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p Not later than June 18, 1943

p Comrades,

p I die for my country, without grudging my life. Good-bye, dear sister Natasha and Mum and Dad.

p Maria

On June 18, 1943, in the village of Lyodnoye, just outside Kharkov the nazis hanged three young patriots: Maria Kislyak, 18 years old, Fyodor Rudenko, 19, and Vasily Bugrimenko, 19.

 
Maria Kislyak

 

p The daring youngsters had not bowed to the "New Order" and had thrown all they had into resistance to the S.S. The eldest of the trio, Fyodor Rudenko was not yet twenty years of age and Maria Kislyak had only just graduated from Kharkov medical school.

p During the first occupation of Kharkov, Maria Kislyak concealed and nursed in her flat two wounded soldiers who later rejoined the Soviet forces after Kharkov’s liberation in February 1943.

In the spring of 1943, Lyodnoye was captured for the second time. The two boys and a girl formed an underground group. Fyodor Rudenko already knew a few things about war
as he had volunteered for the army in February 1943, had been 148 taken pusoner near Chuguyev, escaped and came home to Lyodnoye where he had at once joined the underground group.

 
Maria Kislyak’s note from the Kharkov Gestapo gaol
 

p In late May 1943, the three were arrested and packed off to the Gestapo in Kharkov. For over a fortnight the Gestapo tortured the youngsters and on June 18 brought them, battered but undefeated, to Lyodnoye for a public hanging. Before the hanging, Fyodor Rudenko was unable to say a word since the nazis had gagged him. But Maria Kislyak shouted: "Good-bye, Mum and Dad and all my friends, I die for my country. Comrades, kill the Germans, purge our soil of these evil creatures.”

A note from Maria scribbled on a piece of paper was smuggled from the Kharkov Gestapo gaol.