You're going to hang up on me, but I'm not the only one. We are more than 200 million, you can't hang us all … these were the words of the 18-year-old Russian heroine Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya shortly before being executed.
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
Being very small, she already showed her interest in reading, music, great thinkers... who were forging her indomitable and idealistic character. At the age of 15 she joined the Komsomol (the youth of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, CPSU). In 1941, after the invasion of the Germans and with only 18 years, she volunteered to be part of a group of partisans who participated in sabotage and reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines. On November 27, 1941, Zoya's group managed to cross the front and entered German-occupied territory until they reached the town of Petrischevo , where a German regiment was quartered. Ella Zoya set fire to several blocks and two houses occupied by the Germans, but a Russian collaborator ratted her out – she was rewarded with a bottle of vodka – and she was captured.
She was taken to a cabin and for 48 hours she was subjected to all kinds of torture and humiliation so that she would give away her comrades. Faced with the desperation of the officer in charge of her, since Zoya did not say anything about her, on the morning of November 29 they took her out of that torture room and walked her around with a sign around her neck « Incendiary of households » to the center of town… the gallows awaited him. The Germans and the entire town, forced to witness the execution, surrounded the scaffold but when the execution was about to take place, one of the German officers ordered them to wait until they had their camera ready, a moment that Zoya took advantage of to shout:
Comrades, why are you so sad? I'm not afraid to die, I'm happy to die for my people […]
You're going to hang me, but I'm not the only one. We are more than 200 million, you will not be able to hang us all. My companions will avenge my death. Germans, surrender before it's too late. Victory is ours.
For a month, Zoya's frozen body hung until drunken Germans decided to cut off her left breast and officials ordered Zoya to be buried. In 1942 the village of Petrischevo was liberated by the Russian army, the Russian collaborator was executed and Zoya was posthumously awarded the highest distinction Hero of the Soviet Union . The German officer who took the photos died in combat and photos of the execution were found in one of his pockets: 1 and 2 . Zoya's brother, Aleksandrk , was also posthumously decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union .