Masha Bruskina - Biography

Masha Bruskina (1924 - 26 October 1941 Minsk) was a 17-year-old Soviet Jewish partisan who was a volunteer nurse. She was arrested on October 14, 1941, by members of the Wehrmacht's 707 Infantry Division and the 2nd Schutzmannschaft Battalion; Lithuanian auxiliary troops under the command of Major Antanas Impulyavichus. Along with two other members of the resistance, 16 year-old Volodia Shcherbatsevich and World War I veteran Kiril Trus, she was betrayed as being partisans in Minsk, Byelorussian SSR, in October 1941.

After being arrested, Bruskina, wrote a letter to her mother on October 20, 1941:

Before being hanged, she was paraded through the streets with a plaque around her neck which read, in both German and Russian: "We are partisans and have shot at German troops". Members of the resistance were made to wear similar signs whether or not they had actually shot at German troops. She and her two comrades were hanged in public on Sunday, October 26, 1941, in front of "Minsk Kristall" a yeast brewery and distillery plant on Nizhne-Lyahovskaya Street (15 Oktyabrskaya Street today). The Germans let the bodies hang for three full days before allowing them to be cut down.

Pyotr Pavlovich Borisenko witnessed the execution;

Olga Shcherbatsevich, the mother of Volodia Shcherbatsevich was hanged the same day as her son with two other members of the resistance in front of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

See also

• Belarusian resistance during World War II
• Jewish partisans
• Belarusian partisans

<references/>

• Cholawski, Shalom. "Minsk", in Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust vol. 3, p. 975. Captioned photograph of Masza Bruskina's hanging.

External links

• The case of Marha Bruskina
• Execution of Masha Bruskina (1924-1941)
• The Harvest, a musical based on the life of Masha Bruskina
• Eyewitness accounts of her execution
• Nechama Tec and Daniel Weiss: "A Historical Injustice: The Case of Masha Bruskina". Holocaust and Genocide Studies 11:3 (1997), p. 366-377. Online abstract
• Hanging Belarusian Partisans in Minsk (Belarus, U.S.S.R.) on 26 October 1941 (Set Four)