Nina Pavlovna Baranova was born in Moscow on December 1, 1923. After Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, she trained as a nurse and worked in a Moscow hospital for a few months. She volunteered for the front and was sent to the Stalingrad Front as a medic in 1943. After a wound she had suffered there had healed, she was transferred to the Don front. In February 1943 she was taken prisoner by Germany.

In February 1944 she was deported to Maidanek via several POW camps because she refused to do forced labor for Germany. In the course of the evacuation of the camp, she was transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp at the end of April 1944. Although hunger was omnipresent in the Ravensbrück camp anyway, she went on a hunger strike with other Russian prisoners of war. This was directed against their forced labor for the German armaments industry. The hunger strike was successful - it was deployed in the HASAG Hasag camp kitchen. Driven from the camp on the death march, she was liberated near Riesa on April 24th.

After returning home in November 1945, she initially worked as a nurse in a hospital again. She later trained at an economic institute and then worked as an administrative clerk in the medical field. After founding the Soviet War Veterans Committee in 1956, she became involved in the prisoner-of-war section. Since 1958 she was chairman of a district organization of the medical union. From 1975 she worked as deputy HR manager in a medical-technical company. Although women in the Soviet Union were allowed to retire at the age of 55 according to the law, she worked until she was 67. She was also active in the IRK for many years, since 1965 she was its vice-president.

• Sources: “Red Army prisoners of war in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Soviet military doctors in Ravensbrück ", Ed .: German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, Berlin 2006 *