26 Facts About Anastasiya Biseniek

Anastasiya Alexandrovna Biseniek was the leader of the Dno Soviet partisan organization of the Pskov region who transferred information for scouts and partisans in addition to providing weapons and explosives.

Anastasiya Biseniek was born in 1899 in the city of Dno, then part of the Russian Empire to a large Russian family; she had four brothers and three sisters.

In 1919 Anastasiya returned to Dno and got a job working at a boarding school, and in 1921 married a Latvian refugee Fyodor Biseniek.

Anastasiya Biseniek took on his surname and the couple soon had their first child, Yura.

In search for her husband she illegally left the Soviet Union for Latvia, where they reconnected and Anastasiya Biseniek eventually birthed a son Konstantine ten years later.

Sympathetic to the efforts to resist the Leningrad blockade, Anastasiya Biseniek was happy to facilitate the resistance.

On one of the first days the market was open Anastasiya Biseniek's sister Yevgenia, who was a schoolteacher in the city of Lukomo, brought pamphlets to the apartment.

At the request of Anastasiya Biseniek she kept an eye on the movements of German troops and reported the information back to Anastasiya Biseniek; she distributed Soviet pamphlets to mechanics at the village locomotive depot who were forced to repair vehicles for the Germans.

Anastasiya Biseniek had complied document of the information she collected, and later sent it to the intelligence service of the Red Army.

Later she made contact with Soviet prisoners of war and provided them with food, civilian clothes, medicine, and Soviet leaflets; When one of the prisoners of war asked Anastasiya Biseniek for help she had Nina provide him with a map and compass, which was used by a group of prisoners of war to escape.

Yakovlev's arrest alarmed Anastasia, and after his arrest Yevgenia asked Anastasiya Biseniek to leave the city of Dno for her own safety but she refused, realizing that if she did leave the Nazis would arrest all of her relatives and anyone she had previously spoken to.

On 4 January 1943 Anastasiya Biseniek had her youngest son Konstantin go skiing near the railway bridge several kilometers from the city to find out the positions of Germans defenses on the bridge and their numbers.

Several days later paratroopers destroyed the German guns mounted to the bridge, but Anastasiya Biseniek did not let Konstantin go on any more scouting missions after she suspected her eldest son Yura was killed in combat.

Anastasiya Biseniek later established connections with the partisan unit named after V I Zinoviev through her son Yura, who had provided her with information about the detachment, which was located on the outskirts of the city near lake Beli at the time.

Anastasiya Biseniek then told her son about the state of affairs in the area, specifically the locations of the commandant's office, the security company, and the improvised airfield with camouflaged anti-aircraft guns protecting a depot as well as names of local villagers who collaborated with the Nazis.

Anastasiya Biseniek acted as the liaison officer, supplying information on the movement of German troops to Zinoyev after she received information from an anonymous informant.

In January 1942 the Druzhny partisan unit that Anastasiya Biseniek had maintained contact with informed her that during a battle in Kholm village the 2nd Leningrad Partisan Brigade worked with the 3rd Shock Army to expel German forces.

Anastasiya Biseniek took the deaths of her fellow partisans very personally and felt that their deaths were her fault.

Anastasiya Biseniek convinced the German occupiers to hire an elderly machinist by the name of Filyukhin; Filyukhin gained the trust of the Germans and was given free rein at the station so he could plant explosives given to him by Anastasiya Biseniek at the depot.

Anastasiya Biseniek refused to do so, claiming she was busy taking care of her sick parents.

Anastasiya Biseniek helped the remaining partisans in the city left in the middle of the night to nearby rural villages, finding safehouses for them over a period of three days.

Anastasiya Biseniek was arrested almost immediately and the police then released her parents and son Konstantin from their custody.

Anastasiya Biseniek was subjected to electric shock, causing her to lose consciousness several times, but she still would not name her contacts.

Anastasiya Biseniek made his last visit on 18 September 1943, after she told him not to come anymore after realizing that she would soon be executed and feared that he would be arrested and executed too.

Anastasiya Biseniek told him not to stay in the city but live in the forest with the partisans.

On 13 October 1943 Anastasiya Biseniek was shot on the orders of the camp commandant.