and for the wrinkle that appeared early on her forehead, as if Tonya was thinking too much.

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

Before dawn, when the groans of the partisans sentenced to execution died down after torture, Tonya quietly crawled out of her bed and spent hours wandering around 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 1978:

“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 the partisans, but also members of their families, women, and teenagers. I tried not to remember this. Although I remember the circumstances of one execution - before the execution, the 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 battles for the liberation of the Bryansk region began, Tony and several local prostitutes were diagnosed with 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.

Of material things - hastily sprinkled bones in mass graves in an unnamed field, where, according to the most conservative estimates, the remains of one and a half thousand people rested. It was possible to restore the passport data of only about two hundred people shot by Tonya. The death of these people formed the basis for the in absentia prosecution 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 involved in the search for Antonina Makarova in the 70s. — From time to time it ended up in the archive, then, when we caught and interrogated another traitor to the Motherland, it surfaced again. Couldn't Tonka disappear without a trace?! Now we can accuse the authorities of incompetence and illiteracy. But the work was in progress. Behind post-war years KGB officers secretly and carefully checked all the women Soviet Union who bore this name, patronymic and surname and were suitable in age - there were about 250 such Tonek Makarovs in the USSR. But it's no use. The real Tonka the machine gunner seemed to have sunk into thin air..."

“Don’t scold Tonka too much,” Golovachev asked. - You know, I even feel sorry for her. It’s all the damned war’s fault, it broke her... She had no choice - she could have remained human and then she herself would have been among those shot. But she chose to live, becoming an executioner. But in 1941 she was only 20 years old.”

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

“Her crimes were too terrible,” says Golovachev. “I just couldn’t wrap my head around how many lives she took.” Several people managed to escape and were the main witnesses in the case. And so, when we interrogated them, they said that Tonka still comes to them in their dreams. The young woman, 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 stop these nightmares. We understood that she could have gotten married a long time ago and changed her passport, so we thoroughly studied life path all her possible relatives named Makarov..."

However, none of the investigators realized that they had to start looking for Antonina not from the Makarovs, but from the Parfenovs. Yes, it was the accidental mistake of the village teacher Tony in the first grade, who wrote down her patronymic as a surname, that 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. When filling out the application form for a foreign passport, he honestly listed the names and surnames of his siblings; the family was large, as many as five children. All of them were Parfenovs, and for some reason only one was Antonina Makarovna Makarov, married to Ginzburg in 1945, 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 woman respected by everyone, a front-line soldier, a wonderful mother and wife,” recalls Golovachev. “That’s why our employees went to the Belarusian Lepel secretly, watched Antonina Ginzburg for a whole year, brought there one by one the surviving witnesses, a former punisher, one of her lovers, for identification. Only when every single one of them said the same thing - it’s her, Tonka the Machine Gunner, we recognized her by a noticeable crease on her forehead - the doubts disappeared.”

Antonina's husband, Victor Ginzburg, a war and labor veteran, promised to complain to the UN after her unexpected arrest.

“We did not admit to him what they accuse the one with whom he lived happily his whole life. They were afraid that the man simply wouldn’t survive this,” investigators said.

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

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 I didn’t write any more complaints.

“The woman who was arrested did not convey a single line to her husband from the pre-trial detention center. And by the way, she also didn’t write anything to the two daughters she gave birth to after the war and didn’t 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 by escaping from a German hospital and finding herself surrounded by us, she straightened out someone else’s veteran’s documents, according to which she began to live. She didn't hide anything, but that was the worst thing.

One got the feeling that she sincerely misunderstood: why was she imprisoned, what SO terrible thing did she do? It was as if she had some kind of block in her head since the war, so that she herself would probably not go crazy. She remembered everything, every execution, but 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. The desire to survive? A moment of darkness? Horrors of war? In any case, this does not justify her. She destroyed not only strangers, but also her own family. She simply destroyed them with her exposure. A mental examination showed that Antonina Makarovna Makarova is sane.”

The investigators were very afraid of any 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 attacks of remorse.

“You can’t be afraid all the time,” she said. “For the first ten years I waited for a knock on the door, and then I calmed down. There are no such sins that a person will be tormented all his life.”

During the investigative experiment, she was taken to Lokot, to the very field where she carried out the executions. Country people they spat after her like a revived ghost, and Antonina only looked sideways at them in bewilderment, scrupulously explaining how, where, whom and with what she killed... For her it was the distant past, another life.

“They disgraced me in my old age,” she complained to her jailers in the evenings, sitting in her cell. “Now after the verdict I’ll have to leave Lepel, otherwise every fool will point a finger at me.” I think they will give me three years probation. For what more? Then you need to somehow arrange your life again. How much is your salary in the pre-trial detention center, girls? Maybe I should get a job with you - the work is familiar..."

Antonin Makarov-Ginzburg shot at six o'clock in the morning on August 11, 1978, almost immediately after the death sentence was pronounced. The court's decision came as a surprise to the defendant. All requests for clemency from 55-year-old Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg 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 female punisher appeared. Never later were women executed by court in the USSR. sources

Story Antonina Makarova-Ginsburg- a Soviet girl who personally executed one and a half thousand of her compatriots - the other, dark side of the heroic history of the Great Patriotic War.

Tonka the machine gunner, as it was called then, worked on Soviet territory occupied by Nazi troops from 1941 to 1943, carrying out mass death sentences of fascist partisan families.

Jerking 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 you are then tormented by remorse. That those you kill come at night in nightmares. I still haven’t had a single dream,” she told her investigators during interrogations, when she was finally identified and detained - through 35 years after her last execution.

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 benefits required by their status: an apartment, insignia for milestone dates, and scarce sausage in their food rations. Her husband was also a participant in the war, with orders and medals. The two adult daughters were proud of their mother.

"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 kind of mistake,” the woman grinned 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 being talked about 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 in vain that last year my heart began to feel anxious, as if I felt that you would appear,” the woman said. “How long ago it was. It’s like it wasn’t with me at all. Almost my whole life has already passed. Well, write it down...”

From the interrogation protocol of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, June 1978:

“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 - that’s how many partisans the cell could accommodate. I shot about 500 meters from the prison near some pit. Those arrested were placed in a chain facing pit. One of the men rolled out my machine gun to the execution site. At the command of my superiors, I knelt down and shot at people until everyone fell dead..."

More than a million Soviet boys and girls died in that Vyazemsk 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. Just like a nurse helping the dead...

19-year-old nurse Tonya Makarova woke up after a battle in the forest. The air smelled of burnt flesh. An unfamiliar soldier lay 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 shell-shocked, and only a human shell was left, and inside there was emptiness.

She reached out to him, trembling: “Mom, it’s so cold!” “Well, beautiful, don’t cry. We’ll get out together,” Nikolai answered and unbuttoned the top button of her tunic.

During the day they shied away from military convoys, and at night they kept each other warm. Tonya washed both of their foot wraps in cold water and prepared a simple lunch. 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’m the eldest, like Gorky, I came out into the world early. I grew up like a beech, taciturn. Once I came to a village school, in first grade, and forgot my last name.

The teacher asks: “What is your name, girl?” And I know that Parfenova, I’m just afraid to say. The kids from the back row shout: “Yes, she’s Makarova, her father is Makar.”

So they wrote me down alone in all the documents. After school I went to Moscow, and then the war began. I was called to be a nurse. But I had a different dream - I wanted to shoot a machine gun like Anka the Machine Gunner from Chapaev. Do I really look like her? When we get to our people, let’s ask for a machine gun..."

In January 1942, dirty and ragged, Tonya and Nikolai finally came to the village of Krasny Kolodets. And then they had to part forever. “You know, my home village is nearby. I’m there now, I have a wife and children,” Nikolai told her goodbye. “I couldn’t confess to you before, forgive me. Thank you for the company. Then you’ll get out on your own somehow.” “Don’t leave me, Kolya,” Tonya begged, hanging onto him. However, Nikolai shook it off like ash from a cigarette and left.

For several days, Tonya wandered around the huts, rejoiced in Christ, and asked to stay. The compassionate housewives let her in at first, but after a few days they invariably refused the shelter, explaining that they themselves had nothing to eat. “She has a bad look in her eyes,” the women said. “She pesters our men, who is not at the front, climbs into the attic with them, asks them to warm her up.”

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

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, after which they put a machine gun in her hands. As she dreamed of - to disperse the emptiness inside with a continuous machine-gun line. For living people.

“Makarova-Ginzburg said during interrogations that the first time she was taken out to be shot by the partisans completely drunk, she did not understand what she was doing,” recalls the investigator on her case, Leonid Savoskin. “But they paid me well - 30 marks, and offered cooperation on an ongoing basis.

After all, none of the Russian policemen wanted to get dirty; they preferred that the executions of partisans and members of their families be carried out by a woman. 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 I was shooting. They didn’t know me. That’s why I wasn’t ashamed in front of them. Sometimes, I’d shoot, come closer, and someone would still twitch. Then I’d shoot again in the head so that the person wouldn’t suffer. Sometimes several prisoners had a piece of plywood with the inscription “partisan” hung on their chests. Some sang something before they died. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardhouse or in the yard. There was plenty of cartridges..."

Tony's former landlady from Krasny Kolodets, one of those who once also kicked her out of her house, came to the village of Elbow for salt. She was detained by police and taken to a local prison, citing connections with the partisans. “I’m not a partisan. Just ask your Tonka the machine gunner,” the woman was frightened. Tonya looked at her carefully and chuckled: “Come on, I’ll give you salt.”

“If I like things from the condemned, then I take them off the dead, why should I waste them,” explained Tonya. “Once I shot a teacher, I liked her blouse, pink, silk, but it was too covered in blood, I was afraid that "I didn'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 towards the door. “Fear God, Tonya, he’s there, he sees everything - there’s so much blood on you, you can’t wash it off!” “Well, since you’re brave, why did you ask me for help when they were taking you to prison?” Antonina shouted after him. “You would have died like a hero! So, when you need to save your skin, then Tonka’s friendship is good?” .

She also did not open up with her roommate, the typist for the village elder, and she was afraid of her for some kind of spoiled look and for the wrinkle that appeared early on her forehead, as if Tonya was thinking too much.

Before dawn, when the groans of the partisans sentenced to execution died down after the torture, Tonya quietly crawled out of her bed and spent hours wandering around 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 1978:

“It seemed to me that the war would write off everything. I was simply doing my job, for which I was paid. I had 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 By shooting, a guy sentenced to death shouted to me: “We won’t see you again, goodbye, sister!”

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.

Among the 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 rested. It was possible to restore the passport data of only about two hundred people shot by Tonya.

The death of these people formed the basis for the in absentia prosecution 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 more than thirty years, passing it on to each other by inheritance,” said KGB Major Pyotr Nikolaevich Golovachev, who was involved in the search for Antonina Makarova in the 70s. “Periodically it ended up in the archive, then when we caught and interrogated another traitor to the Motherland, it again floated to the surface. Couldn't Tonka disappear without a trace?!

Now we can accuse the authorities of incompetence and illiteracy. But the work was in progress. During the post-war years, KGB officers secretly and carefully checked all the women of the Soviet Union who bore this name, patronymic and surname and were suitable in age - there were about 250 such Tonek Makarovs in the USSR. But it's useless. The real Tonka the machine gunner seemed to have sunk into thin air..."

“Don’t scold Tonka too much,” Golovachev asked. “You know, I even feel sorry for her. It’s all the damned war’s fault, it broke her... She had no choice - she could have remained human and then she herself would have been one of the shot. But she chose to live, becoming an executioner. But in 1941 she was only 20 years old."

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

“Her crimes were too terrible,” says Golovachev. “It was simply impossible to comprehend 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.

The young woman, 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 stop these nightmares. We understood that she could have gotten married long ago and changed her passport, so we thoroughly studied the life path of all her possible relatives named Makarov..."

All of them were Parfenovs, and for some reason only one was Antonina Makarovna Makarov, married to Ginzburg in 1945, 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 woman respected by everyone, a front-line soldier, a wonderful mother and wife,” recalls Golovachev. “Therefore, our employees went to the Belarusian Lepel secretly, watched Antonina Ginzburg for a whole year, brought there one by one the surviving witnesses, the former punisher, one of her lovers, for identification. Only when everyone said the same thing - it was she, Tonka the Machine Gunner, we recognized her by a noticeable crease on her forehead - doubts disappeared."

Antonina's husband, Victor Ginzburg, a war and labor veteran, promised to complain to the UN after her unexpected arrest. “We didn’t admit to him what they were accusing the one with whom he had lived a happy life. We were afraid that the man simply wouldn’t survive this,” the investigators said.

Victor Ginzburg bombarded various organizations with complaints, assuring that he loved his wife very much, and even if she had committed some crime - for example, embezzlement - he would forgive her everything.

He also talked about how, as a wounded boy in April 1945, he was lying in a hospital near Koenigsberg, and suddenly she, a new nurse, Tonechka, entered the room. Innocent, pure, as if she had not been at war - and he fell in love with her at first sight, and a few days later they married.

“The woman who was arrested did not give a single line to her husband from the pre-trial detention center. And, by the way, she also did not write anything to the two daughters 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 by escaping from a German hospital and finding herself surrounded by us, she straightened out someone else’s veteran’s documents, according to which she began to live. She didn't hide anything, but that was the worst thing.

One got the feeling that she sincerely misunderstood: why was she imprisoned, what SO terrible thing did she do? It was as if she had some kind of block in her head since the war, so that she herself would probably not go crazy. She remembered everything, every execution, but 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. The desire to survive? A moment of darkness? Horrors of war? In any case, this does not justify her. She destroyed not only strangers, but also her own family.

She simply destroyed them with her exposure. A mental examination showed that Antonina Makarovna Makarova is sane."

“It’s impossible to be constantly afraid,” she said. “For the first ten years I waited for a knock on the door, and then I calmed down. There are no such sins that a person will be tormented all his life.”

During the investigative experiment, she was taken to Lokot, to the very field where she carried out the executions. The villagers spat after her like a revived ghost, and Antonina only looked sideways at them in bewilderment, scrupulously explaining how, where, whom and with what she killed... For her it was the distant past, another life.

“They disgraced me in my old age,” she complained in the evenings, sitting in her cell, to her jailers. “Now after the verdict I’ll have to leave Lepel, otherwise every fool will point a finger at me. I think they’ll give me three years’ probation. For what?” more? Then you need to somehow arrange your life again. How much is your salary in the pre-trial detention center, girls? Maybe I should get a job with you - the work is familiar..."

Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was shot at six o'clock in the morning on August 11, 1978, almost immediately after the death sentence was pronounced. The court's decision came as a complete surprise even to the people who led the investigation, not to mention the defendant herself. All requests for clemency from 55-year-old Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg in Moscow were rejected.

After the end of World War II Soviet authorities launching punitive operations and searching for criminal collaborators. The country is shaken by public executions; one of the most famous was the execution at the Leningrad Gigant cinema. These processes are filmed and shown in newsreels. A real hunt and investigation begins for the traitors. One of these criminals, who for a long time could not be caught and convicted of crimes, turned out to be the only woman - the executioner Tonka the Machine Gunner.

Lokot Republic

The elbow of the Bryansk region was captured by the Nazis. At its base, Reichsführer SS Himmler ordered the creation of a republic under the control of the local population. Such an organization was supposed to show the locals that it was free of communists. Autonomous became a place where peasants were allowed to work on their own land. But not all residents supported the new order; some went to the forests to continue, which was quite active in the Bryansk region.

Bronislav Kaminsky, a former technologist at a local distillery, became the new burgomaster of the republic. German generals They placed the highest trust in him and allowed him to build a new future.

Private trade was allowed in the republic, and only a small tax was collected in favor of the new authorities. Against this background, constant partisan battles took place, as a result of which the new leadership captured partisans and other suspects. Mass extermination of dissenters was the order of the day and occurred regularly.

Tonya Makarova could well have been among those executed, but she decided to survive at any cost, which turned out to be too high. Kaminsky personally invited her to perform the work of the executioner of the new regime. The nineteen-year-old girl agreed. She could have gone into the forests with the partisans, but began to serve the new authorities. She jumped at the chance to save her life.

She was assigned to carry out death sentences and was given a machine gun, and before that she took the oath of allegiance to Germany.

Female executioner

The local population had no problems with either clothing or food. The Germans uninterruptedly supplied the region with essential goods.

Tonya was given a room at a local stud farm and a salary of 30 marks. After long wanderings through the forests, after the Vyazemsky Cauldron, it seemed to the girl that Kaminsky’s proposal was not the worst option. By those standards, she lived in luxury. She had absolutely everything. But when it came to executions, there was no turning back.

And when Tonya already believed that luck had smiled on her, a machine gun was placed between her and the prisoners. Despite the fact that she was drunk, she remembered this day well. No one was going to show mercy to the doomed, and Tonya Makarova forgot about all her doubts.

At each execution, she shot about 30 prisoners with a Maxim machine gun. This is exactly how much was placed in the stall of the former stud farm of Mikhail Romanov. In two years, according to official data, the girl killed about 1,500 thousand prisoners. This category included partisans, Jews and persons suspected of having links with partisans, and their families.

New life

Wild life and prostitution in an entertainment establishment led to venereal disease. And Antonina was sent to Germany for treatment. But she managed to escape from the hospital, made herself new documents, and got a job in a military hospital. There she met her future husband. It was a Belarusian soldier who was in the hospital after being wounded - Viktor Ginzburg. The biography of his future wife was unknown to him.

A week later, the couple signed, the girl took her husband’s last name, which helped her get even more lost and escape justice.

During her work at the hospital, she earned a good reputation as a front-line soldier, and Viktor Ginzburg, Makarova’s husband, could not believe that his beloved wife was involved in such crimes.

Family

Victor Ginzburg, whose biography is practically unknown, was a native of a small Belarusian town, it was here that the family began a new life.

After the end of the war, the family went to Lepel, where Antonina got a job in a garment factory. The woman’s family - Victor Ginzburg, Makarova’s husband, their children - lived in this city for 30 years and established themselves as an exemplary family. She was in good standing with the factory management and never aroused any suspicion. From the memoirs of contemporaries, everyone characterized the Ginzburg family as exemplary.

Arrest

State security agencies opened a criminal case against Antonina Makarova in absentia, but they could not get on her trail. The case was transferred to the archive several times, but was not closed, the crimes she committed were too terrible. Neither Victor Ginzburg nor her immediate circle even knew about the woman’s involvement in the brutal murders.

The investigators did not admit to the family why they arrested the woman, so Viktor Ginzburg, Tonka the Machine Gunner’s husband, a war and labor veteran, threatened to complain to the UN after his wife’s unexpected arrest. Despite the fact that the traces were lost, surviving witnesses pointed to the criminal without doubt.

Victor Ginzburg wrote complaints to different organizations, assuring that he loves his wife very much and is ready to forgive her all her crimes. But I didn’t know how serious it was.

When Victor Ginzburg, Makarova's husband, found out the terrible truth, the man turned gray overnight.

Surname

There are some ambiguities in the biography of Antonina Makarova. She was approximately born in the early 20s in Moscow. Her mother was a native of Sychevsky. After finishing the seventh grade, Antonina lived in Moscow with her aunt.

As for her last name, then the large family bore the surname Panfilov, patronymic - Makarovna/Makarovic. But at school the girl was registered as Makarova, either by accident or due to inattention. This surname was transferred to the girl’s passport.

Finally, Antonina was sentenced to death, and Victor Ginzbrug, Makarova’s husband, and his two daughters left the city in an unknown direction. Their fate is still unknown.

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Biography, life story of Tonka the Machine Gunner (Antonina Makarovna Makarova)

Antonina Makarova (aka Tonka the Machine Gunner) is an executioner, one of the most cruel persons of the Great Patriotic War.

Childhood

Antonina was born in 1920 in Malaya Volkovka (Sychevsky district, Smolensk province). According to other sources, her year of birth is 1923, and her place of birth is Moscow.

Antonina's real name is Parfenova. She received the surname Makarov by an absurd accident. When the girl went to school, the teacher mixed up her last and middle names and wrote her down in the class register under the name Antonina Makarova. Since then, in all documents she was listed under that last name.

Tony's family lived very poorly. The girl’s mother worked a lot, in addition, she had her own small vegetable garden, which had to be constantly monitored. She simply did not have time to take care of her daughter’s stupid requests, in her opinion. And Antonina dreamed of such mundane things as her own dress, new boots and a trip to the local dance floor... On the day when the beginning of the war was announced on the radio, Antonina realized that her old life had come to an end. It is noteworthy that the young girl was not upset or afraid - on the contrary, she felt some joy from such sad news.

The path to the punitive

In 1941, Antonina went to the front as a nurse. For two months the girl worked diligently, cared for the wounded, washed, cleaned, in a word, she worked as hard as she could. But already two months after it began new stage her life, a misfortune happened - the unit in which she worked came under fire from the Vyazemsk operation. There were almost no survivors... However, Tonya managed to escape. She hid in the forest for several days. Then the Germans found her. Makarova was captured.

Tonya spent little time without will - very soon she escaped in the company of Nikolai Fedchuk, a simple soldier who agreed to take the girl, scared to death, with him. For several months they wandered around the districts, trying to figure out how to get out of the German encirclement. Eventually, Tonya and Nikolai reached the village of Krasny Kolodets. Fedchuk’s family lived in this village - his wife and children. Nikolai said goodbye to Tonya, although she begged him to keep her with him. But the soldier was adamant. Tonya had to leave...

CONTINUED BELOW

Endless roads, new villages, unfamiliar villages... For a long time, Makarova wandered through strange places, until one day she wandered into the village of Lokot (the newly formed Lokot Republic), where she was again arrested by the Germans.

Once again captured, Antonina thought of only one thing - she had to survive. When the Germans began to interrogate her, she realized what had to be done. And then the girl began to scold the power of the Soviets. Her idea was a success - the German soldiers spared her, but in exchange for her life they offered her to become a punisher herself. Antonina agreed. She became an auxiliary police officer, was given a Maxim machine gun and was ordered to execute Soviet partisans and members of their families.

During her first execution, Makarova was terribly worried. She couldn't muster the courage to fire the bullet. Then the smart Germans decided to get the Russian girl drunk - as they say, for courage. True, this was the only case when Makarova needed “doping” to perform her duties... Throughout her career as an executioner, Tonya shot more than 1,500 people (according to official data).

Antonina was never tormented by her conscience. She was not ashamed of her actions. She perceived everything that was happening as if it were the norm, as if this was how it should be, as if she was born for this. Very often, after the next execution, Makarova took off the clothes that she liked from the corpses, and sometimes she could grumble dissatisfiedly that, supposedly, the clothes had lost their appearance because of the blood and bullet holes. Historians claim that sometimes at night Antonina came to the prison for those sentenced to death and carefully examined each poor fellow... More precisely, their clothes, which would soon go to her.

In 1943, Antonina Makarova was sent to the hospital for treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. The fact is that after a hard day, Tonya loved to go to a local music club, dance there to her heart's content, drink a hefty dose of alcohol and earn a little extra money by pleasing German soldiers. In the hospital, having received a little treatment, Tonya met a German cook-corporal, who first took her to Ukraine and then to Poland (all their movements were, of course, secret). In Poland, the cook was killed, and Tonya was sent to a concentration camp in the city of Keninsberg. In 1945, the Red Army broke into Keninsberg. Makarova, using someone else’s military ID, stated that she was a Soviet nurse with three years of experience. An experienced nurse was accepted into service in a Soviet mobile hospital. There, Tonya began an affair with Viktor Ginzburg, a Belarusian soldier, which lasted only a week. Seven days after they met, Victor took Tonya as his wife. Antonina took her husband's surname.

Life after the war

After the end of the war, Antonina and Victor settled in the city of Lepel, Ginzburg’s homeland. Soon the couple had two daughters. Tonya got a job at a local clothing factory as a shop inspector and quality assessor of finished products. She was one of the best employees of the enterprise, her photograph often hung on the honor board, she was valued by management and respected by her colleagues. For many years, Antonina worked at the factory, but she was never able to make friends there - she was withdrawn, spoke little, tried not to drink alcohol during collective holiday evenings, in a word, tried to build a wall around herself. And this wall turned out to be strong - no one (including her husband) knew about Antonina Ginzburg’s terrible past. For the time being, for the time being...

Committee staff state security The USSR (KGB) began looking for Tonka the Machine Gunner, as the residents of the village of Lokot called her, immediately after the territory of the village was liberated. The search was difficult and lengthy - none of the surviving residents knew her real name. In 1976, an incident occurred in Bryansk that moved the search for Makarova off the ground. On the street, one man recognized another as Nikolai Ivanin, the head of the Lokot prison during the war. Ivanin was detained. During interrogation, he said that Tonka the machine gunner’s name is actually Antonina Makarova. The KGB began an active search for a woman with that name. But all their efforts were in vain, because on the birth certificate Tonya was written down under the name Parfenov. Investigators learned about this only when one of Tony’s brothers, who lived in Tyumen and worked in the Ministry of Defense, indicated this in his application to travel outside the country. The search resumed. Ivanin had already committed suicide by this time (he committed suicide on the eve of a meeting with Antonina Makarova from Serpukhov, whom investigators initially mistook for Tonka the Machine Gunner).

Tonya was found in Lepel. The KGB set up surveillance on her, but after a week they stopped - Antonina noticed them and began to suspect something. Over the course of a year, KGB officers collected evidence that could prove Makarova’s guilt. They sent security officers to her in order to get her to talk, conducted experiments and arranged for her “random” meetings with those who could identify her... As a result, in the fall of 1978, Antonina was arrested. As Leonid Savoskin, an investigator who was personally present during Makarova’s arrest, assured, the woman did not resist. She wasn’t even surprised - apparently she knew that this was exactly what would happen.

Antonina was taken from Lepel to Bryansk. In prison she remained calm and stoic. Makarova was completely sure that for her past she would face a maximum of three years in prison - she was an elderly woman, in addition, the war ended more than thirty years ago... Antonina went along with the investigation, dutifully went to investigative experiments in Lokot, but did not admit her guilt - She said that the war was to blame. By the way, during the entire time of her imprisonment, Antonina never once thought about her family - about Victor, children and little grandchildren. And Victor at this time, not remembering himself from despair, tried to achieve the release of his wife. When investigators told him why Tonya was detained, the Ginzburg family immediately left Lepel. Victor could not come to terms with the shame to which he doomed himself and his family, he could not get over the fact that many years ago he fell in love with the caring nurse Tonechka, a gentle and sweet girl, who in fact was an immoral German prostitute, a cruel executioner who mercilessly shot one and a half thousand men, women, old people and children, traitors to the Motherland.

Trial and death

On November 20, 1978, the court sentenced Antonina Makarova to death. The convict filed several petitions for pardon, but the court rejected them. On August 11, 1979, Tonka the Machine Gunner was shot.

Antonina Makarova (or Antonina Ginzburg) is a woman who became an executioner for many Soviet partisans during the war and received the nickname “Tonka the Machine Gunner” for this. She carried out more than 1.5 thousand sentences of the Nazis, forever covering her name with indelible shame.

Tonka the machine gunner was born in the Smolensk region, in the small village of Malaya Volkovka in 1920. At birth her surname was Parfenova. Due to an incorrect entry in the school register, Antonina Makarovna Parfenova “lost” her real name and turned into Antonina Makarovna Makarov. This surname was used by her in the future.

After graduating from school, Antonina went to study at a technical school, intending to become a doctor. When the war began, the girl was 21 years old. Inspired by the image of Anka the machine gunner, Makarova went to the front to “beat the enemies.” Presumably, this is what prompted her to pick up a weapon such as a machine gun. Professor of psychiatry Alexander Bukhanovsky at one time investigated the personality of this woman. He suggested that she might have a mental disorder.

In 1941, Makarova managed to escape in the Vyazemsk operation, a catastrophic defeat Soviet army near Moscow. She hid in the forests for several days. Then she was captured by the Nazis. With the help of Private Nikolai Fedchuk, she managed to escape. Wanderings through the forests began again, which had a bad effect on Antonina’s psychological state.

After a few months of such a life, the woman ended up in the Lokot Republic. After living with a local peasant woman for some time, Antonina noticed that the Soviet citizens who collaborated with the Germans settled well here. Then she went to work for the Nazis.

Later at the trial, Makarova explained this act with the desire to survive. At first she served in the auxiliary police and beat prisoners. The chief of police, appreciating her efforts, ordered the zealous Makarova to be given a machine gun. From that moment on, she was officially appointed executioner. The Germans thought that it would be much better if a Soviet girl shot the partisans. And you don’t need to get your hands dirty, and this will demoralize the enemy.

In her new position, Makarova received not only a more suitable weapon, but also a separate room. To make the first shot, Antonina had to drink heavily. Then things went like clockwork. All other executions were carried out by Tonka the Machine Gunner while sober. Later in court, she explained that she did not treat those she shot as ordinary people. For her they were strangers, and therefore she did not feel sorry for them.

Antonina Makarova “worked” with rare cynicism. She always personally checked whether the “work” was done well. In case of a miss, she would definitely finish off the wounded. At the end of the execution, she removed good things from the corpses. It got to the point that on the eve of the executions Makarova began to go around the barracks with prisoners and select those who had good clothes.

After the war, Tonka the Machine Gunner said that she never regretted anything or anyone. She didn’t have nightmares, and the people she killed didn’t appear in visions. She did not feel any remorse, which indicates a psychopathic personality type.

Antonina Makarova “worked” extremely hard. She shot Soviet partisans and their relatives three times a day. She has more than 1.5 thousand ruined souls to her name. For each executioner in a skirt she received 30 German Reichsmarks. In addition, Tonka provided intimate services to German soldiers. By 1943, she had to be treated for a whole bunch of venereal diseases in the German rear. Just at this time, Elbow was recaptured from the Nazis.
Then Makarova began to hide from both the Russians and the Germans. She stole a military ID somewhere and pretended to be a nurse. At the end of the war, using this card, she worked as a nurse in one of the hospitals for Red Army soldiers. There she met Private Viktor Ginzburg and soon became his wife.

After the war, the Ginzburgs settled in the Belarusian city of Lepel. Antonina gave birth to 2 daughters and began working as a quality controller at a clothing factory. She had an extremely reserved character. I never drank, probably for fear of spilling the beans about my past. For a long time no one knew about him.

Security authorities searched for Tonka the Machine Gunner for 30 years. Only in 1976 were they able to trace her. 2 years later she was found and identified. Several witnesses immediately confirmed the identity of Makarova, who was already Ginzburg at that time. During the arrest, and then the investigation and trial, she behaved surprisingly calmly. Tonka the machine gunner could not understand why they wanted to punish her. She considered her actions in wartime to be quite logical.

Antonina's husband did not know why his wife was arrested. When investigators told the man the truth, he took the children and left the city forever. It is not known where he began to live subsequently. At the end of November 1978, the court sentenced Antonina Ginzburg to death. She took the verdict calmly. Later she wrote several petitions for pardon. On August 11, 1979 she was executed.