Esfir Glatman
Esfir Glatman was born in 1925 in a Jewish family living in the town of Khabnoye, which became known as "the Kamchatka of Kiev Province" in the 1920s. In 1934, Khabnoye was renamed Kaganovichi, in honor of Lazar Kaganovich, who had been born in a nearby village (nowadays, it is the town of Polesskoye in Kiev Oblast).
Esfir Glatman is known to have been in Moscow at the time of the outbreak of the Soviet-German War. In 1943, she was called up for service in the Red Army. Having been trained as an aviator, Esfir found herself in the legendary 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, which had been created at the initiative of the pilot Marina Raskova (1912-1943). This was an all-female regiment, with all positions – mechanics, pilots, navigators, technicians – being staffed by women. For the most part, these were young women and girls, aged 17-22. The regimental commander was the pilot Yevdokia Bershanskaya, who was not yet 30 at the time. Under her command, the regiment fought on until the end of the war. The unit was popularly nicknamed "Dunka's Regiment", while the German soldiers referred to it as the Nachthexen ("Night Witches"). They were so called because of their tactic of night bombing: the pilots would idle their engines, with the bomber gliding soundlessly over the target, and the bombs would then be released. This done, the pilots would turn the engines back on and fly back to the base.
Esfir Glatman joined the 46th Guards Regiments in October 1944. Having successfully completed a night training course, Esfir quickly began to take part in flights. Over her six months of service as a navigator in this regiment, she completed 75 combat missions, dropping a total of 10,000 kg of payload and destroying enemy ammunition depots. In late March 1945, as she flew a mission near the city of Danzig (present-day Gdańsk in Poland), she destroyed vehicles carrying ammunition with a precise hit. During her tour of active duty, which lasted less than a year, Esfir was awarded the Order of the Red Star, as well as medals. She was only 20 years old at the time.
Unfortunately, Esfir Glatman's postwar fate has remained unknown.
