Maria Vasil'evna Makhovskaya (Shishkina)

Maria Vasil'evna: She Survived Execution by Firing Squad Three Times Maria Vasil'evna was born on May 1, 1928, in the village of Taborishchi, in the Kirovograd Region of the Ukrainian SSR. She grew up in the family of Vasilyy and Alexandra alongside her older brother, Ivan, and her younger sister, Galina, who was still very small. In the early days of the Great Patriotic War, Maria Vasil'evna’s father, Vasilyy, volunteered for the front. A new, arduous life began for the family, and soon the war reached Taborishchi itself. In the autumn of 1941, the village was occupied by German troops. According to family recollections, local armed units and police forces appeared in the village alongside the occupiers, participating in the persecution of and reprisals against the local population. Arrests and executions of residents ensued. Maria Vasil'evna was a staunch opponent of fascism and Nazism. She wanted to resist the occupiers, yet there were no organized partisan cells in the vicinity of the village that she could join. Under these circumstances, resistance took a different form for her: the struggle for her own life and the lives of her family members. According to family accounts, Maria Vasil'evna found herself three times among villagers being led to their execution. Each time, after the volley of gunfire, she would feign death. Once the executioners had left, Maria would get up and make her way home along back roads. A lifelong wound served as a reminder of just how close she had come to death. She was missing the fingernail on the middle finger of her left hand—family lore held that it had been torn off by a bullet during one of the executions. But her ordeals did not end there. The occupying forces decided to deport some of the village residents to Germany for forced labor. Among those slated to leave their home were Maria Vasil'evna’s mother, Alexandra, her brother Ivan, and her infant sister, Galina. Maria could not abandon them. Waiting for nightfall, she spirited her mother, brother, and baby sister away from the column. The family hid in a swamp not far from where the convoy was stationed. However, a new problem arose. Due to hunger, Alexandra’s milk had dried up, leaving her with no way to feed the infant. Maria Vasil'evna took another risk: she returned to the convoy and stole a cow. According to family recollections, the theft went unnoticed, and the cow saved little Galina from starvation. The fugitives remained in hiding until the convoy had left. Afterward, they were able to return to their home village. In late 1943, Soviet forces launched an offensive along the Dnieper. During the combat operations of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, Taborishchi was liberated. However, the liberation of their home village was both a joyous and a tragic event for Maria Vasil'evna’s family. Her father, Vasilyy, was killed during that operation while liberating his native land from the Nazi invaders. Maria Vasil'evna survived the occupation, three near-executions, starvation, persecution, and the loss of her father. Her experiences did not remain merely a personal history; after the war, she passed on her memories to future generations, recounting what the Nazi occupation had brought and the ordeals the civilian population had endured. Although she devoted her post-war life to peaceful labor, for Maria Vasil'evna, her family and the memory of what she had endured remained inseparable from the history of the Great Patriotic War. Victory Day was the most important holiday for her. It was a day that signified not only the end of the war but also the victory over the forces that had once brought the conflict to her native village, claimed her father’s life, and jeopardized the lives of her entire family. Maria Vasil'evna survived the war to go on living, working, raising a family, and passing on the memory of her experiences to her children and future generations. Her story is not merely one of wartime events, but the story of a civilian who had to fight for survival amidst the most harrowing circumstances. Her memory remains a part of our family’s history.