Maria Melnikayte Participant of the partisan movement in Lithuania during the Great Patriotic War, Hero of the Soviet Union (1944, posthumously). Date of Birth: 18.03.1923 Country: Lithuania

Biography of Maria Melnikaitė

Maria Melnikaitė was a participant in the partisan movement in Lithuania during the Great Patriotic War and was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1944. She was born into a poor family of a Lithuanian and a Russian as the second of five children. She was baptized in a Catholic church, although there is a version that she was a Russian from the Old Believers.

At the age of fourteen, Melnikaitė started working at the "Avanti" candy factory. In August 1941, when the Nazis entered Lithuania, she was evacuated to Tyumen with other Lithuanian Komsomol members. In 1942, she went to the front and received training at the sabotage school in Balahna. She fought in a partisan unit in Belarus and Lithuania, engaging in various activities such as sabotaging enemy trains, blowing up warehouses, daring attacks on enemy garrisons, and burning down estates and farms seized by German colonists. She was the most active fighter in her unit, participating in diversions, reconnaissance missions, and doing extensive work among the local population.

In the summer of 1943, Melnikaitė was sent as the leader of a partisan group on an important mission. In the forest, the partisans encountered a punitive detachment, and during the unequal battle, Maria was wounded and captured. However, she did not reveal the location of her unit. She was executed on July 13, 1943, in the square of the village of Dukštas.

For exemplary execution of combat missions behind enemy lines, Maria I. Melnikaitė was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1944. Streets in Minsk and Tyumen are named after her. The streets that bore her name in cities of Lithuania were renamed after the restoration of independence. In 1955, a monument was erected in Zarasai (sculptor Juozas Mikėnas, currently located in the Grūtas Park).

In 1947, the film "Marita" was made at the Mosfilm studio, directed by V. P. Stroeva and featuring Lithuanian actors. The film, based on the screenplay by F. F. Knorre, marked the debut of Donatas Banionis in a small role.