When Adolf Hitler marched into Soviet Russia, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya quit the tenth grade of Moscow's 202nd Secondary School and joined a guerrilla band. Hair-cropped, in men's clothes, tall, 18-year-old Zoya proved an apt recruit: before the Germans captured her, she had cut a German field-telephone wire, fired German troop quarters, destroyed a 20-horse enemy stable.
For hours her captors tried to make her talk. They flogged her with a leather belt, punched her with their fists. They held lighted matches to her chin. They scraped a saw across her back. They walked...
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