Marytàor Marija Melnikaità(18 March 1923 â 13 July 1943) was a Soviet partisan and the only Lithuanian woman awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. While her partisan career lasted less than two months, Soviet propaganda exaggerated her duties and accomplishments. Many works, including a film and an opera, were dedicated to her. Several streets in the former Soviet Union (including Tyumen, Minsk, Almaty, Shymkent) are still named after her.
Melnikaitàwas born to a family of a Russian mother Antonina Illarionovna and a Lithuanian father Juozas Melnikas in Zarasai. She had four other siblings and the parents took assorted jobs to provide for the large family. They moved frequently in search for jobs (Zarasai, Anykà ¡ÃÂiai, Rokià ¡kis, Zarasai, MarijampolÃÂ). Melnikaitàcompleted a primary school in Rokià ¡kis and started working at Avanti confectionery at age 14 and studied sewing. In 1940, after Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union, Melnikaitàjoined the Lithuanian Komsomol and started evening classes. Reportedly her father did not approve her Komsomol activities, which included her singing in a choir.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, MelnikaitÃÂ along with other Komsomol members was evacuated to Russia where she took a job at a machine tool plant in Tyumen. In July 1942, she joined the Soviet Army (16th Rifle Division) and was sent to a saboteur school in Balakhna. In May 1943, she finished the studies and together with 35 other partisans (including two other women) were airlifted to the Rasony District in Belarus. From there, they needed to travel on foot to partisan headquarters in forests near . MelnikaitÃÂ and a few others were assigned to the native Zarasai where she joined the Soviet partisan group KÃÂstutis under the name of Ona KuosaitÃÂ.
MelnikaitÃÂ's partisan life lasted less than two months. Her Soviet biographers claimed that she participated in sabotage operations that derailed German trains carrying weapons to the front lines or bombed German warehouses. There is some evidence of only one diversion where a small train carrying gravel and sugar was derailed. In July 1943, she and several other partisans were sent on a mission to bring more weapons from the Soviet partisans operating in Belarus. Local inhabitants spotted the group near Apvardai Lake in Ignalina District and called Lithuanian policemen. During a shootout, several partisans were killed. There is reliable evidence of only one policeman (Igoris Kazanas) who was killed by the partisans. Melnikaitàand a man (likely FatÃÂjus Sapoà ¾nikovas) were captured and their custody was transferred to the German police. After five days of torture, they were shot in the cemetery of Kanià «kai village. Since MelnikaitÃÂ's family was not repressed while Sapoà ¾nikovas' and other partisans' families were killed or arrested, it is likely that Melninkaitàdid not give up her real identity.
Her story was rediscovered in spring 1944 when Motiejus à  umauskas, leader of Lithuanian Soviet partisans, searched for a Lithuanian version of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Melnikaitàwas posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 22 March 1944. The death of the twenty-year-old was used by Soviet propaganda, which exaggerated her duties, accomplishments, and circumstances of her death. For example, in March 1944, Antanas SnieÃÂkus wrote in Tiesa that the shootout lasted a day and that Melnikaitàpersonally killed seven policemen, was badly injured, attempted to commit suicide with a grenade, and even after brutal torture did not betray her fellow partisans. Her first biographer Antanas Venclova later admitted in his memoirs that he was given just the basic facts (name, dates of birth and death, and a few words on the circumstances of her death) and a deadline of next morning to produce her heroic biography. Until 1965, when documents were discovered that proved she was shot, her biographers claimed that she was publicly hanged and that her last words praised the Lithuanian SSR and comrade Stalin.