Reina PenningtonReina Pennington">
`Поли́на Влади́мировна Ге́льман
Polina Gel'man's story appears in several interviews and articles. The English Wikipedia entry on her is weak and poorly sourced, though generally accurate. She studied history at Moscow State University before and after the war. She retired from military service in 1957 and taught political economy at the Party Institute of Social Sciences in Moscow until her retirement in 1990.
Click here for a translated copy of my correspondence with Gel'man in 1992-93. Click here for a complete translated transcript of my 1993 interview with her. Here's an excerpt from that interview:
"I remember one more night when I was flying and I was crying the whole time. We were retreating from Ukraine to Caucasus. And we were bombing the advancing German columns of tanks. They were advancing so fast that we didn't have enough time to relocate. I remember we didn't even have maps. They just told us to fly on a course of 90 degrees, fly east. And then, while we flew toward the target, our own people were burning the land, it was August or September, the end of harvest season, but there wasn't time to harvest so they burned it rather than leave it [for the Germans], and you know my tears flowed involuntarily because it's your own land burning, my own country was burning, it was terrible."
Polina Vladimirovna Gel'man (1919-2005)
Sources:
In English
Cottam, Kazimiera J. Women in War and Resistance: Selected Biographies of Soviet Women Soldiers. Nepean, Ontario: New Military Publishing, 1998.
Noggle, Anne. A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994.
Pennington, Reina. Wings, Women, & War: Soviet Airwomen in World War II Combat. Edited by Theodore Wilson. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2001.
Redlich, Shimon, K. M. Anderson, and I. Alʹtman. War, Holocaust, and Stalinism: A Documented Study of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2016.
The Real Truth: Profiles of Soviet Jews. Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1986.
In Russian/French
Bashkirov, B., and N. Semenkevich. "Geroini Sovetskogo Neba." Kryl'ia Rodiny, March 1969.
Blinova, Klavdiia. "Siniy Platochek." In Na Zemle, V Nebesakh I Na More Rasskazyvaiut Frontoviki, 1941-1945, edited by Iu I. Chernov, 94-119. Moskva: Voenizdat, 1983.
Chernov, Iu I., ed. Na Zemle, V Nebesakh I Na More. 11 vols. Moskva: Voenizdat, 1979-.
Drabkin, Artem. Ia Dralsia Na Po-2 (I Fought in the Po-2). Moskva: Iauza: Eksmo, 2007.
Gel'man, Polina. O Boiakh, Pozharishchakh I Druz'iakh-Tovarishchakh. Moskva: Izd-vo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1995. Click here for PDF.
La Poype, Roland de Stasi Jean-Charles. L'èpop/E Du Normandie-Nièmen : Mèmoires. Paris: Perrin, 2007.
Sverdlov, F. D. V Stroiu Otvazhnykh: Ocherki O Evreiakh, Geroiakh Sovetskogo Soiuza (В строю отважных: очерки о евреях, героях Советского Союза). Moskva: A/O "Kniga i biznes", 1992.
Viguchin, S., and E. Ignatovich. "Nezabyvaemoe Kryl'ia." Komsomol'skoe znamia, 18 December 1987, 1-2.
Unpublished sources
Gel'man, Polina. "Letter 8/11/92." edited by author, 1992.
———. "Letter 7/15/92." edited by author, 1992.
———. "Letter 7/28/92." edited by author, 1992.
Gelman, Polina Vladimirovna. "Interview with Reina Pennington." Moscow, Russia, 3 May 1993.
Rakobolskaia, Irina. "Interview with Reina Pennington." Moscow, 10 May 1993.
"Shtatno-Dolzhnosti Spisok 588 Nochnogo Legko-Bombardirovochnogo Aviatstionogo Polka Na 6 Noiabria 1942." 6 Nov 1942. f. 46 GvBAP, op. 15726, d. 8, l. 5-9. Podolsk, Russia: TsAMO.
Young adult and fiction
Wein, Elizabeth. A Thousand Sisters: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II. New York, NY: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, 2019.
Links
https://www.yadvashem.org/research/research-projects/soldiers/polina-gelman.html
Part of the "Jews in the Red Army" project at Yad Vashem.
http://www.berdichev.org/polina.html
Brief biographical entry.
http://aircrewremembered.com/soviet-night-witches-pilots.html