home / Business/ The film executioner is the prototype of the main character. A sadist, a victim of circumstances or a calculating cynic: who Tonka the Machine Gunner really was

The film executioner is the prototype of the main character. A sadist, a victim of circumstances or a calculating cynic: who Tonka the Machine Gunner really was

In the media, one can often encounter attempts to justify the killer, declaring her a mentally ill person or an unfortunate victim of circumstances. However, experts who worked with documents in Tonka’s case see no basis for such allegations.

Experts believe that her life story can help answer the question of why, at a time when most Soviet citizens were defending their homeland, there were people who were ready to kill their compatriots for a small salary and food rations. Historians Dmitry Zhukov and Ivan Kovtun, authors of the book “The Burgomaster and the Executioner,” helped RT understand the life story of Tonka the Machine Gunner and the motives for her crimes.

Fundamental distortion of biography

“For some reason, in newspaper articles and documentaries about the case of Tonka the Machine Gunner, much is depicted incorrectly, even in those that are based on real documents. The emergence of certain ideas about Tonka’s life story was also influenced by the series “The Executioner”. It is clear that this is a feature film and there can be no complaints against its creators regarding the accuracy of the description of events, but you need to understand that it should in no way be perceived as a historical source. Apart from some aspects of the general outline, it has nothing in common with reality. Some of the events in it are distorted, others are completely fictional,”

Dmitry Zhukov said in an interview with RT.

Even the date and place of birth of Antonina Makarova are controversial. According to the most common version, she was born on March 1, 1920 in the village of Malaya Volkovka, Smolensk province. Other sources indicate the year 1922 or 1923, and Moscow is also named as the place of birth. A man with the same surname and initials as Antonina Makarova’s father appears in the “All Moscow” directory for 1917, but disappears from it in 1923. Therefore, the parents of the future Tonka the Machine Gunner could indeed have been residents of the capital, who for some reason left Moscow and moved to the provinces. However, the most fundamental distortion of the biography of the future collaborator concerned not the date and place of her birth, but her last name.

“The last name of Antonina’s parents is Panfilov. But this was in the early 1920s. It was not clear how the metrics were kept, and Antonina’s birth certificate was not issued. When she entered school, she was most likely recorded in the journal as Makarova by her father’s name - Makara. They later issued a passport and Komsomol card in the same name.

A paradoxical situation has arisen: parents, brothers and sisters are Panfilovs, and Antonina is Makarova. After the war, this will dramatically complicate the lives of state security officials who will be looking for the “Lokot executioner”,”

Ivan Kovtun said in an interview with RT.

In the mid-1930s, Antonina moved to Moscow, where she lived with her aunt Maria Ershova. After graduating from school, she worked for some time in a tannery and then in a knitting factory. However, the girl, apparently, did not like this work, and, citing vision problems, she transferred to the position of a waitress in the canteen of the Ilyich plant. Even before the start of the war, Antonina Makarova attended Red Cross courses, so in August 1941 she was sent to the military registration and enlistment office on a Komsomol ticket. Her first place of service temporarily became the canteen of one of the military units.

Many years later, Antonina, hoping to soften her fate, will state that during this period she allegedly did not take the oath and was not awarded a military rank. However, this is a lie: according to documents from the Ministry of Defense, in August 1941, Antonina Makarova was called up for military service and became a sergeant in the fall. From the buffet she was transferred to the position of medical instructor in the 422nd Infantry Regiment of the 170th Division of the 24th Army of the Reserve Front.

"Lokot executioner"

During the Vyazemsk operation, Sergeant Makarova was captured, where she met a soldier named Fedchuk (according to some sources, his name was Sergei, according to others, Nikolai). A personal relationship developed between them, and together they escaped from a prisoner of war camp, heading to the village of Krasny Kolodets, Brasovsky district. “The series “The Executioner” shows a scene of Antonina’s rape by a soldier with whom she ended up behind German lines. Nothing like that actually happened. Her relationship with Fedchuk, apparently, was completely mutual in nature; another thing is that upon arrival in his native village, he abandoned her and returned to his family,” noted Dmitry Zhukov.

In the Red Well, Makarova lived for some time with an elderly woman named Nyura. The village was located next to the village of Lokot, where the administrative center of the collaborationist Lokot Republic was located and a large garrison of traitors to the Motherland was stationed. It was created with the support of the Germans by Hitler's collaborator Bronislaw Kaminsky. Subsequently, the so-called Russian Liberation People's Army (RONA) was formed on the basis of the garrison.

Someone introduced Antonina to the deputy chief of the Lokot police, Grigory Ivanov-Ivanin. In December 1941, he took Makarova into his service and made him his mistress. She received a salary of 30 marks per month, free food and room. Antonina took part in several punitive operations. During one of them, Antonina accidentally almost shot the chief of police, a relative of her lover, after which she was transferred to serve in a prison.

Makarova was among the guards who formed the firing squad that carried out the sentences passed by the occupation authorities. Antonina was given a machine gun and a pistol. She began to take part in the executions of Soviet partisans and civilians and soon received the nickname Tonka the Machine Gunner.

“In a number of sources you can find a statement that Makarova allegedly enjoyed the process of murder, that she received sadistic pleasure from it. In fact, nothing indicates this. She was not a maniac in the generally accepted sense. Firstly, she had a completely prosperous family - none of her brothers and sisters were seen in unseemly acts. Secondly, she herself did not like the “work” of an executioner. She drowned her negative feelings in alcohol and left Elbow at the first opportunity,”

Ivan Kovtun emphasized.

At the same time, according to Dmitry Zhukov, its activities in 1941-1943 were in themselves a unique phenomenon.

“What was unique was that the executioner was a woman. The executions she carried out turned into a terrible theatrical performance. The leaders of the Lokot self-government came to see them, German and Hungarian generals and officers were invited,”

The historian noted.

Tonka the Machine Gunner tried to make the most of her position.

There is evidence that she took the belongings of the people she killed, in particular clothes. After parting with Ivanov-Ivanin, Antonina drank a lot and entered into promiscuous relationships for money with both policemen and German officers.

In 1943, she fell ill with syphilis and was sent for treatment to one of the rear hospitals. But during the liberation of Lokt by the Red Army in September 1943, Makarova was not there.

There were even rumors that the Germans did not send Tonka for treatment, but killed her. It cannot be ruled out that Makarova herself tried to go further to the rear, as she felt that the situation was changing.

Having recovered, Antonina met a German corporal, whose military unit was moving to the west, and asked to join him as a servant and mistress. In fact, she deserted the ranks of the collaborators. Subsequently, according to some sources, the corporal died; according to others, he simply could not cover his fellow traveler for long: Makarova was driven into a common column with other refugees and sent to East Prussia. There she was forced into forced labor at a munitions factory, becoming one of millions of Soviet Ostarbeiters (the Third Reich's term for people taken from Eastern Europe to be used as free or low-paid labor).

In 1945, Makarov was liberated by Soviet soldiers. Due to the huge number of former prisoners of war, filtering at this time was carried out quite superficially. Antonina told the Soviet law enforcement agencies her real information, concealing only the fact of working for the Germans, and successfully passed the filtering.

Search and retribution

Makarova was reinstated in service and ended up in the 1st Moscow Division. In the summer of 1945, due to health problems, Antonina ended up in the hospital.

Here she was demobilized and remained to work as a civilian nurse. In August, Makarova met a mortarman, guard private Viktor Ginzburg, who was undergoing treatment. He went through the entire war, and in the spring of 1945 he accomplished a feat, destroying about 15 enemy soldiers in one battle and receiving a severe concussion. Antonina and Victor began to live together, and in 1947, after the birth of their first child, they got married.

Having changed several places of residence, the Ginzburg couple moved to Victor’s homeland - Belarus. Antonina tried to organize the family's move to Poland, but nothing worked out for her. In 1961, she got a job at the Lepel industrial plant, which soon gave her an apartment. In Lepel, Makarova was considered a respected war veteran - she participated in meetings with schoolchildren, her photographs were displayed on the Honor Board.

“After the war, Antonina, as a participant in the war, was awarded several medals, and formally fairly, since she actually served in the Red Army. Even at the trial, she was not deprived of her awards - perhaps they simply forgot about it,”

Told by Dmitry Zhukov.

Even during the war years, state security agencies began to look for Antonin Makarov. However, the search was carried out using metric records, in which she appeared as Panfilova. Therefore, the search was unsuccessful. Antonina was careful - even on holidays she did not linger in the company, so as not to say anything unnecessary. Only in 1976, her brother, who by this time had become a colonel, indicated in his application form before going abroad that he had a sister whose maiden name was Makarova and who was captured by the Germans.

KGB officers became interested in this fact. A check began, people who knew Tonka the Machine Gunner began to be secretly brought to Lepel. She was identified, and in the summer of 1978, Antonina Ginzburg was arrested.

By this time, the KGB officers had managed to collect so much evidence that the honored worker of the Lepel industrial plant had no choice but to admit that she really was the famous “Lokot executioner.” When leaving for Lokot, she clarified some details and accurately indicated the location of the executions. True, she admitted personal participation in only 114 murders.

“The number of Tonka’s victims is one of the most famous myths associated with her activities. The press attributes about 2 thousand victims to her. But this is a mistake. About 2 thousand Soviet patriots were killed by collaborators in the village of Lokot in 1941-1943, but, in addition to Tonka, there were other executioners. Having assessed all the facts, the court found Antonina Ginzburg’s personal participation in the commission of 168 murders proven. Her victims, of course, could have been much more, but not 2 thousand. Her former accomplices also took an active part in exposing Tonka the Machine Gunner. After the war, the death penalty was abolished for some time in the USSR, and some of the traitors, instead of execution, were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, from 10 to 25 years. But in 1978 they were already free,”

Told by Ivan Kovtun.

At the beginning of November 1978, court hearings began in the case of the female executioner.

Dmitry Zhukov concluded.

The movie “The Executioner,” based on the true story of Tonka the Machine Gunner, was shown on TV; the KGB gave this case the name “Sadist.” It takes great skill or self-confidence to film those events. I watched the film only because of the actress Victoria Tolstoganova (+ the artists of the picture), I bet that she would turn out to be the main villain. In my opinion, “The Executioner” is very inferior to the similar Soviet film “Confrontation”. The director did not master the theme of the tragedy of betrayal and covered himself with the “tragedy of the detectives.” And a completely obscene sound came from a distance, showing L.I. Brezhnev is an idiot. For what?
Okay, let's get back to the real story.

35 years ago, for the first time in the history of capital punishment in the USSR, a female punisher was shot. Tonka the machine gunner cold-bloodedly shot captured partisans, communists, women, and children. Then fate protected her. But retribution took place on August 11, 1979. Ironically, that year was declared the Year of the Woman in the USSR.

Antonina Makarovna Makarova (surname at birth - Panfilova) was born in 1920 in Malaya Volkovka, Smolensk province. She had an ordinary, serene childhood, like all ordinary citizens of the USSR. When the girl went to school, the teacher mistakenly wrote her down as Makarova. From school documents, the incorrect last name migrated to other important papers. So Panfilova became Makarova.
When the Great Patriotic War began, the girl became a nurse. In the fall of 1941, she managed to survive in the “Vyazma Cauldron.” Having become the traveling wife of Nikolai Fedorchuk, she made her way with him to the nearest village. He became her first man and she fell in love with him. He simply took advantage of the situation. When they went to the Red Well in January 1942, Nikolai decided to end his relationship with Tonya, admitting that he was married and had children. The betrayal of Fedorchuk, who abandoned the girl to the mercy of fate, and the experience of the Vyazemsk meat grinder led to the fact that Tonya Makarova lost her mind. Wandering from one settlement to another, she was ready to give herself to everyone she met for a piece of bread. It is surprising that during her wanderings she was never wounded. So Makarova ended up in the Bryansk forests. She was arrested on the territory of the Lokot Republic formed by the Germans.

Fearing for her life, she began to blame the Soviet government for everything, and then agreed to work for the Nazis. She believed that in this terrible massacre everything would be written off. Later, during interrogation, she said that the Germans did not want to get dirty themselves, and a special feature in the matter of shooting partisans was that the sentence was carried out by a Soviet girl.
So Tonka the nurse turned into Tonka the machine gunner. Psychiatrist-criminologist Vinogradov, who acted as a consultant on her case, emphasized: “She wanted to kill, and if she had gone to the front as a soldier, she would have shot at the Germans just as much without hesitation as at her future victims.”

The Nazis settled Makarova at a local stud farm, which has now become a prison, giving her a small room where she lived and kept her coveted murder weapon - a machine gun. The first time the girl could not press the trigger. It was only when the Germans gave her alcohol that things began to boil.
In Makarova’s soul there were no other feelings, regret, pain, pangs of conscience, except fear for her life. During interrogation, she admitted: “I didn’t know those I was shooting. They didn't know me. Therefore, I was not ashamed in front of them. It happened that you would shoot, come closer, and someone else would twitch. Then she shot him in the head again so that the person would not suffer. Sometimes several prisoners had a piece of plywood with the inscription “partisan” hung on their chests. Some people sang something before they died. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardhouse or in the yard. There was plenty of ammunition..."
She considered firing a machine gun at her former fellow citizens as ordinary work. Every day she shot 27 people, receiving 30 marks for it. In addition to punitive operations, Tonka entertained German officers, providing them with bed services and being considered a VIP whore of the Lokot Republic. She took off her outfits from the victims: “Why should something go to waste?”
According to official data, Antonina Makarova shot about 1,500 people; only about 200 people were able to recover their passport data.
In the summer of 1943, Makarova was sent to a German rear hospital for treatment for venereal diseases and escaped retribution after the liberation of Lokot by the Red Army. The traitors to the Motherland were executed, and only Tonka the Machine Gunner remained alive and unharmed, turning into a terrible legend of Soviet intelligence.
Soviet troops were advancing to the West, and Makarova again faced the prospect of losing her life. And this was what she feared most. In 1945, pretending to be a nurse who had escaped from captivity, she moved eastward, towards the Soviet Army. The NKVD believed her and gave her a new certificate, sending her to serve in the military hospital in Koenigsberg. There Tonya met the wounded front-line soldier Ginzburg and after marriage took his last name. Life for Antonina Makarova began anew - with a different biography.

After the war, the Ginzburgs moved to their husband’s homeland in the Belarusian town of Lepel, where Antonina Makarovna got a job at a garment factory and became a leader in production. Her life was quite happy. She raised two daughters, was respected among her colleagues, and her portrait was on the local Honor Board. The past life never reminded me of itself, either in nightmares or in reality. “It’s impossible to be afraid all the time,” she said during interrogation. “For the first ten years I waited for a knock on the door, and then I calmed down. There are no such sins that a person will be tormented all his life.”
But KGB workers have been shifting her case for more than 30 years, considering it a hanging case - Tonka the Machine Gunner disappeared without a trace, as if she had never existed at all. Investigators checked all her namesakes - about 250,000 people, but no one thought of looking for the Lokot monster under a different surname.
They were looking for the punisher among the prisoners and wounded. It was even suggested that she became an agent of Western intelligence services. And only when the case came to the attention of detective Golovachev, it got off the ground. “Our employees have been conducting the search for Antonina Makarova for more than thirty years, passing it on to each other by inheritance,” KGB veteran Pyotr Golovachev is no longer afraid to reveal the cards of a long-standing case to journalists and willingly recalls details similar to the legend. - From time to time it ended up in the archive, then, when we caught and interrogated another traitor to the Motherland, it surfaced again. Couldn't Tonka disappear without a trace?! During the post-war years, KGB officers secretly and carefully checked all the women of the Soviet Union who bore this name, patronymic and surname and were suitable in age - there were about 250 such Tonek Makarovs in the USSR. But it's useless. The real Tonka the machine gunner seemed to have sunk into thin air...”

One incident put Tonka the Machine Gunner on the trail. In 1976, a fight with a knife wound occurred in Bryansk. The hooligans were arrested. One of the rowdies was unexpectedly identified as the head of the Lokot prison, Ivanin. For thirty years he lived quietly in the Bryansk region under a different name, changing his appearance. The KGB became interested in his case. Captain Golovachev methodically conducted interrogation after interrogation - and the real name of Tonka the Machine Gunner came to light - Antonina Makarova. The former head of the Lokot prison, unfortunately, could not tell the investigation anything worthwhile, since he took his own life by hanging himself in his cell.
The second opportunity to get on the trail of Tonka presented itself soon after these events. A certain Panfilov, who was her brother, was going abroad. In that time, in the application form for leaving, you had to indicate all your relatives - this name came up again. Now the investigators had the necessary information - Antonina Makarovna Makarova. Here is the starting point of the search.
Having discovered the punisher in the person of an ordinary Soviet woman worker, the KGB men secretly monitored her in Lepel for a whole year. Then they managed to take Makarova’s fingerprints. At the factory there was a soda fountain for workers. And when Antonina quenched her thirst during the lunch break, the glass from which she drank was immediately and quietly taken away by the security officers.
But Makarova became suspicious, looked around more often, took a closer look, and then the surveillance was lifted. She had not been disturbed for a whole year, and her vigilance had weakened. The next stage of the investigation was to embarrass the military front-line soldier. Disguised as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, the investigator was invited to a gala concert dedicated to Victory Day, where Makarova was also present. Having met Tonya, he began, as if by chance, to ask about the roads of the battle route, but she could not remember the names of the commanders or the names of the units. The experiment testing Makarova’s knowledge of the theater of military operations, the names of commanders and military units was a great success.

“We were terribly afraid to jeopardize the reputation of a front-line soldier respected by all, so the surviving witnesses, a former punisher, one of her lovers, were brought one by one to the Belarusian Lepel for identification.” They all noted one external detail of the manic girl - a sullen crease on her forehead. The years have added wrinkles to her, but this feature has remained unchanged.
In July 1978, the main witness in the punisher’s case was brought to Lepel. They began to develop an operation to identify Tonka the Machine Gunner and arrest her. They decided to invite Makarova to SOBES for allegedly recalculating her pension. The role of the SOBES accountant was played by Golovachev. The witness also portrayed herself as an employee of this organization. If Makarova was successfully identified, the woman had to give the captain a prearranged signal. But she was noticeably nervous, and the security officer was afraid that she would ruin the operation.
When the unsuspecting Antonina Ginzburg entered the accounting department and began talking to Golovachev, the witness did not react at all at first. But when Ginzburg closed the office door, the woman, crying, identified the punisher. Soon Antonina Ginzburg was summoned to the head of the factory’s personnel department. There she was arrested and handcuffed. There were no emotions of surprise or indignation on the part of the detainee; she did not become hysterical, did not panic, and gave the impression of a determined and strong-willed woman. When she was brought to the Lepel KGB department, 58-year-old Antonina began to talk about her fate. The case file contains the testimony of investigator Leonid Savoskin about how the arrested woman behaved in the pre-trial detention center. She never wrote a letter to her husband or asked to see her daughters. “She didn’t hide anything, and that was the worst thing. One got the feeling that she sincerely misunderstood: why was she imprisoned, what SO terrible thing did she do? It was as if she had some kind of block in her head since the war, so that she herself would probably not go crazy. She remembered everything, every execution, but did not regret anything. She seemed to me a very cruel woman. I don't know what she was like when she was young. And what made her commit these crimes. The desire to survive? A moment of darkness? Horrors of war? In any case, this does not justify her. She destroyed not only strangers, but also her own family. She simply destroyed them with her exposure. A mental examination showed that Antonina Makarovna Makarova is sane.”
The most interesting thing is that she could not even imagine that she herself would be shot. “They disgraced me in my old age. Now after the verdict I will have to leave Lepel, otherwise every fool will point a finger at me. I think they will give me three years probation. For what more? Then you need to somehow arrange your life again. How much is your salary in the pre-trial detention center, girls? Maybe I should get a job with you - the work is familiar..."
Antonina's husband, Victor Ginzburg, a war and labor veteran, promised to complain to the UN after her unexpected arrest. “We did not admit to him what they accuse the one with whom he lived happily his whole life. They were afraid that the man simply wouldn’t survive this,” investigators said. But when he finally had to reveal the terrible details, he turned gray overnight. In the USSR, this was the last major case of traitors to the Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, and the only one in which a female punisher appeared. She was shot at six o'clock in the morning on August 11, 1979.
P.S. Almost 30 years later, after Tonka the Machine Gunner was found, journalists met with her family and friends. They lived a life full of sadness and shame, were seriously ill and died terribly. “Somehow everything fell apart at once,” said the daughter of Tonka the Machine Gunner, who is now the same age as her mother was when they came for her. - Pain, pain, pain... She ruined the lives of four generations... You want to ask, would I accept her if she suddenly returned? I would accept it. She’s a mother... But I don’t even know how to remember her: as alive or as dead? You don't know what's wrong with her? After all, according to the unspoken law, women were not shot anyway. Maybe she is still alive somewhere? And if not, then you tell me, I’ll finally go and light a candle for the repose of her soul.”

Svyatoslav Knyazev

Forty years ago, a death sentence was imposed on a female executioner, widely known as Tonka the Machine Gunner. The number of her victims, according to various sources, ranges from 168 to 2 thousand people, which allows some authors to classify her as one of the bloodiest female killers in human history. In the media, one can often encounter attempts to justify the killer, declaring her a mentally ill person or an unfortunate victim of circumstances. However, experts who worked with documents in Tonka’s case see no basis for such allegations.

Thanks to the media and cinema, Antonina Ginzburg (Makarova) became one of the most famous executioners-collaborators operating during the Great Patriotic War in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. However, her life is so shrouded in all sorts of myths that it is quite difficult to understand who Tonka the Machine Gunner really was. Experts believe that her life story can help answer the question of why, at a time when most Soviet citizens were defending their homeland, there were people who were ready to kill their compatriots for a small salary and food rations. Historians Dmitry Zhukov and Ivan Kovtun, authors of the book “The Burgomaster and the Executioner,” helped RT understand the life story of Tonka the Machine Gunner and the motives for her crimes.

Fundamental distortion of biography

“For some reason, in newspaper articles and documentaries about the case of Tonka the Machine Gunner, much is depicted incorrectly, even in those that are based on real documents. The emergence of certain ideas about Tonka’s life story was also influenced by the series “The Executioner”. It is clear that this is a feature film and there can be no complaints against its creators regarding the accuracy of the description of events, but you need to understand that it should in no way be perceived as a historical source. Apart from some aspects of the general outline, it has nothing in common with reality. Some of the events in it are distorted, others are completely fictional,” Dmitry Zhukov said in an interview with RT.

Still from the TV series “Executioner” (2014)

“The last name of Antonina’s parents is Panfilov. But this was in the early 1920s. It was not clear how the metrics were kept, and Antonina’s birth certificate was not issued. When she entered school, she was most likely recorded in the journal as Makarova by her father’s name - Makara. They later issued a passport and Komsomol card in the same name.

A paradoxical situation has arisen: the parents, brothers and sisters are Panfilovs, and Antonina is Makarova. After the war, this will dramatically complicate the lives of state security officials who will be looking for the “Lokot executioner,” Ivan Kovtun said in an interview with RT.

"Lokot executioner"

During the Vyazemsk operation, Sergeant Makarova was captured, where she met a soldier named Fedchuk (according to some sources, his name was Sergei, according to others, Nikolai). A personal relationship developed between them, and together they escaped from a prisoner of war camp, heading to the village of Krasny Kolodets, Brasovsky district. “The series “The Executioner” shows a scene of Antonina’s rape by a soldier with whom she ended up behind German lines. Nothing like that actually happened. Her relationship with Fedchuk, apparently, was completely mutual in nature; another thing is that upon arriving in his native village, he abandoned her and returned to his family,” noted Dmitry Zhukov.

B.V. Kaminsky and RONA soldiers
Bundesarchiv

“In a number of sources you can find a statement that Makarova allegedly enjoyed the process of murder, that she received sadistic pleasure from it. In fact, nothing indicates this. She was not a maniac in the generally accepted sense. Firstly, she had a completely prosperous family - none of her brothers and sisters were seen in unseemly acts. Secondly, she herself did not like the “work” of an executioner. She drowned her negative feelings in alcohol and left Lokot at the first opportunity,” emphasized Ivan Kovtun.

At the same time, according to Dmitry Zhukov, its activities in 1941-1943 were in themselves a unique phenomenon. “What was unique was that the executioner was a woman. The executions she carried out turned into a terrible theatrical performance. The leaders of the Lokot self-government came to see them, German and Hungarian generals and officers were invited,” the historian noted.

Tonka the Machine Gunner tried to make the most of her position.

There is evidence that she took the belongings of the people she killed, in particular clothes. After parting with Ivanov-Ivanin, Antonina drank a lot and entered into promiscuous relationships for money with both policemen and German officers.

In 1943, she fell ill with syphilis and was sent for treatment to one of the rear hospitals. But during the liberation of Lokt by the Red Army in September 1943, Makarova was not there.

Search and retribution

Makarova was reinstated in service and ended up in the 1st Moscow Division. In the summer of 1945, due to health problems, Antonina ended up in the hospital.

“After the war, Antonina, as a participant in the war, was awarded several medals, and formally fairly, since she actually served in the Red Army. Even at the trial, she was not deprived of her awards - perhaps they simply forgot about it,” said Dmitry Zhukov.

Confrontation: a witness to the bloody events in the village of Lokot identified Antonina Makarova (in the photo: the far right of those sitting)
Archive of the FSB Directorate for the Bryansk Region

“The number of Tonka’s victims is one of the most famous myths associated with her activities. The press attributes about 2 thousand victims to her. But this is a mistake. About 2 thousand Soviet patriots were killed by collaborators in the village of Lokot in 1941-1943, but, in addition to Tonka, there were other executioners. Having assessed all the facts, the court found Antonina Ginzburg’s personal participation in the commission of 168 murders proven. Her victims, of course, could have been much more, but not 2 thousand. Her former accomplices also took an active part in exposing Tonka the Machine Gunner. After the war, the death penalty was abolished for some time in the USSR, and some of the traitors, instead of execution, were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, from 10 to 25 years. But in 1978 they were already free,” said Ivan Kovtun.

At the beginning of November 1978, court hearings began in the case of the female executioner.

Witnesses who spoke at the trial said that for years they had seen Tonka the Machine Gunner in nightmares.

Antonina Ginzburg admitted her guilt, but tried to soften her future fate, claiming that she never took part in torture and killed only those against whom the death sentence was imposed anyway. She said that she became a victim of circumstances - if she had not shot other people, they would have shot her herself.

Archive of the FSB Directorate for the Bryansk Region

However, the court did not consider these “mitigating circumstances” significant enough. On November 20, 1978, Antonina Ginzburg was sentenced to death for treason. Attempts by lawyers to appeal the verdict were unsuccessful. On August 11, 1979, Antonina Ginzburg was shot.

“For family members, the truth about Tonka became a terrible psychological trauma. But it is worth noting that they were not subjected to any political or legal persecution. We deliberately did not publish the full data of Antonina’s relatives in our book, since some of them are still alive, and they already had a hard time. As for her motives, apparently, Tonka was a very prudent, pragmatic and rather immoral person. Moreover, these qualities were manifested in Makarova throughout her life - from the fact that she moved from a factory to a canteen in her youth, and ending with the fact that she hid from the investigation and tried to justify herself in court. The same qualities were developed in many other collaborators. These were people of a fundamentally different type than Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya or Liza Chaikina,” concluded Dmitry Zhukov.

, Smolensk province, RSFSR

Antonina Makarovna Makarova(nee Parfenova, according to other sources - Panfilova, married Ginzburg; , Malaya Volkovka, Sychevsky district, Smolensk province (according to other sources, born in 1923 in Moscow) - August 11, Bryansk) - executioner of the Lokotsky district during the Great Patriotic War, shot in the service of the German occupation authorities and Russians More than 1,500 collaborators .

At the time of the shootings she was also known as "Tonka the Machine Gunner".

Biography

Early life

Born in 1920, although some sources indicate 1923 and 1922, she was the youngest of seven children. At birth she was named Antonina Makarovna Parfenova, but when the girl at the age of 7 went to the first grade of a village school, an incident occurred with her name - the teacher, writing down the children's names in the class register, confused Antonina's patronymic with her last name and as a result she was listed in school documents like Antonina Makarova. This confusion was the beginning of the fact that in all subsequent documents, including in the passport and Komsomol card, Antonina’s name was written down as Antonina Makarovna Makarova. The parents did not correct this mistake.

Antonina did not show any particular zeal for the exact sciences; she liked history and geography more. She studied at the village school for 8 years, after which the family moved to Moscow, where the girl completed the remaining two classes. After school, I entered college, and then entered technical school, intending to become a doctor.

Personality

In the documentary series The investigation was conducted..."host Leonid Kanevsky expressed the version that in 1941, when the Great Patriotic War began, 21-year-old Makarova went to the front, inspired, like many Soviet girls, by the image of Anka the Machine Gunner from the film " Chapaev" This could explain why she agreed to take a machine gun as an execution weapon in the future. Psychiatrist-criminologist Mikhail Vinogradov, who spoke there, simply said: “ She wanted to kill... For such people, murder is the norm and [they] have no remorse“, and, in his opinion, if she had gone to the front as a soldier, she would have shot at the Germans just as unhesitatingly as at her future victims.

Actions on the side of the “Lokot self-government”

In the future, giving testimony, Makarova stated that she simply pursued the goal of surviving and warming up after long wanderings, and was also very afraid of death, which is why, when the Germans began to question her, she began to scold the Soviet government. She also blamed her fears on why she voluntarily joined the Lokot auxiliary police, where at first she beat up arrested anti-fascists, but Chief Burgomaster Bronislav Kaminsky considered this work unsuitable for her, and Makarova was given a “Maxim” machine gun for executing death sentences, to which Soviet partisans and members of their families were sentenced. According to Makarova, the Germans clearly did not want to get their hands dirty, and they decided that it would be better if the Soviet girl executed the Soviet partisans. For agreeing to participate in the executions, the Germans settled Makarova in a room at a local stud farm, where she kept a machine gun.

At the very first execution, Makarova, although she held firm, could not shoot, which is why the Germans gave her alcohol. During the next executions, she no longer needed alcohol. During interrogation by investigators, Makarova explained her attitude towards the execution as follows:

I didn’t know those I was shooting. They didn't know me. Therefore, I was not ashamed in front of them. It happened that you would shoot, come closer, and someone else would twitch. Then she shot him in the head again so that the person would not suffer. Sometimes several prisoners had a piece of plywood with the inscription “partisan” hung on their chests. Some people sang something before they died. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardhouse or in the yard. There was plenty of ammunition...

She also stated that she was never tormented by remorse, and none of the killed appeared to her in her dreams, since the executions themselves were not perceived by her as something unusual. However, during interrogations later, she recalled the circumstances of one of the executions, where a guy sentenced to death for some reason shouted to her before his death: “We won’t see you again; goodbye, sister! Prisoners were sent to her for execution in groups of about 27 people. There were days when she carried out death sentences three times a day. According to official data, she shot about 1,500 people, but only 168 people managed to recover their passport data. For each execution, Makarova received 30 Reichsmarks. After the executions, Makarova took off the clothes she liked from the corpses, motivating it like this: “Why should good things go to waste?” She often complained that large blood stains and bullet holes remained on the clothes of the dead. Eyewitnesses recalled that often at night Makarova came to the local stud farm, where the Germans had set up a prison for the condemned, and closely examined the prisoners, as if she was looking at their things in advance.

Makarova often relieved tension at a local music club, where she drank heavily and, along with several other local girls, worked as a prostitute for German soldiers. Such a wild life led to the fact that in the summer of 1943 Makarova was sent to a German rear hospital for treatment of venereal diseases, and thus avoided capture by the partisans and the Red Army when they liberated Lokot on September 5. In the rear, Makarova started an affair with a German cook-corporal, who secretly took her in his wagon train to Ukraine, and from there to Poland. There the corporal was killed, and the Germans sent Makarov to a concentration camp in Königsberg. When the Red Army captured the city in 1945, Makarova posed as a Soviet nurse using a stolen military ID, in which she indicated that she had worked in the 422nd Medical Battalion from 1941 to 1944, and got a job as a nurse in a Soviet mobile hospital.

Here, in a local hospital, she met soldier Viktor Ginzburg, who was wounded during the assault on the city. A week later they signed, Makarova took her husband’s last name.

After the war

Antonina and her husband settled in Lepel (Belarusian SSR) (this was Victor’s hometown) and they had two daughters. Antonina worked as a supervisor in the sewing workshop at a local clothing factory, where she carried out product quality control. She was considered a responsible and conscientious worker; her photograph often appeared on the local honor board. However, after working there for many years, Antonina did not make any friends. Faina Tarasik, who at that time was an inspector in the factory’s human resources department, recalled that Antonina was very reserved, not talkative, and during collective holidays she tried to drink alcohol as little as possible (she was probably afraid of spilling the beans). The Ginsburgs were considered respected front-line soldiers and received all the benefits due to veterans. Neither her husband, nor neighbors, nor family acquaintances knew about Antonina's true identity.

Arrest, trial, execution

State security agencies began looking for Makarova immediately after Lokot was liberated from the Germans. However, the surviving residents of the village could only provide the investigators with meager information, since they all knew Makarova only as Tonka the Machine Gunner. The search for Makarova lasted for 30 years, and only in 1976 the matter moved from a dead point, when in Bryansk on the city square one man attacked a certain Nikolai Ivanin with his fists, whom he recognized as the head of the Lokot prison during the German occupation. Ivanin, who, like Makarova, had been hiding all this time, did not deny it and spoke in detail about his activities at that time, at the same time mentioning Makarova (with whom he had a short-term affair). And although he mistakenly gave her full name to the investigators as Antonina Anatolyevna Makarova (and at the same time erroneously reported that she was a Muscovite), this was a major clue, and the KGB began to develop a list of USSR citizens with the name Antonina Makarova. However, the Makarova they needed was not on it, because the list contained only those women who were registered under this name at birth. The Makarova they needed was registered at birth under the name Parfenova.

File:Antonina Ginzburg-2.jpg

Antonina Ginzburg (far right of those seated) during presentation for identification

Initially, investigators mistakenly identified another Makarova, who lived in Serpukhov. Ivanin agreed to conduct an identification, and he was brought to Serpukhov and accommodated in a local hotel. The next day, Ivanin committed suicide in his room for unknown reasons. Then the KGB found other surviving witnesses who knew Makarov by sight, but they all could not identify her, so the search began again.

Her real name became known when one of her brothers, who lived in Tyumen and was an employee of the Ministry of Defense, filled out a form to travel abroad in 1976. In Lepel, Makarova was under surveillance, but after a week it had to be stopped because Makarova began to suspect something. After that, the investigators left her alone for a whole year and all this time they collected materials and evidence on her. At one of the concerts dedicated to Victory Day, the dispatched security officer started a conversation with Makarova: Makarova could not answer his questions about the locations of the military units where she served, and about the names of her commanders - she referred to bad memory and the remoteness of the events.

In July 1978, investigators decided to conduct an experiment: they brought one of the witnesses to the factory, while Antonina, under a fictitious pretext, was taken out onto the street in front of the building. The witness, watching her from the window, identified her, but this identification alone was not enough, and so the investigators staged another experiment. They brought two more witnesses to Lepel, one of whom played a local social security worker, where Makarova was allegedly summoned to recalculate her pension. She recognized Tonka the machine gunner. The second witness was sitting outside the building with a KGB investigator and also recognized Antonina. In September of the same year, Antonina was arrested on her way from her place of work to the head of the personnel department. Investigator Leonid Savoskin, who was present at her arrest, later recalled that Antonina behaved very calmly and immediately understood everything.

Antonina was taken to Bryansk, where she was placed in a local pre-trial detention center in cell 54. At first, investigators feared that she would decide to commit suicide, so they put a woman “whisperer” in her cell. She recalled that Makarova was still very calm and confident that she would be given a maximum of three years, both because of her age and because of how long ago those events were (she even made plans for her future life after serving time). She volunteered for interrogation herself, where she demonstrated the same composure, answering questions directly. Sergei Nikonenko in the documentary film “ Retribution. Two lives of Tonka the Machine Gunner“He said that Antonina was sincerely sure that there was nothing to punish her for, and she blamed everything on the war. She behaved no less calmly during investigative experiments when she was brought to Lokot. During the investigation, she never once remembered her family. Victor Ginzburg, not knowing the reasons for his wife’s arrest, constantly tried to achieve her release, after which the investigators had to tell him the truth, which is why Ginzburg and his children left Lepel in an unknown direction (their further fate remained unknown).

Court

On November 20, 1978, judge of the Bryansk Regional Court Ivan Bobrakov sentenced her to capital punishment - the death penalty. Antonina took this, as always, calmly, but from the same day she began to submit petitions for pardon (although she admitted her guilt in court) in

Makarov by mistake

Antonina Parfenova (according to another version of Panfilov) was born in one of the Smolensk villages in 1920. It is believed that she got the surname Makarov by mistake. Allegedly, when she came to school, out of fear and excitement she could not say her last name in response to the teacher’s question. Classmates sitting nearby told the teacher that she was Makarova - in fact, that was her father’s name. However, the error stuck and then migrated to all other documents - Komsomol card, passport, etc.

The story is quite strange, but still not fantastic - although the inaction of Antonina’s parents, who did not correct the mistake of the school teacher, is puzzling. It is quite unusual for the entire large family (she had six brothers and sisters) to have one surname, and one child to have a completely different one. In the end, this creates a lot of inconvenience. Again, one surname is recorded in the birth certificate, and another in all other documents.

But theoretically this can be explained. In those days, population registration was very weak, peasants were not issued passports, and having arrived in the city and received a passport, a person could call himself by any last name, and it was recorded from his words.

Antonina’s youthful biography is not entirely clear. According to one version, she came to Moscow with her parents. But in this case, they should have been issued passports together and, of course, passport officers would have paid attention to the discrepancy in last names.

According to another version, Antonina left alone and lived with her aunt. In this case, it is easier to explain the change of surname. In addition, she could get married and divorce quickly. In a word, the story of the transformation of Antonina Parfyonova\Panfilova into Makarova still remains a mystery.

Front

Soon the war began. Antonina was studying to become a doctor at this time. Some sources report that she initially served as a civilian barmaid in one of the military units, and then was transferred to orderlies.

It is known for sure that she was drafted into the 422nd Regiment of the 170th Infantry Division by the Leninsky District Military Commissariat of Moscow on August 13, 1941 with the rank of sergeant. There were two 170th divisions in the Soviet army: the first and second formations. The division of the first died near Velikiye Luki. The division of the second formation was created in 1942 and ended its combat career in East Prussia. Makarova served in the first.

Before the war, the division was stationed in Bashkiria, and mainly local conscripts served there. Makarova got into it as a replenishment. In the first days of the war, the division took on a powerful blow from the Germans in the Sebezh area. She was surrounded and managed to break through with heavy losses. At the end of July - beginning of August, it was replenished and sent to defend Velikiye Luki.

The front-line path of the future executioner was short-lived. On August 26, the city was taken, and Makarova, who barely had time to arrive, found herself surrounded. Only a few hundred of her colleagues were able to break through and reach their own. The rest either died or were captured. Later, the 170th Infantry Division was disbanded due to the fact that it ceased to exist as a combat unit.

The Germans were unable to establish serious control over the huge mass of prisoners (over 600 thousand people were captured at Vyazma alone), who lived virtually in an open field. Seizing the moment, Makarova escaped with her colleague Fedchuk. Until winter they wandered through the forests, sometimes finding shelter in villages. Fedchuk made his way home to the Bryansk region, where his family lived. And Makarova went with him, because she had nowhere to go, and it was difficult for a 21-year-old girl to survive alone in the autumn forest.

In January 1942, they finally reached the village of Krasny Kolodets, where Fedchuk announced to her that they were breaking up and he was returning to his family. Then Makarova wandered alone through the surrounding villages.

Elbow

So Makarova reached the village of Lokot. There she found shelter with a local woman, but not for long. The woman noticed that she was looking at her brother-in-law, and even he seemed to like her. She did not want to put an “extra mouth” on the family’s balance sheet in troubled wartime, so she drove Makarova away, advising her to go either to the partisans or to serve with the local collaborationist administration. According to another version, a suspicious girl was detained in the village by local police.

It is worth noting that Lokot was not a typical occupied settlement. Unlike the others, where power belonged entirely to the Germans, there was self-government in Lokot. However, it did not go beyond certain limits. Initially, the Lokot system existed only in the village, but in 1942 it was extended to the entire region. This is how the Lokot district appeared. Local collaborators did not enjoy complete independence, but had self-government within a much broader framework than in the rest of the occupied lands.

Lokot, like everywhere else, had its own police. Its peculiarity was that at first the line between police and partisans was quite illusory. In the ranks of the local police, it was not uncommon to have defectors from among the partisans, tired of the hardships of life in the forest. Even the former head of a department of one of the local district executive committees served in the police. In the post-war trials of local collaborators, former party members and Komsomol members were often defendants. The opposite was not uncommon. The police, having eaten their fill of “police rations,” fled into the forests to join the partisans.

At first, Makarova simply served in the police. The moment of her transformation into an executioner is unknown. Most likely, she was offered this specific job because she was not local. The police could still justify themselves by saying that they went to work under duress and that they were simply maintaining order (although this was not always the case), but the executioner is a completely different conversation. Few people wanted to shoot their fellow villagers. So Makarova, as a Muscovite, was offered the position of executioner, and she agreed.

Number of victims

This period is the most mythologized by modern publicists. Makarova is credited with some completely “Stakhanovite” pace of executions. In this regard, the figure of one and a half thousand people shot during her year of service as an executioner was established as the “official” figure. In fact, she apparently shot less.

At the trial, Tonka the Machine Gunner was accused of executing 167 people (in some sources - 168). These are the persons who were identified through testimony and surviving documents. It is very likely that several dozen more people were not included in the lists. The Lokot district had its own judicial system and the death penalty was imposed only by the decision of military courts.

After the war, the trial of Stepan Mosin (deputy mayor of Kaminsky) took place. He claimed that during the entire existence of the Lokot District, military courts sentenced about 200 people to death. At the same time, some of those executed were hanged (in which Makarova did not take part).

Mosin has every reason to downplay the number of executed people. But even according to archival data, most of the casualties in the region were due to punitive anti-partisan actions in villages, where people were executed on the spot. And in the district prison, where Makarov worked as an executioner, those sentenced by the local court were executed.

The figure of 1,500 executed by Makarova was apparently taken from the “Act of the Commission to establish the facts of the atrocities of the German occupiers in the Brasovsky district dated October 22, 1945.” It says: “In the fall of 1943, in the last days of their stay in the area, the Germans shot 1,500 people in the fields of the horse farm.”

It was in this field that Makarova shot her victims. And the Lokot prison itself was located in a converted horse farm building. However, the document states that the executions took place in the last days before the Germans retreated, in September 1943. By this time, Makarova was no longer there. According to one version, she ended up in the hospital before the Lokot collaborators left for Belarus; according to another, she left with them. But they left Lokot back in August, a week and a half before the Germans left.

Nevertheless, the executions proven by the court are more than enough to consider her one of the bloodiest female killers. The scale of Makarova’s atrocities has apparently been exaggerated by publicists, but is still horrifying. We can speak with absolute confidence about at least two hundred who were shot by her with her own hands.

Disappearance

In August 1943, due to the offensive of the Soviet army, the situation in the Lokot district became critical. Several thousand people from among the collaborators and their families left for Belarus. Then Makarova also disappeared.

There are versions that describe her disappearance in different ways. According to one of them, she was hospitalized with a venereal disease. And then she persuaded a certain compassionate German corporal to hide her in the convoy. But it is possible that she simply left with the rest of the collaborators, and then ran away to the Germans.

They had no use for her, so she was sent to a military factory in Königsberg, where she worked until the end of the war. In 1945, the city was taken by Soviet troops. Makarova, along with other prisoners and deportees, was tested in the NKVD testing and filtration camps.

In many publications there are allegations that she allegedly either forged or stole someone’s nursing documents and thus returned to serve in the army. These are speculations of modern authors. In fact, she successfully passed all the checks under her own name. An archival document from the Ministry of Defense database in which she appears has been preserved. It reads: “Antonina Makarovna Makarova, born in 1920, non-party, conscripted with the rank of sergeant by the Lenin District Military Commissariat of Moscow on August 13, 1941 to the 422nd Regiment. She was captured on October 8, 1941. Sent for further service in the marching company of the 212th reserve rifle regiment on April 27, 1945."

At the same time, Makarova met the Red Army soldier Ginzburg. He had just distinguished himself in one of the April battles, destroying 15 enemy soldiers with a mortar (for which he was awarded the medal “For Courage”), and was being treated for a slight concussion. Soon they got married.

Makarova did not need to compose complex legends. It was enough just to keep silent about his service as an executioner. The rest of her biography did not raise any questions. A young nurse was captured in the first days at the front, was sent by the Germans to a factory, and worked there throughout the war. Therefore, she did not arouse any suspicion among the inspectors.

Search

At one time, there was a popular joke about the elusive Joe, whom no one was looking for. This fully applies to Makarova, who openly lived in the USSR for more than 30 years. Moreover, just a few hours’ drive from the place of their “glory” - after the war, she and her husband settled in Lepel.

At first, the Soviet authorities knew nothing at all about Makarova. Later, they received testimony from the former commandant of the Lokot district prison, who said that a certain Tonya Makarova, a former nurse from Moscow, was involved in the executions there.

However, the search was soon abandoned. According to one version, the Bryansk security officers (it was they who investigated her case) mistakenly considered her dead and closed the case. According to another, they got confused due to confusion with her last name. But, apparently, if they were looking for her, it was extremely carelessly.

Already in 1945, she appeared in army documents under her own name. And are there many Antonin Makarovs in the USSR? Probably several hundred. What if we subtract those who did not live in Moscow and did not serve as a nurse? Significantly less. The investigators in her case probably did not take into account that she could have gotten married and changed her last name, or were simply too lazy to check her along this line. As a result, Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg lived quietly for more than 30 years, working as a seamstress and not hiding from anyone. She was considered an exemplary Soviet citizen, her portrait even hung on the local honor board.

As in the case of another famous punisher Vasyura, chance helped to find her. Her brother, a colonel in the Soviet army, was going abroad. In those days, everyone traveling was strictly checked for trustworthiness, forced to fill out forms for all relatives. And high-ranking military personnel were checked even more strictly. Upon verification, it turned out that he himself was Parfenov, and his sister’s maiden name was Makarova. How can this be? They became interested in this story, and along the way it turned out that this Makarova was in captivity during the war, and her full namesake appeared on the list of wanted criminals.

Antonina was identified by several witnesses who lived in the village at the time she worked as an executioner. In 1978 she was arrested. The trial took place then. She did not deny it and admitted her guilt, explaining her actions by saying that “the war forced her.” She was found sane and sentenced to death for the murder of 167 people. All appeals and requests for clemency were rejected. On August 11, 1979, the sentence was carried out.

She became the only female punisher convicted by a Soviet court. In addition, she became the first woman executed in the entire post-Stalin era.

Researchers are still puzzling over what made the young girl choose such a terrible craft. After all, it wasn't a matter of her survival. Based on available information, she initially served in the police in auxiliary positions. There is no evidence that she was forced to become an executioner by threats of death. Most likely, this was a voluntary choice.

Some believe that Makarova was forced to take up the craft, which even the men who went to serve the Germans shied away from, due to the darkness of her mind after the horrors of encirclement, captivity and wanderings in the forests. Others say that it was a matter of banal greed, because the position of executioner was paid higher. One way or another, the true motives of Tonka the Machine Gunner remained a mystery.

The film executioner is the prototype of the main character. A sadist, a victim of circumstances or a calculating cynic: who Tonka the Machine Gunner really was

Fundamental distortion of biography

"Lokot executioner"

Search and retribution

Fundamental distortion of biography

"Lokot executioner"

Search and retribution

Biography

Early life

Personality

Actions on the side of the “Lokot self-government”

After the war

Arrest, trial, execution

Court

Password recovery