12 Facts About Mariya Osipova

Mariya Borisovna Osipova was a Soviet Belarusian partisan who provided Yelena Mazanik with the bomb she used to kill Wilhelm Kube, a high-ranking SS officer and the General-Commissar of Nazi-occupied Belarus.

Mariya Osipova was born to a Belarusian peasant family in Serkavitsy, in the Mogilev Governorate of the Russian Empire.

Mariya Osipova started working at a glass factory at the age of 13 and was the chairman of her young pioneer chapter.

Mariya Osipova then went on to attend law school, which she graduated from in 1940 before serving at the Supreme Court of the Byelorussian SSR.

Mariya Osipova left her job at the Supreme Court to work as an assistant at a law practice in May 1941, just a few weeks before the start of the war.

Shortly after German forces took over Minsk, Mariya Osipova worked with a teacher at the law school where she had previously studied to organize a resistance movement that would be headquartered at the school.

Mariya Osipova wrote for the underground newspaper "Zvezda" that was circulated throughout German-occupied Minsk.

Mariya Osipova's best known accomplishment as a partisan was the assassination of high-ranking SS official and General-Kommissar of Nazi-occupied Belarus Wilhelm Kube, who oversaw the Minsk Ghetto.

Mariya Osipova gave Mazanik a small magnetic mine which she carried in her purse, having obtained the mine from a partisan unit.

Mariya Osipova later worked in the office of Vasily Kozlov, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Byelorussian SSR, and from 1947 to 1963 she was a deputy in the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR.

Mariya Osipova had headed the pardon department of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Belarus and worked to get many members of the Minsk resistance rehabilitated after myths spread that the Minsk resistance was engaged in collaboration with the Nazis.

Mariya Osipova died at the age of 90 on 5 February 1999 and was buried in the Eastern Cemetery of Minsk.