Wardaddy brought me here

Roza Shanina (1924-1945).

Soviet sniper.

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She was credited with fifty-nine confirmed kills, including twelve soldiers during the Battle of Vilnius. Shanina volunteered for the military after the death of her brother in 1941 and chose to be a marksman on the front line. Praised for her shooting accuracy, Shanina was capable of precisely hitting enemy personnel and making doublets (two target hits by two rounds fired in quick succession).

She was one of the first women to join the Soviet army during World War II and was the first Soviet female sniper to be awarded the Order of Glory, also becoming the first servicewoman of the 3rd Belorussian Front to receive it.

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Roza was above average height, with light brown hair and blue eyes, and spoke in a Northern Russian dialect. After finishing four classes of elementary school in Yedma, Shanina continued her education in the village of Bereznik. As there was no school transport at the time, when she was in grades five through seven Roza had to walk 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) to Bereznik to attend middle school.

At the age of fourteen, Shanina, against her parents' wishes, walked 200 kilometres (120 mi) across the taiga to the rail station and travelled to Arkhangelsk to study at the college there.

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Her childhood was deeply impacted by the events of the war, during which she lost three of her five brothers. She volunteered and enrolled at the ‘Central Women’s Sniper Training School,’ from where she graduated with honors. She joined the ‘184th Rifle Division’ and was appointed as the commander of a newly raised special female-sniper platoon.

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Shanina was killed in action during the East Prussian Offensive while shielding the severely wounded commander of an artillery unit. Shanina's bravery received praise already during her lifetime, but conflicted with the Soviet policy of sparing snipers from heavy battles. Her combat diary was first published in 1965.

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Trackwomen, 1943. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company

Series: Women Working In Industry, 1940 - 1945. Record Group 86: Records of the Women’s Bureau, 1892 - 1995

March is Women’s History Month! Women have shaped this country’s history in more ways than we can count. Long before Rosie the Riveter joined the war effort in the 1940s, women earned wages to support themselves and their families. This series of posts celebrates the diversity of women’s labor, ranging from industry to agriculture to folklore and beyond. 

This archival series (Women Working In Industry, 1940 - 1945) contains images depicting women and their contributions to the war effort during World War II. The photographs show women for the first time on a mass scale and from every social and economical background preforming jobs that have been traditionally considered as men’s work. In addition to the clerical and secretarial fields, women are seen working in the aircraft industry, the metal industry, ordnance, the railroad, the shipyards, as well as the military services. There are approximately 94 different occupations shown in this series where women were performing the work.

• Irena Sendler

Irena Stanisława Sendler, also referred to as Irena Sendlerowa; was a Polish humanitarian, social worker, and nurse who served in the Polish Underground Resistance during World War II in German-occupied Warsaw.

Sendler was born on February 15th, 1910 in Warsaw, to Stanisław Henryk Krzyżanowski, a physician, and his wife, Janina. Her father, a humanitarian who treated the very poor, including Jews, free of charge, died in February 1917 from typhus contracted from his patients. After his death, the Jewish community offered financial help for the widow and her daughter, though Janina Krzyżanowska declined their assistance. From 1927, Sendler studied law for two years and then Polish literature at the University of Warsaw, interrupting her studies for several years from 1932 to 1937.

By the outbreak of World War II she submitted her magister degree thesis, but had not taken the final exams. Sendler joined the Union of Polish Democratic Youth in 1928; during the war she became a member of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). She was repeatedly refused employment in the Warsaw school system because of negative recommendations issued by the university, which ascribed radically leftist views to her. Sendler was employed in a legal counseling and social help clinic, the Section for Mother and Child Assistance at the Citizen Committee for Helping the Unemployed. She published two pieces in 1934, both concerned with the situation of children born out of wedlock and their mothers. She worked mostly in the field, crisscrossing Warsaw's impoverished neighborhoods, and her clients were helpless, socially disadvantaged women.

Sendler married Mieczysław Sendler in 1931. He was mobilized for war, captured as a soldier in September 1939 and remained in a German prisoner of war camp until 1945. Soon after the German invasion, on November 1st, 1939, the German occupation authorities ordered Jews removed from the staff of the municipal Social Welfare Department where Sendler worked and barred the department from providing any assistance to Warsaw's Jewish citizens. Sendler with her colleagues and activists from the department's PPS cell became involved in helping the wounded and sick Polish soldiers. Around four hundred thousand Jews were crowded into a small portion of the city designated as the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazis sealed the area in November 1940. As employees of the Social Welfare Department, Sendler gained access to special permits for entering the ghetto to check for signs of typhus, a disease the Germans feared would spread beyond the ghetto. Under the pretext of conducting sanitary inspections, they brought medications and cleanliness items and sneaked clothing, food, and other necessities into the ghetto.

Sendler and other social workers would eventually help the Jews who escaped or arrange for smuggling out babies and small children from the ghetto using various means available. Transferring Jews out of the ghetto and facilitating their survival elsewhere became an urgent priority in the summer of 1942. This work was done at huge risk, as since October 1941, giving any kind of assistance to Jews in German-occupied Poland was punishable by death, not just for the person who was providing the help but also for their entire family. Sendler joined the Polish Socialists, a left-wing branch of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). The Polish Socialists evolved into the Polish Socialist Workers' Party (RPPS), which cooperated with the communist Polish Workers' Party (PPR). Sendler was known there by her conspiratorial pseudonym Klara and among her duties were searching for places to stay, issuing fake documents and being a liaison, guiding activists to clandestine meetings. In the RPPS there were Poles she knew, involved in saving Jews, as well as Jews that she had helped. While in the ghetto, she wore a Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people.

The Jewish ghetto was a functioning community and to many Jews seemed the safest available place for themselves and their children. In addition, survival on the outside was plausible only for people with access to financial resources. This calculation lost its validity in July 1942, when the Germans proceeded with the liquidation of the ghetto in Warsaw, to be followed by the extermination of its residents. Sendler and her associates could take a small number of children, and a certain number could be accepted and supported by Christian institutions, but a larger-scale action was prevented by the lack of funds. Working for Żegota from January 1943, Sendler functioned as a coordinator of the Welfare Department network. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a network of emergency shelters was created by Sendler's group: private residencies where Jews could be temporarily housed.

According to American historian Debórah Dwork, Sendler was the inspiration and the prime mover for the whole network that saved Jewish children. She and her co-workers buried lists of the hidden children in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities. The aim was to return the children to their original families, if still alive after the war. On October 18th, 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo. As they ransacked her house, Sendler tossed the lists of children to her friend Janina Grabowska, who hid the list in her loose clothing. The Gestapo took Sendler to their headquarters and beat her brutally. Despite this, she refused to betray any of her comrades or the children they rescued. She was placed in the Pawiak prison, where she was subjected to further interrogations and beatings, on November 13th she was to be taken to another location, to be executed by firing squad. Her life was saved, however, because the German guards escorting her were bribed, and she was released on the way to the execution. During the Warsaw Uprising, Sendler worked as a nurse in a field hospital, where a number of Jews were hidden among other patients. She was wounded by a German deserter she encountered while searching for food. She continued to work as a nurse until the Germans left Warsaw, retreating before the advancing Soviet troops.

Sendler resumed other social work activities and quickly advanced within the new structures, in December 1945 becoming head of the Department of Social Welfare in Warsaw's municipal government. Almost all of the children's parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had gone missing. Sendler felt that the Jewish children should be reunited with "their nation", but argued vehemently about specific aims and methods; most children were taken out of Poland. In post-war communist Poland, Sendler continued her social activism but also pursued a government career. In 1965, she was recognised by the State of Israel as Righteous Among the Nations. Among the many decorations Sendler received were the Gold Cross of Merit granted her in 1946 for the saving of Jews and the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour, awarded late in Sendler's life for her wartime humanitarian efforts.

“First Army Nurses to Cross the Rhine River with the 51st U.S. Army Field Hospital,” 3/14/1945