With the intersection of Women’s History Month and the US government’s shocking decision to stop funding Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia, it’s time we remember legendary WWII female Ukrainian sniper, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and celebrate today’s female snipers fighting for Ukraine. I came across Lyudmila while researching female snipers for my upcoming novel, The Night Sparrow;…
Read MoreKlavdiya Kalugina was not only the youngest female sniper in the Red Army during WWII, she also had more difficulty shooting than the other cadets. Just fifteen years old when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, she joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) with an eye to leaving her job as a munitions factory worker and…
Read MoreBy 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 MoreWhen 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 MoreLida 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…
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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…
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