L. Kosmodemyanskaya

The Story of Zoya and Shura


In Petrishchevo

I went to Petrishchevo on February 13. I don't remember very well how we got there. I remember only that the asphalt road did not go as far as Petrishchevo, and we had to push the car for almost five kilometres. We were numb with cold when we reached the village. They took me into a hut, but I could not get warm. The cold was inside me. Then we went to Zoya's grave. They had already dug my girl out, and I saw her…

She was lying with her arms straight down by her sides, her head thrown back, with a rope round her neck. Her lace, which was perfectly calm, had been beaten unmercifully. There was a large dark bruise on her cheek. Her body had been pierced time and again with a bayonet. The blood had dried on her breast…

I knelt down beside her and looked…I drew aside a lock of hair from her clear brow—and again was struck by the calm serenity of the torn, disfigured lace. I could not tear myself away from her, I could not turn my eyes away.

A girl in a Red Army greatcoat came up to me. Gently but firmly she took my hand and helped me to my feet.

"Let's go into a hut," she said.

"No,— I said, "Come. I was in the same partisan group as Zoya. I'll tell you everything."

She led me into a hut, sat down beside me and began her story. I listened to her with difficulty, as through a fog. Some things I knew already from the newspapers. She related how a group of partisans, members of the Komsomol, had crossed the front line. For two weeks they had lived in the forests, on German-occupied land. At night they carried out their commander's assignments, by day they slept somewhere on the snow and warmed themselves at a campfire. They had taken enough food for five clays but they made it last for a fortnight. They shared the last crust of bread, the last drop of water.

The name of Zoya's friend was Klava. She cried as she told me what she knew.

The time came for them to return. But Zoya kept insisting that they had done too little. She asked permission from the group commander to penetrate into Petrishchevo.

There she set fire to the houses occupied by the Germans, and the stable of a military unit. The next night she crawled up to another stable on the edge of the village. There were more than two hundred horses there. She took a bottle of benzine from her kitbag, splashed it over the building and was just bending down to strike a match when a sentry gripped her from behind. She pushed him away, snatched out a revolver but did not have time to fire. The German knocked the weapon out of her hand and raised the alarm…

Klava fell silent. Then the mistress of the hut, who had been sitting there staring into the fire, said suddenly, "And I can tell you what happened after that…if you wish…

I heard her out too. But I cannot write about it. Let Pyotr Lidov's story come now. He was the first to write about Zoya, he was the first to come to Petrishchevo when he heard about her; and it was he who, while the tracks were still fresh, discovered how they had tortured her and how she had died.

 


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