Maryte Melnikaite

Born Mar. 18, 1923, in Zarasai, present-day Lithuanian SSR; died July 13, 1943, in Dūkštas, present-day Ignalina Raion, Lithuanian SSR. Participant in the partisan movement during the Great Patriotic War (1941-45); Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously, Mar. 22, 1944). Member of the Komsomol from 1940. Daughter of a worker.

Melnikaitė worked at the Mekhanik Plant in Tiumen’ in 1941-42. In June 1942 she voluntarily joined the 16th Infantry Division of the Red Army, and, after graduating from a special school in May 1943, she was parachuted behind enemy lines. Melnikaitė was secretary of the Zarasai underground district committee of the Lithuanian Komsomol, helped organize the Ke.stutis Partisan Detachment, and fought with the detachment. Wounded on July 8, she was captured with a group of partisans by a fascist German punitive detachment and shot after brutal torture.