Viktor Ginsburg no relation Eastern Front (World War II)
Early life
Antonina Makarova was born in a small village in the Sychyovsky Uyezd of Smolensk Governorate. Her birth name was Antonina Panfilova. On her first day at school, Panfilova's name was written down as Makarova, from her father's first name, Makar. She was shy as child and had forgotten her last name. As an adult, Makarova studied in Moscow. When World War II started, she joined the Red Army and became a volunteer nurse. During her military service, Makarova also learned how to use a machine gun.Collaboration with Nazi Germany
In the fall of 1941, Makarova was separated from Soviet troops. In January 1942, she was recruited by the local authorities at the town of Lokot, which was the capital of the Lokot Autonomy, a collaborationist statelet established by the Nazis in October 1941. Makarova was hired as a machine gun shooter and assigned the job of executing Russian POWs and partisans, as well as their families. Usually, Makarova was ordered to execute groups of 27 people at a time, which was the number of prisoners the local jailhouse could hold. In the evenings Makarova spent time with German officers along with local women who were working as prostitutes. In the summer of 1943, Germans found out that Makarova and the other women had a sexually transmitted disease and they were sent to a hospital in the rearguard.Post-war life
As the Red Army entered the Lokot region they found the remains of about 1,500 people. Soviet troops captured and killed many Nazi collaborators, but Makarova, who was at a hospital behind the German lines, was not among them. In 1945, Makarova married a Russian war veteran named Viktor Ginsburg who was a Jew by origin. His whole family had been executed by Germans and Soviet collaborators during the war. They settled in Lepiel, a town in Soviet Belarus, and had two daughters, one in 1947, and the other a few years later. Antonina and her husband lived as respected citizens enjoying all the privileges granted to war veterans. Antonina was once invited to a school to give a speech to students.
no relation