Hi. Has anyone here ever heard of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya? I hadn't until a few days ago when I stumbled upon her on the internet. I will explain more of what I think she means to us today and why I posted this about her in my closing paragraph. For now, I want to say that this is not a pretty story, and it is not for the faint of heart. Please take that into consideration as you read.
Zoya lived in Russia. Her story takes place during the Nazi occupation.
She was born on September 13, 1923, and grew up in Moscow. Of the many articles I read about her in the last few days, it seems she had a keen intellect, sharp mind, a clean life, and was a hard-working role model for her own peers. Particularly, she did have a certain outlook on life and people in general that helped drive her to do what she did later. This outlook is shown in one instance when in high school, the girls all wrote secret notes to each other for a New Year's celebration. One of her friends wrote to her: "Zoya, don't judge people so strict. Don't take everything so close to heart. Know that most people are egoist, flatterers, are insincere and you can't depend on them. You should leave their words without attention. Such is my New Year wish."
To this, Zoya commented: "If one thinks of people like that, then what has one to live for?"
She was also an avid reader, and her favorite subject was literature. She loved the classics, and commented once on Shakespeare that "In Shakespeare's tragedies the death of a hero is always accompanied by a triumph of a high moral cause."
[above quotes taken from wikipedia]
She joined the Young Pioneers at age 11, then the Young Communist League at 15, both complimenting her clean living of hard work, no swearing, no drinking, and no smoking. There also, she proved to be an energetic leader of those around her.
The German Army invaded her homeland on June 22, 1941. Her personality, of course, could not allow her to sit by and watch her own people leave to fight and die, and her towns be taken over by the invaders. She told her mother what she had to do, then volunteered for the "labour front," where she worked on a farm harvesting crops to feed the troops. Next, she decided to take nursing courses to help the wounded. Still not satisfied that she was contributing enough, she applied for a combat role in the Komsomol, a secret Russian partisan group that enlisted young people to secretly fight the invaders. She was accepted and given an assignment to participate in guerrila operations behind enemy lines in the occupied German territory. Her main tasks were to disrupt the Germans by cutting communication lines, burning buildings, and basically harassing their progress forward.
The Germans had taken over a small village, Petrishchevo, near Moscow. On November 27, 1941, her mission was to go in with two other comrades under cover of darkness and start fires throughout the town. One took the southern end, one the northern, and Zoya headed to the center toward a large buiilding. She dressed very warmly in the sub freezing temperatures with woolen coat and pants and dark hood to cover her, and she carried lighter fluid and matches along with a pistol. The three did start the fires successfully, but the one on the southern end, I believe, was caught quickly. He panicked and named the two other comrades, telling the Germans who they were and where they were at. Zoya was bent over lighting one more area, striking matches in the cold, when a German officer slunk up behind her and grabbed her. She fought hard, pushing him off, turned, and pulled her pistol. He was able to smack it away and capture her, taking her back to the house where he and his fellow officers and enlisted men stayed. When they uncovered her, they were rather astonished to find a girl of barely 18 beneath the wool.
They wanted information on this secret society harassing them.
I read what they did, but will not put it here. They interrogated her severely, and she only gave her name as "Tanya." She never gave another name for herself or anyone else, nor any information about anything. They took her clothes away and continued to "interrogate" her and torture her in very inhumane ways. Suffice it to say, she suffered greatly and never gave in nor uttered a sound. I will only say here that later in the night, they put a thin gown on her and made her walk in the snow up and down the street, the guard himself, fully clothed, only lasting 15 to 20 minutes until he had to go in. Every hour until morning they took her out and marched her for that time until they had to go in because of the cold.
In the morning, a gallows stood in the village square, erected during the night. The Germans made the entire village come out to witness the scene. They threw some old dirty clothes over Zoya which did not close in the front, hung a placard around her neck that said "Incinerator of Homes," then paraded her in front of the villagers as she walked to the gallows. As she stood on boxes in front of the people, she looked at them and yelled, “Comrades! Why are you looking so downcast? Be brave, fight, smash, burn the fascists!...I am not afraid of dying, Comrades! It is a great thing to die for one's people!” Then she turned to the Germans and said "You'll hang me now, but I am not alone. There are two hundred million of us. You can't hang us all."
[Quote taken from "Zoya's Story" at http://www.greeklish.org/features/zoya/home.html]
This enraged the Germans who hanged her slowly with a thin cord. They also bayoneted her frozen body. They did not allow any townspeople to lower her for weeks, then when she was lowered, they kept her lying in the snow in the middle of the village.
After the news spread, a new war cry was heard. Whenever a unit confronted the enemy, someone yelled "You're fighting Zoya's killers!" That pushed the Red Army harder to win. The small village of Petrishchevo was taken back by the Russians in January, 1942, just a couple of months after Zoya's death.
She became a beacon in death for millions more than she was already in life.
She became a national hero.
It seems that it is true, that faith in your people and a passion for something greater than yourself can make your work live on and grow much bigger than you ever imagined. That "the death of a hero" can be "accompanied by a triumph of a high moral cause."
In the political light, Zoya fought for Communism. However, it seems that at the grass roots, at the passionate viewpoints of this woman, she was really fighting for freedom from invaders, plain and simple. With that, her faith, passion, courage, relentlessness, and selfless acts transcend any political ideas and become universal. I believe that Zoya's actions should become an inspiration for anyone in the world who confronts opposition. I believe that people should take stock in their own level of passion for something bigger than they are, and remember this heroine who has already gone much further than most would ever want to go, and at such a young age.
