Maria Limanskaya was known in Russia as the ‘Madonna of Brandenburg’
Russian World War II veteran Maria Limanskaya, nicknamed the “victory traffic controller” for a 1945 photograph taken in front of the Brandenburg gate in Berlin, has died at the age of 100.
Limanskaya gained international fame thanks to a picture taken by photojournalist Yevgeny Khaldei, who covered the events of WWII from Moscow to Berlin, and is best known for his image of a Soviet soldier raising a flag over the Reichstag in Berlin.
In May 1945, Khaldei took a photo of Limanskaya at her post by the Brandenburg Gate, where she helped organize traffic along the bombed-out streets of Berlin, after Soviet forces took the German capital and forced Nazi Germany to surrender. The picture became one of the most memorable symbols of the victory over the Third Reich.
“Tonight, Maria Filippovna Limanskaya, known internationally as the ‘Madonna of Brandenburg’, passed away at the age of 100. Maria Filippovna was a wonderful person with a difficult but bright destiny… I express my sincere condolences to family and friends. This is a great loss for everyone, and I am proud that I knew her personally,” the governor of Russia’s Saratov Region, Roman Busargin, wrote on Telegram on Tuesday.
Limanskaya, born on April 12, 1924, joined the Soviet Army and went to the front in 1942 at the age of 18. After serving in a reserve regiment, where she stitched clothes for Soviet soldiers, she became a traffic controller. Under Nazi fire, Limanskaya regulated the movement of Soviet troops at the crossing of the Don River in 1942. She took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, as well as the liberation of Simferopol, Belarus and Poland, and in 1945 reached Berlin with the Soviet troops.
Limanskaya also regulated traffic during the Potsdam Conference (July 17-August 2, 1945) when she gave the green light to the motorcade of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
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After the end of the Second World War, which in Russia is called the Great Patriotic War, Limanskaya worked as a nurse and then as a school librarian in Volgograd Region. Since 1994 she had lived in the village of Zvonarevka in Saratov Region.
