Keta Braun
Keta Braun was born in 1920 in Simferopol. She finished high school in that city.
In the late 1930s, Keta moved to Leningrad, where she began to attend the Mikhail Kalinin Law Institute (now the St. Petersburg State University).
At the time of the outbreak of the Soviet-German War in June 1941, Keta Braun was about to begin her last year of study at the Institute. In the first days of the war, Keta's husband, Piotr, volunteered to enlist in the army. He served as a signalman on the Leningrad Front, and was killed in action in autumn 1941.
Keta Braun tried to volunteer for frontline service, but her application was denied. Nevertheless, she was able to undergo marksmanship training, alongside her exams at the Institute.
In early 1942, Keta Braun was finally allowed to enlist in the Red Army. She began her service on the Leningrad Front as a rank-and-file private, and later became a machine gunner. There were few women serving in this capacity, and for this reason she was frequently written about in the frontline newspapers.
Shortly thereafter, Keta Braun was appointed a political commissar. The rifle division in which she served was deployed in the area of Nevsky Pyatachok, which became the site of heavy fighting and massive casualties for both sides. From September 1941 until February 1943 (with a brief intermission), the Red Army, using a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Neva River, kept trying to launch an offensive against the enemy forces, in an attempt to lift the Siege of Leningrad.
In late September 1942, while crossing to the left bank of the Neva, Keta's squad came under enemy fire. She was mortally wounded, and the boat that she was on capsized. Keta Braun was buried in the area of Nevskaya Dubrovka. She was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Star.
The poet Georgy Suvorov dedicated a poem to Keta Braun. It was published in 1943 in the Zvezda magazine:
"As soon as she recalls their life together,
Her heart becomes inflamed with thoughts of vengeance,
And bullets slice through the congealing dark,
And the stunned enemies are falling back…
Meanwhile, the woman, hoping to hit harder,
Is wheeling her big gun from trench to trench.
As soon as she recalls… The woman's hands
Grip the machine gun with unfailing strength!"
