Tamara K was only 13 when the World War II started.

She just turned 14 when she contacted a debilitating typhoid infection amidst the city of Orel razed to ashes. She barely survived it thanks to her Jewish mother who managed to talk a young Nazi doctor from a field hospital to give her a single penicillin shot. Against all odds, that single fateful shot made her well enough to escape the apocalyptic Nazi occupation of the city by hitchhiking into the rural area.

Inevitably, the Nazi forces eventually made it all the way to the same village where her family had hoped to find peace. Tamara K was 15 when she pulled off the famous Typewriter Heist, by robbing the Nazi headquarters in broad daylight of their only typewriter, hoping to divert their daily mass executions, conducted via the methodically typed execution lists posted outside.

Tamara K wasn’t a very careful teenager.
Just a stubborn one.

She became a dead teenager walking after that, but the commander of the Soviet resistance army operating in the shadows of the endless woods all around heard about her. So they came and got her the night before she’d be executed.

Tamara K would spend the rest of the war as a guerillla soldier with the 200-head resistance formation, living in the woods, responsible for interrupting railroad traffic of Nazi invader across Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. It was run with discipline and precision by a former surgeon turned commander Dmitriy Rydlevskiy.

Commander Dmitriy was in his late 40s. He had lost his wife and own teenage daughters in the early days of the war, and he became a father figure for Tamara and the other 2 teenage girls, the only ones in the whole formation. If anybody on the team would ever dare to hurt or violate or insult these girls, the commander announced officially, he would promptly execute the offender on the spot.
No one ever dared.

Tamara became a valuable asset for the team because she was the only person in the whole team who could speak German – her mother’s native language was Yiddish, the German-based language of the European Jews, and Tamara understood enough and could communicate with the captured Nazi soldiers.

One time the commander called Tamara and said it pained him to ask, but she was the only one. The captured soldiers gave the unit some valuable information about the incoming strategic Nazi shipments that they had a chance to blow up. The information had to be verified. The captured Germans – two older farmers forced into the Nazi army and asking to convert to fight on the Soviet side – were willing to don their Nazi uniforms, go to the train station and help identify the shipments and fish for more information. It was too dangerous for any Russian male to go with them, the death threat would be imminent. But a young female like Tamara who could actually understand what’s written on documents and said around the station, was a perfect spy to tag along.

Still, it was a grave danger. She could be betrayed by the new recruits. She could be captured and raped or killed at the station just because. It was the height of the war and no inch of land was safe. Only you can decide if you can do it, he said. And I’m sorry for asking you to.

She didn’t hesitate a moment. The mission was a total success. They went to the station and back, and brought invaluable information that led to a huge operation.

It was in the woods that Tamara turned 16, and it was there that she met her first true love.

One day, the Railroad Unit came across another resistance unit while on the mission in the Belarus forests. The two units set up a huge camp for a few days of rest, along the river. One afternoon, Tamara and the girls were splashing in the shallow river waters when she looked down the river, and her heart skipped a beat.

Ivan was tall, blonde and handsome. He was only 20 but had also earned a high spot on the command chain, wearing his uniform with pride. People respected him, and his war record spoke for itself.

The two locked eyes, and they both knew.

Ivan also knew Commander Dmitriy would straight up shoot him on the spot if he did anything out of the order. That night, deep in the woods where no Nazi forces would dare venture into, the two camps set up for a rare moment of celebration: there were bonfires, and people belting national songs, and laughter, and being alive. Ivan made a beeline and sat next to Tamara on the log. That night, they went all out: under the cover of the night, he put his hand on top of hers, and held it there for a few minutes.

The two units split in the morning again and went on their respective missions. For months and months after that, Ivan would send her notes when he could, which was very rare. But at least they both knew they were alive.

When the Soviet Army finally freed Minsk, all the resistance units poured back in to the city to get disassembled and sent home, to rebuild the country. Thousands and thousands of resistance soldiers had to get registered, accounted for, given documents and ways to travel back home. It was a Babylonian chaos. Amidst it all, she suddenly saw Ivan with his unit across the square. He ran to her, grabbed her by the shoulders and yelled, “Wait for me! Wait for me, I’ll find you!”. As the sea of people dragged him away in a different direction, suddenly Tamara’s Mom popped out from the station. Somehow, she had gotten the news and made her way to Minsk to get Tamara and whisk her away to the nearby friendly village, one of the dozens scattered around the region, for an overnight stay before a long and arduous trek back home. For Tamara as a 16-year-old, the war was now over. They were all sent home.

In the middle of the night somebody knocked on the door. Tamara opened it and saw Ivan’s face, beaming at her. He looked exhausted, covered in dust and happy to see her. “How did you even find me?!”, she said. “Nothing is impossible for a man who loves a woman”, he replied. “Nothing.”

Ivan told Tamara that due to his rank and war record he got enlisted in the official Army unit and was heading out to Berlin for the final push against the Nazi forces. It was all going to be over soon, he said, and we will get married then.

He had to head back shortly, right at dawn. So she said you rest, and I’ll stay on the lookout. He hung up his rifle on the hook, and collapsed dead sleep on the floor. She sat there watching him sleep, holding his hand, until dawn started coloring the horizon.

When he was leaving, Ivan gave Tamara his mother’s address and said to wait for him there once the war was over. He would build her a house, they would become a family and he would never, ever leave her anymore.

She never saw him again. Ivan Tsiskin was killed in action in the final days of the war in the battle for Berlin.

They say you remain alive as long as somebody remembers you. All these years, Ivan has been living inside Tamara’s heart. And now he lives inside mine, too. When we talk about him, I feel like it’s me sitting on that log in the dark, the campfire spirits dancing in my eyes, his ghost hand warm over my skin.