Polina Vladimirovna Gelman (Russian: Поли́на Влади́мировна Ге́льман, Ukrainian: Полі́на Володи́мирівна Ге́льман; 24 October 1919 – 25 November 2005) was a flight navigator in the all-female 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment who was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union in 1946 for having totaled 857 sorties during World War II.
Early life
Born to a working-class Jewish family from the Ukrainian city of Berdychiv in 1919, after the death of her father she lived in Gomel, Belarus with her mother. In 1938 she completed her tenth grade of school and graduated from the Gomel glider school. Admitted to the history department of Moscow State University, she attended some classes at the school before the war cut short her schooling.[1][2]
World War II
A history major at MSU at the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Gelman was recruited by Marina Raskova to join the newly formed women's aviation group. Following training at Engels Military Aviation School, she was deployed to the Southern Front in May 1942 with the women's 588th Night Bomber Regiment, later redesignated as the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment in 1943. Starting in September 1943, she began flying as navigator for Raisa Aronova, who also went on to become a Hero of the Soviet Union. By the end of the war she reached the rank of senior lieutenant and totaled 857 combat sorties, dropping 113 tonnes of bombs, having participated in bombing campaigns in the North Caucasus, Stavropol, Kuban, Novorossiysk, Crimea, Kuban, Kerch, Belorussia, Poland, and Germany across the Southern, Transcaucasus, North Caucasus, 4th Ukrainian, and 2nd Belarusian fronts. The day after the end of the war she was nominated for the title Hero of the Soviet Union, which was awarded to her over a year later on 15 May 1946.[3]
Postwar
Continuing her career as a professional military officer, she was sent for instruction as a military translator, graduating from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in 1951.[4]
Gelman settled in Moscow following her retirement from active service as a major in 1957, and worked at the Institute of Social Sciences teaching political economy as a college instructor until retiring in 1990. She attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the reserves. A member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union since 1942, she was sent as an advisor and translator to Cuba.[5] She died in Moscow on 25 November 2005 and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.[6][7]
Simonov, Andrey; Chudinova, Svetlana (2017). Женщины - Герои Советского Союза и России. Moscow: Russian Knights Foundation and Museum of Technology Vadim Zadorozhny. ISBN9785990960701. OCLC1019634607.
Cottam, Kazimiera (1998). Women in War and Resistance: Selected Biographies of Soviet Women Soldiers. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Co. ISBN1585101605. OCLC228063546.
