Posts by Shelly Sanders
Aliya Moldagulova: An Unlikely Sniper Heroine
By the time Aliya Moldagulova was eight years old, in 1933, she was practically an orphan. Her mother and brother had died, and her father was a prisoner of the Soviet regime where he was being persecuted for being the son of a nobleman. For a year, Aliya wandered her small, impoverished village on the…
Read MoreSara (Shura) Erenshtein: A Tribute to a Latvian Jewish Sniper from her daughter, Fira Erenshtein
When the Germans invaded Latvia in 1941, few Jews left Riga—their news had been censored for years so they didn’t know how the Nazis were treating Jews elsewhere in Europe. Sara Erenshtein, however, fled Riga for Uzbekistan on the last available train with her parents, four siblings, and three nieces and nephews. Her mother, one…
Read MoreNina Petrova: The only grandmother-sniper in WWII
Nina Petrova was 48 years old when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, far beyond the age of conscription. Yet Nina, who’d raised her daughter on her own and was now a grandmother, clearly considered age as insignificant when it came to combat. She joined the Red Army as a sniper of the 284th…
Read MoreLIDA BAKIEVA: LOYAL UNTIL THE END
Lida Bakieva’s loyalty, raw determination, quick thinking and sense of humor made her a sniper to fear and admire. This dark-featured young woman from Kazakhstan was just seventeen when she married nineteen-year-old Satai Bakiev a few months before the war. Satai was conscripted as soon as the Germans invaded Russia. Lida, a Young Communist League…
Read MoreROZA SHANINA: Unseen Terror of East Prussia
Oh, this army life, they all think we’re a bunch of prostitutes, and it’s so offensive for a modest girl to see all this. -Roza Shanina, November 18, 1944 Of all the female snipers I came across while working on The Night Sparrow, Roza Shanina has resonated most with her remarkable fortitude and with the…
Read More