April 7, 1996
She passed away at the age of 82. Elena Mazanik. Liquidator of Gauleiter Wilhelm Kube. The General Commissioner of Belarus in 1941-1943 was responsible for the deaths of more than 50,000 people.
If the assassination attempt had failed, then, of course, it would have been the end of me. (from the book "KGB Liquidators")
She was born in 1914 into a family of peasants in Minsk province. She completed sixth grade. At 17, she got a job as a waitress in the cafeteria of the Republican Council of People's Commissars. Soon after, she married a driver and NKVD officer. Boleslaw Tarlecki.
Her family life was unhappy: her first child died in 1935, at the age of one and a half. She gave birth to her second child prematurely in 1939, but the baby could not be saved.
Before the war, she worked in the cafeteria of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus. She remained in Minsk after the Nazis captured her (she and her husband had separated by then; he had fled the city on the eve of the occupation along with Soviet officials).
She got hired as a cleaner in a German military unit, later becoming a waitress in a casino. It was from there that "Galina" (the name she worked under) found a job as a maid at the mansion of General Commissioner Kube.
Tall (in the Kube household, they called her "Big Galina"), experienced in serving dinners, caring for children, and walking dogs, she was impeccable as a servant. She assumed her duties in June 1943. By then, the hunting season in Cuba was already in full swing.
Wilhelm Kube was 55 at the time. He was born in Silesia, graduated from university with a degree in history and law, and was a writer who wrote plays. In 1927, he joined the NSDAP, later became Gauleiter of Brandenburg, and in 1934, received the rank of SS Gruppenführer. He fell into disgrace due to underhanded dealings (he spread rumors about his mother-in-law). Borman), but regained its position.
In 1941, he became General Commissar of Belarus. Soon after assuming his post, 2278 prisoners of the Minsk ghetto were executed:
What the plague and syphilis are to humanity, the Jews are to the white race.
He was a rabid anti-Semite. In July 1942, he reported that he had liquidated "about 55,000 Jews" in Belarus "over the past ten weeks."
Several attempts were made to assassinate Kube. He was lucky. On July 22, 1943, a bomb exploded in a Minsk theater, killing 70 German soldiers, and Kube left the building just minutes before the blast. On September 6, an explosion rocked the officers' mess hall, killing 36, but Kube missed the banquet.
Beginning in August 1943, NKVD officers began approaching Mazanik with proposals to liquidate Kube. "Galina" acted cautiously. She conditioned this on a meeting with the task force's leadership and guarantees of safety for herself and her family remaining in Minsk. She refused two contacts. The partisan Maria Osipova (call sign "Heron"), who fulfilled the conditions, managed to recruit Mazanik.
Mazanik immediately rejected the idea of poisoning Kube with arsenic—children were the first to eat in the Gauleiter's family. It was decided to blow Kube up. On September 20, Osipova gave "Galina" a small mine and suicide poison in case of failure.
On the night of September 21st, the 24-hour clock mechanism was activated. In the morning, "Galina" went to work. She placed the mine in her purse, wrapped in a scarf. A soldier at the entrance to the mansion inquired about the contents, but was satisfied that the scarf was a gift for her wife, Kuba. To Anita.
"Galina" had a good relationship with Anita; according to some accounts, she was even willing to take the maid with her to Germany. At the time of the assassination attempt, Frau Kube was eight months pregnant.
Mazanik placed the mine under Kube's mattress. Under the pretext of a toothache, she asked her hosts for permission to see a doctor. That same day, she and her relatives were evacuated from Minsk. The explosion occurred at 00:40 AM on September 22. Kube was killed instantly. His wife was barely injured.
In October 1943, Mazanik became a Hero of the Soviet Union.
After the war, she joined the party and returned to Minsk. According to some accounts, she lived in fear for the last years of her life, changing apartments and avoiding contact with strangers. This may have been because, starting in 1976, she began receiving letters from Anita. Although Kube's widow wrote that she held no grudge, "Galina" was advised not to respond to the letters.
Anita wrote to Elena until the early 1990s, outlived her by 10 years, and passed away at 95, also suffering from a nervous disorder.
