Mysterious executions of fascists and partisan Tatiana Markus

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In Kiev, she was considered a whore - she was often seen with various German officers. No one knew that meetings with this graceful "princess" ended for the Nazis with a bullet in the forehead. But the partisan Tatyana Markus herself was shot at Babi Yar.

Tatiana was born in 1921 in the town of Romny, Sumy region in the family of a military musician Joseph Markus. Later, the family moved to Kiev, where Tanya finished nine classes of school and in 1938 got a job as a secretary of the personnel department of the South-Western Railway. Deployed in 1940 to Chisinau, shortly before the German attack on the USSR, she returned to Kiev. With the beginning of the war, the girl refused to evacuate and began to actively participate in underground activities.

Together with her father, Tatyana entered the sabotage and reconnaissance group, which was led by a member of the underground city party committee Vladimir Kudryashov. There she also met her love - Georgy Levitsky. With him, she subsequently went on almost all of her assignments. They carried out the first action against the German soldiers who occupied Kiev in August 1941. At the moment when Hitler's columns marched in solemn formation along Khreshchatyk, Tanya, standing on the balcony of one of the houses, portrayed the joy of meeting the “liberators”. When the column drew level with her, with a shout of "Heil Hitler!" she threw down a bunch of asters, in which a pomegranate was hidden. Afterwards, Molotov cocktails thrown by other underground fighters flew into the column. As a result, more than 20 German soldiers were killed.

They decided to use the brave girl as a scout and a kind of bait. The underground workers composed a legend: not Tanya Markus, but Tatiana Markusidze, the daughter of a Georgian prince who was shot by the Bolsheviks. Gracefully and with princely dignity, presenting this story to the Nazis, Tatiana swore loyalty to the Wehrmacht and was eager to help the Germans in everything - to avenge her father. All this was supported by the necessary documents, which allowed the charming "princess" to get a job as a waitress in the officers' dining room. Under the admiring glances of high-ranking German officers, who were vying to look after her, Tatyana slowly poured poison into their food, slowly but surely sending them to the next world.

Others were dealt with by Georgy Levitsky, who followed his beloved to all her dates. Tatyana lured another boyfriend, who had lost his head from her feigned availability, to a predetermined place where underground fighters were already waiting for them - they destroyed the enemy. However, Tatyana herself often dealt with them, who always had a small silent Browning with her.

So, one of Tatyana's victims was a Hitlerite emissary sent to Kiev just to fight the underground movement. Tanya was instructed to meet the general at the theater. Several languid glances - and by the first intermission, the general suggested continuing the evening with dinner at his mansion. Tatiana agreed, but asked the general not to tell anyone about this - to avoid unnecessary rumors. To preserve incognito, they agreed that she would walk past the security posts in his mansion exclusively in a veil that hides her face. However, this did not abolish the full security screening at the entrance. During the first dinner, the general could not only get kisses from the girl, but even get close to her. And he invited her to dine with him the next day. Then followed the third and fourth dinners - the guards lost all interest in the emissary's mysterious mistress.

At their fifth meeting, Tatiana unhindered carried her little pistol into the mansion. It was possible to shoot only from a very close distance, which for the first time during this time allowed Tatiana of the general, who immediately lost his head from happiness. The shot sounded almost silently, after which, with a relaxed look, Tatyana passed through the security and went out into the street. The dead general was discovered by the guards only in the morning - no one knew where to look for the mysterious stranger.

The specific nature of Tatyana Markus's work resulted in hundreds of insults she heard from local residents. They set dogs on her, the boys threw stones at her, but how could she admit to them why she was going into the darkness with another German officer.

For a long time no one suspected the "Georgian princess" of the mysterious deaths of the fascists. But such a favor of fate could not be eternal. Tatyana herself began to lose her vigilance - especially after her father did not return from the next assignment. Performing the next task, she shot a Hitlerite officer and, unable to contain her emotions, attached a note to his tunic: "All of you, fascist bastards, will face the same fate." Below was the signature - "Tatiana Markusidze".

From that day on, the hunt began for her. The Germans knew whom to look for - the appearance of the beautiful princess was well known to them. She was caught trying to cross the Dnieper. Tatiana could even run away from the policemen who ambushed them, but she was not alone, and her comrade by that time was wounded. She chose to stay with him.

In October 1942, a report was sent from Kiev to Berlin: “During the operation against the leading members of terrorist groups in Kiev, a Georgian woman Tatiana Markusidze, born on September 21, 1921 in Tiflis, was arrested. Together with other members of the gang, she tried to escape from Kiev by water . Surprisingly, the Nazis never recognized Tatyana's real biography. They learned nothing from her at all. For five months she was tortured every day: they knocked out all her teeth, pulled out her nails, but they could not get any information about the underground.

She was shot on January 29, 1943 at the site of the deaths of tens of thousands of her brothers by blood - in Babi Yar. Like the tragedy of the Jews who died in this place, the memory of Tatiana Markus was consigned to oblivion for many years. Moreover, all this time, her mother and sister, who returned from evacuation, as well as brothers who came from the front, heard only unpleasant reviews about her as a German bedding. Only a few decades after her death, Tatiana was awarded posthumously with the medals "Partisan of the Patriotic War" and "For the Defense of Kiev." In 2006, Tatiana Markus was awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine with the wording “For personal courage and heroic self-sacrifice, invincibility of spirit in the fight against the fascist invaders in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”. In 2009, in Kiev, on the territory of Babi Yar, a monument to Tatyana Markus was unveiled.