Polina Gelman

Polina Vladimirovna Gelman (Поли́на Влади́мировна Ге́льман) was a Soviet Air Force officer and one of the most distinguished members of the all-female 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, commonly known as the “Night Witches.” She was born on October 24, 1919, in Berdichev, Ukraine, into a Jewish, working-class revolutionary family. Her father, Vladimir Gelman, was killed by counter-revolutionaries shortly after her birth, and her mother, Yelya, a nurse and veteran of the October Revolution, moved the family to Gomel.

As a young girl, Gelman dreamed of becoming a pilot, taking initial flying lessons at a local club despite being deemed too short for flight school. Rejected due to her small stature, she eventually qualified as a navigator. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Gelman was a third-year history student at Moscow State University. That October, amid heavy fighting near Moscow, she volunteered for the Red Army. In a letter to her mother, she declared her motivation as both patriotic and personal: “I am a daughter of the Jewish people and I have a particular account to settle with Hitler”.

Gelman joined the newly formed 588th Night Bomber Regiment under Colonel Marina Raskova, later renamed the 46th Taman Guards Regiment. After an accelerated three-month training program, she was assigned in May 1942 as a navigator aboard the Po-2 biplane, a slow, wooden aircraft once used for training. The regiment became infamous for flying low-altitude night raids against German forces, often idling engines mid-air to glide silently toward their targets. The Germans dubbed them “Nachthexen” — Night Witches.

Gelman flew 869 combat missions throughout the war, totaling more than 1,000 flight hours. She helped destroy enemy fuel depots, bridges, anti-aircraft positions, and convoys, sometimes flying up to 18 sorties in a single night. She also participated in leaflet drops and supplied Soviet partisans behind enemy lines. Her combat record included 113 tons of bombs dropped and over 140 fires caused. Gelman also served as her squadron’s communications officer and political commissar.

For her service, she was awarded the Order of the Red Star and the Order of the Red Banner and, on May 15, 1946, the title “Hero of the Soviet Union,” the highest military honor in the USSR.

After the war, Gelman continued her military career. She graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in 1951 and later became a translator and advisor in Cuba. She retired from active duty in 1957 with the rank of major but remained in the reserves, eventually attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. Gelman taught political economy at the Party Institute of Social Sciences in Moscow until her retirement in 1990.

She remained a symbol of Soviet Jewish pride and military valor. A Yiddish-language biography of her was published in 1948, and in the early 1990s, she visited Israel as a government guest. A street in Ashkelon was later named in her honor.

Polina Gelman died on November 25, 2005, in Moscow. She was buried with military honors at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Sources: “Polina Gelman,” Berdichev.org.
“Polina Gelman,” JewAge.org.
“Polina Gelman,” Yad Vashem.
Alexander Nazaryan, “Overlooked No More: Polina Gelman: Fearless ‘Night Witch’ Who Haunted Nazi Troops,” New York Times, (July 19, 2025).

Photo: Mil.ru, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.