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p January 6, 1943

p Farewell Mummy. I’ll soon be gone. Don’t cry over me.

p Mum, when our Red Army comes, let them know I died for my country. Let them avenge me and our suffering.

p My dear Mum, farewell once more ... we shan’t be seeing each other any more. I’m going to die.

p But how much I want to live! I’m only 20, and death is knocking at the door. .. .

p How much I want to work, to serve my country.

p But these savages, murderers.... They snatch our young lives away.

p I’m now in the death cell, waiting for them to come along at any moment. I can hear them shouting "Come out!”, they’re coming to the cell now. . . .

p Oh, Mum, farewell! Kisses to you all for the last time. My final greetings and kisses. . . .

Nina Poptsova

p Nina Poptsova was a twenty-year-old Y.C.L. girl from a little hamlet near Pyatigorsk. At the approach of Hitler’s army she took to the hills to fight the enemy from there. In late autumn 1942, she was dropped by parachute behind the front line to glean what information she could about the nazi troops. On instructions from her command, Nina made three excursions behind the lines. On one occasion she got through to Pyatigorsk, and on another to her native village; she even fearlessly entered nazi offices. And everywhere her sharp eyes took in exactly what was needed back at command headquarters.

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Nina twice safely crossed the front and dehveied her information to headquarters Wnen she appeared for the third time in the streets of Pyatigorsk she was spotted by a traitor and given away to the Germans In the Pyatigorsk dungeons she was interrogated by officers from the notorious Bergman Regiment with the participation of the fascist butcher Oberlander But they were unable to force a word fiom the young girl On the day of her death, January 6, 1943, five days before Pyatigorsk’s liberation, Nina wrote a letter to her mother This letter, hurnedly scribbled in pencil, was discovered among the documents left behind by the Germans in then hurried exit from the town