Nina Ivanovna Sosnina - member of the resistance organization Komsomol in the Zhytomyr region
(1923 - 1943)
Heroine of the Soviet Union
She was born in 1923 in a small village in the Ivanovo region in the family of a doctor. The Sosnin soon moved to Kiev, where Nina's father was to work at a city clinic, but because of the typhus epidemic, he voluntarily gave up a promising career and went to Malin in the Zhytomyr region to help. His family later went to see him and Nina studied high school there. She planned to study at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow University, but her plans were changed by the war.
After the occupation of the city, she joined an illegal youth organization in Malin. Its members, including children of the so-called kulaks - "enemies of the people", distributed leaflets and obtained information for local guerrillas. In addition to contacts with members of the ROA, Nina also established close contact with the Slovak crew officer in the city, Ján Antal. At the end of August 1943, she took part in the fight near Bílá Krynice with the partisans, during which Pavel Taraskin, the leader of the group, was wounded. Together with him, she was surrounded on August 31 by an SS criminal unit in the house of her father, who was to operate on a young guerrilla. Nina refused to give up and started firing at the Germans from a light machine gun. The unequal struggle lasted several hours. Eventually, the house was set on fire by the SS and the guerrillas died a heroic death.
After the war, Inna was twice nominated for the title Hero of the USSR in memoriam, but twice it was rejected by higher places, for the first time due to Nina's attitudes to "Class enemies", for the second time due to a relationship with a Slovak soldier. It was only after Ján Antala was tracked down and personally came to Malin to clarify the circumstances of his relationship with Nina at the time that she was awarded the title on May 8, 1965.
Today, an obelisk with a memorial plaque of resistance fighters stands in the Malinu city park. Nina Sosnina is named after the school where she studied and the streets in several Ukrainian cities. Her story was described in S. S. Smirnov's book «Семья», according to which the film «Семья Сосниных» was made.
The story is also described in Kazimier J. Cottam's book: Woman in War and Resistance
URL : https://www.valka.cz/Sosnina-Nina-Ivanovna-t35772#132500
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