Woman who executed 1,500 people in WWII faced death sentence in 30 years

All searches for Antonina Makarova turned out to be a bad luck. The machine gunner managed to escape punishment because investigators did not guess to search the woman by her real last name, Parfenova, not the one – Makarova – that the teacher gave to the girl by mistake.

In 1976, KGB officials suddenly found traces of Antonina Makarova who had the last name Ginsburg after a marriage in 1945. A Moscow official named Parfenov was registering documents necessary for a trip abroad and put down the names of all close relatives in official documents necessary for getting a visa. All people of the family had the last name Parfenov but one woman was named Antonina Makarova (Ginsburg after marriage). The KGB went into details and found out that Antonina Ginsburg (maiden name Makarova) was a very respectable 55-year-old woman living in a small town in Belarus, in Lepel. In 1945, Antonina Makarova married war veteran Viktor Ginsburg whom she met in a military hospital. When the war was over Antonina together with her husband went to his native town, Lepel where they lived a happy life and gave birth to two daughters. The woman and her husband were respectable citizens of the town, war veterans enjoying all privileges usually granted to war veterans. The KGB acted rather cautiously not to mar the woman's reputation in the town in case all suspicions turn out to be mistaken. KGB officers brought several victims of the terrible machine gunner, another executioner working with her and one of Antonina's war lover to the town where the suspected woman lived to identify her. Only when all the witnesses identified Antonina Ginsburg as Antonina the Machine Gunner who executed orders of Fascist officers the KGB arrested the woman. At first, Antonina behaved as if she was arrested by mistake. Her husband was indignant at the arrest and even threatened to complain to the UN about the human rights violation. But soon Antonina confessed she had been working for Nazis during WWII and told every detail about those horrible days. Her husband turned grey overnight when he learnt the truth.

Being in a detention center, Antonina wrote no messages to her husband and daughters. The woman concealed not a single detail of her past which was particularly scary. Investigators say that it seemed as if Antonina could not realize that she actually committed anything criminal. She remembered every execution she carried out but did not regret anything. There is no excuse for Antonina's doings even if the woman says she had to kill hundreds of people to save her life. A psychical expertise revealed the woman was of sound mind. Investigators feared that the accused could commit suicide which was quite typical of people whose terrible crimes were disclosed.

During the investigation, Antonina was brought to the settlement of Lokot where she executed families of partisans. The woman described in detail where and how she committed every execution.

Antonina took the arrest as something particularly shameful for a woman of her age and reputation. She expected she would be sentenced to not more than three years of suspended sentence and planned to leave Lepel to begin a new life somewhere else.

But a court decision as concerning Antonina Ginsburg (Makarova) turned out to be an absolute surprise for investigators and for the accused herself. The court sentenced Antonina to capital sentence by shooting. The woman was executed August 11, 1978. Moscow authorities declined all appeals for pardon that Antonina had sent there.

The case of Antonina Makarova was the last significant case on traitors of the motherland during WWII and the only one which concerned a female executor. Never before that was a woman executed by shooting by court decision in the USSR.

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