Elena Rzhevskaya is among the many names that have been mostly forgotten and relegated to historical footnotes within archives. In May 1945 she was a twenty five year old Jewish translator for the Red Army and was assigned to a secret unit in the search for Hitler within the ruins of the Reich Chancellery after the conquest of Berlin. Her assignments had previously taken her across the front lines through Belarus, Poland, and into Germany as a translator for a Red Army reconnaissance unit. She was tasked with this role due to her knowledge of German and later wrote a memoir about her experiences, a book which was originally suppressed by Soviet authorities.
After settling in Moscow in her post-war life, Rzhevskaya (nee: Kagan), became a writer. Her most well known book, Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter: From the Battle of Moscow to Hitler's Bunker, was released for the first time in English in 2018.
Courtesy: Elena Rzhevskaya (Yad Vashem)
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