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LETTER FROM IVAN KOZLOV TO HIS COMRADES

p December 27, 1942

p My dears,

p Yesterday, Saturday, I received no correspondence from you. Understood. I’ll probably be the death of you with my straightforwardness but there’s no sense giving way to despair when there’s no way of mending what’s done. Everything I’ve got worked out, as you see, cannot be realised for reasons which are beyond my control. I know it must be hard to lose one of your mates. But how can you help? Tears are no use. To hell with them. Millions are dying and in what way are we better than them? A real patriot is one who looks death bravely in the face. No tears. No despair. Our blood won’t be shed in vain.

p Have courage, be brave, don’t be afraid and never despair.

p What wouldn’t I give to live and get revenge on these savages! If only I were able.... You can bet your life I would have slaughtered these dirty swine. I wouldn’t have cared, I would have torn them apart-and enjoyed every minute of it. Yet only a couple of years ago I was too scared even to carve a little chicken.

p Oh, how I want to live! The whole aim of life is not to hide behind the backs of your comrades but to take a gun in your hands and kill the dirty jackals. The whole ecstasy 104 of life, the eternal ideal of us all is to live for our country, for our freedom-loving Russian nation, to battle for its honour and freedom.

p Ardent greetings to all those who go with gun in hands to defend honour and independence.

p Greetings to all friends and comrades....

p From the very bottom of my heart I wish you the best of luck. Please excuse the torments I’m causing you, they’ll be paid back in full.

p Yours,
Vanya Kozlov 

See if you can get me a bit of baccy today round about three.

GEORGI FALEVICH’S LETTER TO HIS FIANCEE

p Not later than September 1942

p My love, what a pity I can’t write to you from here, I’d swamp you with letters.

p My darling, how I want to see you, kiss you and hold you in my arms. But, unfortunately, all that is impossible both now and in the future. Nina dear, please try and slip me a few words somehow. My love, write me something every day. It would make me so happy....

p Give mum a kiss for me. Ask Vera Ignatyevna to forgive me for everything-kiss her too.

p I could do with a smoke!

p All my love,
Georgi 

Tell them at home there is a note sewn in my underpants.

On June 28, 1941, the nazis marched into Minsk, but they were unable to break its people’s spirit. In the very first months of occupation the Communists and Y.C.L. members began to get together small resistance groups at the big factories, on the railway and in the colleges. At the end of 1941 a town Party committee came into being to lead the resistance struggle. Set up at the same time was a Military Council of Partisan Detachments consisting mainly of soldiers and officers who had stayed behind in the Byelorussian capital.

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Ivan Kozlov

p One of their first tasks was to listen in to the news from Moscow and to distribute leaflets. After establishing contact with the partisans, the underground resistance began to engage in intelligence work and supply the partisans with arms and ammunition, medicine and warm clothing. In order to carry out intel ligence work more efficiently the Minsk patriots, on instructions from the Party committee, made their way into jobs at offices and factories run by the Germans.

p Ivan Kozlov was one of the most active of the Minsk underground workers. Right from the very first days of occupation Kozlov turned his house into a meeting place for his fellow resistance fighters, intelligence people and partisans. He handled all the messages which the partisans sent to the underground and back again. On instructions from the Party committee, he became engaged on the job of preparing documents for the underground. In the squat house on Komarovskaya Street this talented artist forged the stamps and signatures of the nazi administrators in Minsk. He was supplied with blank documents by another member of the underground, Y.C.L. lad Zakhar Gallo who got himself a job as clerk in the German pass office. Risking his life daily Gallo brought Kozlov blank passports, passes and other documents, specimens of stamps and signatures. The pair of them supplied dozens of Minsk fighters with life-saving documents. It took the Germans a long time before they could lay their hands on the underground pass-issuing office.

p Between September and October 1942, the Gestapo, with the connivance of spies who had wormed their way into the Minsk underground, dealt a serious blow to the Party organisation. On October 26, Kozlov was arrested. More than two months of endless questioning and torture went by. Nothing could break the will of the intrepid Soviet patriot. Not one name passed his lips.

p His friends prepared an escape plan, but it fell through at the last moment.

From time to time Ivan Kozlov succeeded in making contact with his friends outside continuing the fight against the enemy. On December 27, 1942, not long before his execution, he wrote them the letter published above. His last words found their way through to his comrades-in-arms and from them were sent to the partisans.

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p Georgi Falevich had been a chemistry student at the Byelorussia State University. He could hardly have imagined that in a few months’ time he was to be in charge of a dispensary under the Germans. But the underground needed a reliable cover and they needed medical supplies, and the chemistry undergraduate took over a dispensary on Sovietskaya St. right next door to the Gestapo H.Q. Another undergraduate, Nina Yermolenko, joined her fiance at the dispensary.

p All autumn and winter of 1941-42, the dispensary manager’s office served as a reliable cover for the partisans. Here they kept their print and blank bread coupons with which they supplied the underground fighters and partisan families. And a good deal of scarce medical supplies were dispatched from here to the partisan units.

p In the spring of 1942, a spy succeeded in penetrating the organisation. Arrests commenced. On the morning of May 26, the Gestapo pounced on two girls-partisan contacts-with whom Georgi Falevich had sent an urgent order of medical supplies for the partisans. The dispensary was cordoned off and all its assistants put under arrest. Due to lack of evidence Nina Yermolenko was quickly released but Georgi Falevich and his comrades were taken away to the town Gestapo gaol.

p The nazis tried every trick they knew to get information out of the young chemist. But they got no names or addresses. The young lad stood up to his torture bravely and took all blame on himself in an effort to save the remaining underground fighters under arrest. In September the Germans stopped taking any more parcels from Nina for Georgi. It was later learned that he had been shot.

Through a policeman in league with the underground, Georgi Falevich managed lo send out a few letters to his bride-to-be. They were written on narrow strips of cloth torn from his clothing.