Yefrosinya Zenkova

After the war Zenkova raised the three children of a relative who had died in the war and became a member of the Communist Party in 1945. As an instructor in the District Komosmol Committee Zenkova assisted in the reconstruction of the city that had been badly damaged during the war. In 1967 she changed jobs and worked at the city military recruitment center. She was a popular public speaker, speaking at factories, schools, and military units. In 1958 she was declared a Hero of the Soviet Union and in 1976 declared an Honorary Citizen of Vitebsk. With her health deteriorating she died in 1984 at the age of 60 and was buried in the Mazurin Cemetery of Vitebsk.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 Zenkova initially worked in civil defense activities, rescuing people from collapsed buildings and removing unexploded ordnances from streets and rooftops. When the city was surrounded by enemy forces she did not leave immediately as she was helping other people with the evacuation. When she tried to escape the city for Soviet-controlled territory she was detained by the Germans but managed to escape their custody. She then ran away on a week-long journey to the small village where she was born. Not long after arriving in her hometown of Ushaly, German forces took control of the area and began seizing the villagers' property, especially food and livestock. While she wanted to join the ranks of the partisan detachment named after Kliment Voroshilov, which her brother was a member of, but in March 1942 she was asked by the detachment's commissar to form a Komsomol cell near the strategically important railroad junction in Obol, five kilometers away from Ushaly to provide them with information on German military activities in the area. Zenkova agreed and the commissar gave her a list of people to recruit and leaflets to spread among them. With herself being only 18 years old at the time of forming the organization as well as many of the new recruits being even younger teenagers, with the youngest member being only 15, the group came to be known as the "Young Avengers". In August 1943 one of the group's members, 17-year-old Zinaida Portnova, managed to get a job working at the kitchen of a German mess hall, and subsequently poisoned the soup that was being prepared, killing dozens of enemy soldiers.

Yefrosinya Savelyevna Zenkova (Belarusian: Ефрасіння Савельеўна Зянькова, romanized: Jefrasinnia Saveljeǔna Ziankova, Russian: Ефроси́нья Саве́льевна Зенько́ва; 22 December 1923 – 19 April 1984) was a Soviet Belarusian partisan who was secretary of the underground Komsomol resistance organization nicknamed the "Young Avengers" during the Second World War. She was declared a Hero of the Soviet Union on 1 July 1958 by decree of the Supreme Soviet.

Zenkova was born on 22 December 1923 to a Belarusian peasant family in Ushaly village, located within the present-day Shumilina District in the Vitebsk Region of Belarus. After completing secondary school, she attended a vocational school before working as a seamstress at a garment factory in Vitebsk. She later began studying at the local Technical Clothing School, but the school building was bombed by the German Luftwaffe on the day of the students' evaluations.