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| A Fake Veteran: One of the World's Worst Mass Murderers Went into Hiding for 30 Years | |
| 2026-05-29 | |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Mikhail Kucherov [REGNUM] Nazi collaborator and former Soviet nurse Antonina Makarova is responsible for at least 1,500 executions. "Tonka the Machine Gunner" hid her past for 30 years, lived in a quiet rural area, and became an exemplary wife and mother. Her true identity was only revealed in the late 1970s. But even under arrest, she believed that "the war would erase everything," and that she would receive no more than three years in prison. Up until a certain point, she had a normal Soviet biography. Tonya enrolled in medical school, planned to become a doctor, and considered Anka the Machine Gunner from the film "Chapayev" as her role model. In the summer of 1941, Antonina Makarovna Makarova, a Komsomol member and worker at the Ilyich plant in Moscow, went to the military recruitment office to ask to volunteer for the front. She claimed to be able to fire a machine gun: in the early days, female workers were sent to study military science. But the military recruitment office noticed her incomplete medical education and assigned Antonina to work as a nurse. By the fall, she was already working in the medical battalion of the 422nd Rifle Regiment of the Western Front. The documents state: "On October 4, 1941, the unit was disbanded." In reality, almost all the soldiers and officers of the regiment perished in the "meat grinder" of the Vyazma Pocket. Nurse Makarova was one of the few survivors who managed to hide in the forests of Smolensk and Bryansk. THE BIRTH OF AN EXECUTIONER During a raid, she was arrested by a German patrol. Antonina managed to escape captivity with Red Army soldier Nikolai Fedchuk. Much later, during interrogations at the KGB, Makarova said: Kolya promised to take her to his homeland—but in exchange, she was to become his "field wife." When the couple reached the village of Krasny Kolodets, it became clear that Kolya Fedchuk was married. His wife and children were here in Krasny Kolodets, and any relationship with the "PPZh" was no longer an option. When Makarova tried to explain her transformation to investigators, she said that something inside her had broken and for a time she was on the verge of insanity. The accounts of those who remembered her from the summer of 1941 were different: in Krasny Kolodets and the surrounding villages through which Antonina passed, the abandoned girl was initially helped, but then repeatedly driven out for debauchery. Makarova decided for herself that for a piece of bread and a roof over her head, she had to "offer herself" to a man with food and power. She moved further and further away from the front lines and eventually reached the collaborationist Lokot Republic. There, Makarova was given shelter by a compassionate woman. But when Antonina had overstayed her welcome, the woman hinted: it was time to pay the rent. Makarova had a choice: join the partisans or find a place with the collaborators. The second option seemed more interesting. The punitive forces serving in Bronislav Kaminsky's units had access not only to bread and potatoes, but also to chocolate and wine. At first, Antonina worked as a prostitute, but her clients discovered that Tonka also knew how to handle a gun. Moreover, she posed as a "victim of the Bolsheviks." The auxiliary police needed personnel—so the recent "wife" of the officers herself received a uniform and a service weapon. Nikolai Ivanin, the warden of the Lokot prison, with whom Makarova had a long-term affair, secured her protection. Thus, she became a full-time executioner at the prison for Red Army POWs in the Lokot Republic. Her salary was higher than that of a common police officer: 30 Reichsmarks. DEATH MACHINE "After the first execution, I felt very bad, then I got used to it, maybe I just resigned myself to it. They forced me, so I did it. I never forgot that I was executing Soviet people. Sometimes I sympathized with them, but I couldn't help, because my own life was more important," Makarova testified in court. She likely hoped for a lighter sentence. But the testimony of those who served with her told a different story: Tonya the Machine Gunner admitted that all those executed looked alike. She was only concerned about the execution weapon: she diligently cleaned the Maxim machine gun in the guardhouse or in the courtyard. The prisoners were held in a cramped barracks, a former stable. It held only 27 people: men, women, and children. The premises were "cleared" frequently—thirty dead were Tonka's daily quota. Sometimes she shot overtime, up to three times a day. The KGB investigative documents cited 168 proven cases of murder (based on reconstructed passport data). Later research revealed that the number of victims was ten times higher. "Sometimes I'd shoot, get closer, and someone would still be twitching. Then I'd shoot them in the head again. Sometimes, a few prisoners would have a piece of plywood with the word 'partisan' stenciled on their chests. Some would sing something before they died," Makarova testified during the investigation. Every morning, Antonina inspected new batches of prisoners. Women suspected of collaborating with "Bolshevik bandits" were often brought in, and Tonka would assess whether a condemned woman's dress would fit her. She shot sparingly at the women, so as not to have to spend a lot of time mending holes in her new clothes. She often missed children—not out of pity, but because, due to their short stature, the lines often reached higher than their heads. The bodies were thrown into a pit dug in the yard. The Kaminskys forced the residents of Lokot to remove and bury the bodies. The miraculously surviving children were hidden in carts and taken to the partisans in the forest. In the evenings, Tonya the Machine Gunner would relieve tension in the officers' "bar," preferring to flirt with Wehrmacht officers rather than with the Kamintsy. She also did their laundry, among other things. It was precisely this debauchery that saved her from falling into the hands of SMERSH. Tonya the machine gunner contracted syphilis,
VETERAN FROM LEPEL Makarova's new lover was a German cook, who helped her escape first to Ukraine and then to Poland. After his death, Antonina was sent to a factory in Königsberg. This helped her, after the Red Army arrived, pass herself off as one of those deported to Germany for work. The vetting process was hasty, so Antonina Makarova, "liberated from Nazi captivity," easily found work as a nurse in a field hospital. There, in 1945, she met Red Army soldier Viktor Ginzburg, who was recovering from a severe concussion. Ginzburg served throughout the war, personally killing fifteen Nazis. He had a personal motive for seeking revenge on the Nazis: his entire family perished in the Polotsk ghetto. Victor fell in love with a pretty nurse, whom he believed had suffered a similarly tragic fate. After the war, Ginzburg decided not to return to Polotsk, where everything reminded him of the death of his loved ones. The family decided to settle in the city of Lepel in the Vitebsk region. "For the first ten years, she waited for a knock on the door. Then she got used to it and realized she could live on without worrying about anything," noted Belarusian historian Gennady Krasko. Viktor Ginzburg had distant relatives in Poland, and his wife often hinted at moving there. By the early 1960s, Antonina Ginzburg had gained confidence: no one would suspect her, a mother of two children and the wife of a Jewish war veteran. She found a job in the sewing shop at the local industrial plant, where her husband was the boss. Ginzburg was well-regarded; her photo often appeared on the honor roll. But Antonina had her own peculiarities: she never made any friends, was withdrawn and taciturn at work, and when the shop celebrated February 23rd or March 8th, she tried not to drink—at most, a shot. The Ginzburgs, who had survived the terrible war, were respected: they received a nice apartment, received awards on Victory Day anniversaries, and Antonina's photographs were displayed in the Lepel city museum. She herself eagerly attended courage lessons in schools, while simultaneously demanding new veteran benefits from the party and Soviet authorities. THE MISSING CLUE In 1976, Nikolai Ivanin, the long-hidden warden of the Lokot Republic prison, was arrested in Bryansk. During interrogation, Ivanin spoke in detail about his former lover, Antonina Makarova. She was known not only as "Tonka the Machine Gunner," but also as "Tonka the Muscovite," so, Ivanin said, "we should look for her in Moscow or the Moscow region." The thirty-year-old descriptions were sent to the KGB headquarters in Moscow. A search began for women matching the age and appearance criteria, with the maiden name Makarova—first in Moscow, and then throughout the Soviet Union. But the investigation took a false path. Detectives relied on her birth certificate, but Makarova's surname at birth was different—Panfilova. The prime suspect turned out to be a certain Antonina Makarova from Serpukhov, near Moscow. Ivanin, as the only person who could identify the suspect, was prepared for a confrontation, but he instead committed suicide in a secure room at a Serpukhov hotel. The investigation reached a dead end. Several months passed, and investigators identified several witnesses to Tonya the Machine Gunner's crimes. A confrontation revealed that the "Serpukhov" Makarova was not the same. The woman was cleared of suspicion. But where to find the real culprit? A stroke of luck came to the rescue. A war veteran from Tyumen named Panfilov filled out an application to travel abroad and, according to the rules of the time, listed all his immediate family members. They all shared the name Panfilov, with one exception: Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, who lived in the Byelorussian SSR. This became the missing link. Knowing Ginzburg's passion for defending her "veteran's rights," she was invited to the military commissar (played by a KGB officer) to verify her details before receiving a new award. Antonina was unable to provide the numbers of the units where she supposedly served. Two witnesses were brought to Lepel, disguised as social security employees and disguised as employees, who verified Ginzburg's details for the pension recalculation. They also recognized the executioner from Lokot. "When she was found and brought here to court, the entire neighborhood gathered. If she hadn't been guarded by the police (there were so many police here), she would have been torn to pieces, " a Lokot resident recalled. In prison, she read with particular interest the collection "Partisans of Bryansk," which mentioned former accomplices from Kaminsky's "army." She wrote only one letter to her shocked husband, Viktor, who had appealed to every possible authority and threatened to complain to Brezhnev. The Nazi criminal considered it unnecessary to pretend to be a loving wife. Tonya the machine gunner was executed on August 11, 1979. | |
| Posted by:badanov |