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 with a machine gun.
As a child, Antonina honored the heroine of the civil war, Anka the machine gunner. But with the help of the same weapon during the Great Patriotic War, she shot captured Soviet soldiers, civilians and partisans.
Biography of Antonina Makarova
She was born in one of the Smolensk villages in 1921 in the Parfyonov family. When the time came, Tonya went to first grade. At first she was shy, she could not even clearly pronounce her last name. Then the guys shouted that she was Makarova. They meant that this is Makar's daughter. But the teacher thought it was the child's surname. So Tonya Parfenova turned into Antonina Makarova. Such an unexpected change of surname came in handy for her in the future.
After leaving school, the girl went to study in Moscow. Here she was caught by the war. She herself submitted documents to volunteer for the front. Makarova graduated from nursing and machine gunner courses.
Wandering
But the war turned out to be not as heroic for Antonina as the girl had imagined. After exhausting battles near Vyazma, only she and Nikolai Fedchuk survived. So a nineteen-year-old girl and a soldier began to wander through the woods. Without ceremony, he made Tonka his field wife. But she did not particularly resist, because she just 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, Tonka confessed that he was married and went to his family.
At first, she tried to twist love with one of the remaining local men, but the women quickly drove her out of the settlement.
Antonina went on to wander. 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 got drunk, fed the girl, and she became their partner.
Executioner career
Once, when Antonina was completely drunk, she was brought to a heavy machine gun and ordered to shoot. On the other side were 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 hired, 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 one of the German soldiers or with another policeman.
In total, she shot about one and a half thousand people. But some of the children managed to survive, as the bullets from the machine gun flew over their heads. Such children, together with the corpses, were taken to the forest by local residents, where the dead were buried, and the children were handed over to the partisans.
Peaceful time
In 1944, the troops of the Soviet army came to this settlement, but Tonka was "lucky" that shortly before that she fell ill with syphilis, and she was admitted to the hospital. Then she fled from there, got hold of someone else's documents, and later began to work as a nurse using them.
There, the 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 quality control officer in a garment production.
Retribution
It would seem that life has improved. Wife, husband, worked, raised children. But one day, one of Antonina's relatives applied for a trip abroad. Among other relatives of the Parfenovs, there was some Antonina Makarova, married to Ginzburg. The KGB has been looking for Tonka the machine gunner for a long time. This is how the infamous female executioner was discovered.
The surviving children once identified the killer. She was detained, the court appointed capital punishment for her crimes. The verdict was carried out in August 1979.
