Zinaida Portnova

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Zinaida Portnova

Zinaida Martynovna Portnova, commonly known as Zina Portnova (Russian: Зинаида Мартыновна Портнова, Зина Портнова) (February 20, 1926 - January 15, 1944) was a Russian teenager, Soviet partisan and Hero of the Soviet Union.

Zina Portnova was born in Leningrad and was a seventh grade student spending summer in a children's camp in Vitebsk region when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

In 1942 Portnova joined the Belarusian resistance movement, becoming a member of the local underground Komsomol organization in Obol, Vitebsk Voblast, named Young Avengers. The young partisan was distributing Soviet propaganda leaflets in the German occupied Belarus and participated in a number of sabotage actions.

In August of 1943 she became a scout of the partisan unit named after Kliment Voroshilov. In October 1943 Portnova joined VLKSM. Two months later she was captured by the Germans. She shot one of her captors whilst trying to escape but was caught, tortured and then executed in a Vitebsk jail.

In 1958 Zina Portnova was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union.