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p Not later than March 19, 1942

p Good-bye, my dear Mummie and Eleonora. As I wait to be hanged I am writing to send my last greetings.

p Don’t cry. Mum, and don’t say it’s my own fault. There was no other way. Look after yourself for Ellie’s sake, you should now be both grannie and mother to her. Bring her up a good girl and a kind person, see that she loves her country and people.

p All my love to you all, remember me to all our relations, friends and my pupils, all those who manage to get through this awful time.

Zhenya

p They all respected her in Kardymovo, the district centre of the Smolensk Region, where she was history teacher in the local secondary school. They respected her for her love for children, her pleasant air, modesty and because she was exacting to herself and her comrades.

In Kardymovo, as everywhere else in the country, the Germans came up against wellorganised resistance. Yevgenia was secretary of the village Communists; her fellow resistance fighters were I. Kovalev, Chairman of the Kardymovo Village Soviet, M. Selyaninova, schoolmistress, P. Shesterikova, doctor, I. Kutsenko, from a district hospital, and others.

Yevgenia Bagrecheva

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p A strong partisan movement swept the whole Smolensk Region. No small thorn in the nazis’ side was provided by the Kardymovo people. After the first winter of the war, Soviet power was, in fact, restored in several villages. To put down partisan resistance, the German Command sent in its crack units from the 10th Tank Division. The nazis burned down 25 villages, shot and hanged over 500 people and carted off hundreds to their prisoner-of-war camp in Smolensk.

On March 19, 1942, Yevgenia Bagrecheva was hanged in the village centre. Before her death, she had been tortured for a long time. But nothing had broken her spirit. A few hours before her death she wrote her last letter on a tiny scrap of paper. It is now preserved in the Smolensk State Museum.