Revenge of Odessa. Legend of the sniper in a pea -jacket

In far days of October, 1941 when heroic defense of Odessa ended and the Soviet parts left the city, the German-Romanian armies began mass retaliatory operations against civilians. In the afternoon on October 17, 1941, next day after city capture, on artillery warehouses on the way to Lustdorf, the invaders drove four parties of inhabitants of Odessa on 2500 — 3000 everyone. Civilians tired out to rooms, the doors were closed outside on locks, sorted a roof, poured gasoline and set fire. 11 thousand women, old men and children were so burned.
There was no one day that mass executions weren’t made in Odessa. Directly on streets the people were killed, shot and hung up. But hearts of fascists were filled already with fear soon: in Odessa there was an unknown shooter who coolly and ruthlessly started destroying invaders. He always appeared unexpectedly, made three — four shots and completely disappeared.
Attempts to pursue him always terminated unsuccessfully. Dogs couldn’t pick up a trail as the unknown shooter strewed the traces with any unknown substance. Sometimes he left on a retreat way smart traps in the form of grenades or antipersonnel mines on which persecutors were blown up.
Any shot didn’t pass the goal. For each exit he destroyed some invaders. Sometimes he shot from ruins, in the Odessa port he disappeared in cases of the semi-sunk ships, on suburban roads his ruthless bullets struck chasteners in cars and motorcycles.
The officer of the Romanian siguranta Pyotr Pyslaru remembered:
- It was the task for me to destroy or detain this sniper. The company of soldiers and some tens local police officers were given to me. Several times I saw the shooter personally, from distance somewhere in 300−350 meters. He was dressed in a black sailor’s pea -jacket. There was the peakless cap on the head. The sniper rifle SVT-40 wound by rags was in the hands. I looked in the field-glass and remembered his face … Gray unblinking eyes, big scar over the left eyebrow, narrow, strong squeezed lips which, apparently, never smiled. He moved softly as a cat. He appeared for a moment and right disappeared.
Once our ambush surrounded him. He precisely was nearby, in ruins. When our soldiers entered inside, he killed three of them and left. On some bullets that were taken from bodies of our soldiers, the letter «M» was scratched which couldn’t be deciphered differently as the word «REVENGE».
Another time our two snipers tracked down him and tried to destroy. However the Russian managed to start shooting the first and killed both and his bullets got the killed precisely to a nose bridge. I think that he had any animal intuition and tremendous accuracy …
Thus the unknown sniper didn’t kill all invaders: he mainly forever put simple soldiers out of action, purposely getting them, for example, to a knee, hip or hand bones. Drivers of cars or motorcycles got bullets directly in wrists during the movement on streets and roads.
But he never spared officers of Wehrmacht and the Romanian army, SS-men, Gestapo men and especially policemen, his shot always was deadly for them. Several times the sniper — seaman prevented executions of inhabitants of Odessa, shooting invaders on a place of future retaliatory action even in the afternoon.
In the Odessa port more than three tens German and Romanian seamen were lost from his bullets. And in the spring of 1942 he appeared in the German airfield near Makarovo village in Odessa region where destroyed four pilots, and three from them directly in cabins of planes … One more pilot was lost after a fighting departure when he, joyfully smiling, got out from a cabin of the diving Yunkers-87 bomber: that day this aviation group sank the Soviet transport with women, children and wounded which went from the besieged Sevastopol to Novorossiysk.
The alarmed soldiers of the protection battalions, as always, couldn’t overtake the shooter, and at prosecution lost two more.
In a day near Makarovo directly in the car from hands of the same sniper the German general and two officers accompanying him were lost. The survived driver at whom the brush of the right hand was shattered, shivering with fear, then told that the sniper at first coolly got to his hand, then struck the chief lieutenant who tried to replace him at a wheel, and then two accurate shots destroyed the general and the second officer in car salon.
In souls of invaders the horror set in, being afraid of punishment, they avoided to appear on open places, and inhabitants of Odessa told legends of accuracy and invulnerability of the unknown sailor. They said that in the first day of occupation the Hitlerites killed all his family. Told that the sniper-seaman submits directly to Stalin, and was left in Odessa according to his direct instruction. They claimed that the avenger will kill invaders until they wouldn’t remain absolutely on their Odessa earth.
The people going for execution, with hope rummaged around the wreck with eyes, hoping at the last minute for rescue which will be brought by bullets of the shooter in a pea- jacket.
He forever disappeared from Odessa in June, 1942. As well as his actions in Odessa, the leaving also was covered with a secret gloom. Most likely, fascists after all managed to destroy him …
Early in the morning on June 22, 1942 among invaders of Odessa the panic reigned, they completely surrounded quarter on Sholem Aleikhem Street, and more than two hours there was the most real fight. After that the Hitlerites and Romanians took out about two tens corpses from there. Invaders declared that they destroyed the sniper.
But some inhabitants of Odessa believed that the seaman hero managed to leave Odessa, and he appeared then in Sevastopol. And the inhabitants who have worried occupation after war said that saw him in the ranks of liberators in day of Odessa liberation …
And in May, 2014 this history received unexpected continuation.
After the tragedy on May 2 in Odessa where «nice» successors of SS armies of «Right Sector» burned live and brutally killed more than one hundred unarmed inhabitants of Odessa (tell, what they differ from animals in the human appearance, in the same way inhabitants of Odessa burning in 1941 on the way to Lustdorf?) the so-called the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov and the head of Security Service of Ukraine Valentyn Nalyvaichenko were started reporting that near Slavyansk of Donetsk region the unknown sniper coolly destroys chasteners in the afternoon… And the letter «M» is represented on his bullets …
The sniper suddenly appears in places of a dislocation of divisions of the Kiev junta, opens fire and at once disappears. For only some days this sniper destroyed and wounded some tens chasteners, and the order was sent to armies of junta not to disclose the true figures of losses, and also in general to tell about this shooter.
In the city Izyum of the Kharkov area he destroyed four soldiers of National Guard. On the road from this city to Slavyansk three soldiers more were lost from his hands. Near Dobropolie the commander of the Hail installation was shot. Near Slavyansk the sniper destroyed some foreign instructors.
Fighters of «Right Sector» say that the sniper is dressed in a black sailor’s pea -jacket and a peakless cap, and he doesn’t know a miss … He revenges for Christina Bezhanitskaya and Nina Lomakina, he revenges for Nina Polulyakh, Irina Yakovenko and Anna Varenikina, he revenges for 100 souls who have burned down, killed and shot in the Odessa Trade Unions Building. He revenges for Yulya Izotova and Irina Boyevets from Slavyansk, he revenges for Odessa. He revenges for Ukraine. And he doesn’t know the mercy.