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[1]; 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:
I am tormented by the thought that I have caused you great worry. Don't worry. Nothing bad has happened to me. I swear to you that you will have no further unpleasantness because of me. If you can, please send me my dress, my green blouse, and white socks. I want to be dressed decently when I leave here.
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;
When they put her on the stool, the girl turned her face toward the fence. The executioners wanted her to stand with her face to the crowd, but she turned away and that was that. No matter how much they pushed her and tried to turn her, she remained standing with her back to the crowd. Only then did they kick away the stool from under her.
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.[2]
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