Nadia Bogdanova

She was executed twice by the Nazis, and for many years her friends considered her dead. They even put a monument to her.

It is hard to believe, but when she became a scout in the partisan detachment of “Uncle Vanya” Dyachkov, she was not even ten years old. Small, skinny, she, pretending to be a beggar, wandered among the fascists, noticing everything, remembering everything, and brought the most valuable information to the detachment. And then together with the guerrilla fighters blew up the fascist headquarters, derailed a train with military equipment, mined objects.

The first time she was captured, when together with Vanya Zvontsov she hung out the red flag in enemy-occupied Vitebsk on November 7, 1941. She was beaten with trowels, tortured, and when they brought her to the moat to shoot her, she had no strength left – she fell into the moat for a moment, ahead of the bullet. Vanya died, and Nadya was found alive in the moat by partisans….

The second time she was captured at the end of the 43rd. And again torture: she was doused in the cold with ice water, burned on her back five-pointed star. Considering the scout dead, Hitlerites, when partisans attacked Karasevo, abandoned her. She was left paralyzed and almost blind by locals. After the war in Odessa, academician V.P.Filatov restored Nadya’s sight.

15 years later she heard on the radio, as the chief of intelligence of the 6th detachment Slesarenko – her commander – said that the soldiers will never forget their dead comrades, and named among them Nadya Bogdanova, who saved his life, wounded.

Only then she showed up, only then did the people who worked with her learn about what an amazing person she was, Nadya Bogdanova, who was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, and medals.