Soviet pilot Rabinovich was officially known as Naum, but in his everyday life, his comrades and relatives knew him as Nyusik. However, behind this boyish name and fragile, yet boyishly figure, hid an ace pilot who personally shot down 5 enemy aircraft in aerial battles. He himself was shot down three times.

The "winged" fighter was born on November 2, 1923, in Zaporizhzhia, in the family of Naum and Yevgenia Rabinovich. His father was a clockmaker, and his mother was a housewife. Naum had two brothers: an older one, Misha, and a younger one, Lion.

In his later years of schooling, the boy, like many of his peers, became passionately interested in aviation. All the boys in Zaporizhzhia then dreamed of being like "Chkalovites" or pilots who saved Chelyuskin's crew, crushed by ice in the Arctic. Right after school, Nyusik ran to the Zaporizhzhia Aero Club, which became a real forge of Soviet aviation personnel. As one of the best, immediately after the 9th grade, he became a cadet at the Kachin Military Aviation School, based near Sevastopol.

The Great Patriotic War caught the Kachin cadets at the very beginning of their training. The command could not send them into battle, so the cadets and all the staff of the military aviation school from Crimea were hastily evacuated to the city of Krasny Kut in the Saratov region. During the evacuation, the Kachin school was transformed into a training school and began to actively prepare pilots for the front.

Nyusik Rabinovich eagerly awaited graduation also because he thirsted for personal vengeance for his brother Mikhail. At the beginning of the war, Misha Rabinovich, a third-year student at the Electrotechnical Institute in Leningrad, volunteered for the front. During the fierce battles near Novgorod in August 1941, Nyusik's older brother went missing.

At that time, the young man did not yet know that his beloved grandfather, Mordechai Gedalievich Rabinovich, had also perished at the hands of Nazi executioners. The elderly man could not be evacuated and remained in the occupied Jewish colony of Inhulets near Kryvyi Rih. For some time, Grandpa Mordechai managed to hide, but he was tracked down by local police, collaborators of the Nazis, and brutally killed. It was later revealed that the monsters burned the old man and his entire family alive in a nailed-up prayer house after the war.

In order to pass the final flight exam, Nyusik and his classmates had to even steal a kerosene tank from a neighboring unit because there was no other way to refuel the training aircraft. However, the "operation" went smoothly, and all the newly qualified pilots were sent to the front with lieutenant epaulets.

In April 1944, Nyusik Rabinovich arrived to serve in the 513th Fighter Aviation Kamianets-Podilskyi Regiment of the 331st Fighter Division, which was fighting on the 1st Ukrainian Front at that time. After a briefing, the young lieutenant was assigned his first combat aircraft - the Yak-3.

However, the Nazi vultures still posed a deadly threat to the advancing Soviet troops. During the first five months of service, Lieutenant Naum Rabinovich flew on combat missions more than eighty times. The work of a fighter pilot was diverse: Nyusik escorted ground-attack aircraft, provided air cover for advancing Soviet units, conducted reconnaissance of enemy troops and equipment.

The lieutenant's first aerial battle occurred almost immediately after arriving at the front. On May 1, 1944, at the Granov airfield near Uman, where the equipment of the 513th air regiment was stationed, a group of six German aircraft attacked. After the initial attack, the Germans prepared for a second raid, but Rabinovich and three other pilots quickly got their planes into the air. The Germans failed to capitalize on their success. Repelling the enemy's second attack, Nyusik and his comrades, in a group battle, managed to shoot down one of the German attackers.

The next battle became a turning point in Lieutenant Rabinovich's personal victories. This time it happened in the area of the village of Stoyanov in Lviv region. Covering the advancing Soviet group on July 16, 1944, four ground-attack aircraft from the 513th Aviation Regiment encountered four Focke-Wulf-190 fighters and an equal number of Messerschmitt-109s. In the ensuing aerial duel, Naum Rabinovich did not lose his composure and personally shot down a German Focke-Wulf-190. This single-engine aircraft had high speed in dives and allowed German pilots to relatively easily exit combat. Its armament was also formidable, providing a high probability of hitting the enemy on the first pass. However, all these impressive characteristics of the FW-190 did not help the Nazi. The downed German fighter fell, and Lieutenant Rabinovich's plane, despite receiving bullet holes, safely landed on its territory.

For his displayed personal courage and bravery, on August 2, 1944, the lieutenant received his first combat award - the Order of the Red Star. As the air regiment commander, Major Pozdnyakov, reported “to the top”, Rabinovich mastered piloting techniques excellently and bravely fought in aerial combat. In addition, Rabinovich distinguished himself in escorting IL-2 attack aircraft - all of them returned from missions without losses, intact and undamaged. This is considering the high intensity of the battles of the spring-summer of 1944 and the constant attacks on attack aircraft by the German aviation.

In the fall-winter of 1944, the fighters under the command of Major Pozdnyakov, now part of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, took part in the battle for Hungary. During this time, Naum Rabinovich, in his Yak aircraft, took part in 12 aerial battles. During one of them, on December 21, 1944, while covering attack aircraft in the area of Budapest, the lieutenant noticed enemy fighters on the horizon. It was a group of FW-190s, which attempted to attack the group of fighters escorting the bombers. Reacting lightning-fast, Rabinovich rushed to help the lead. Warding off the attack, he hit a German with accurate fire, who crashed to the ground. For successfully conducted combat missions and a productive battle, as well as for personal courage and bravery shown in the battle for the liberation of Budapest, on February 11, 1945, Naum Rabinovich received another award - the Order of the Red Banner.

About a week later, Nyusik Rabinovich distinguished himself once again. In an aerial battle, he had to fend off the attack of German fighters on his squadron leader, Senior Lieutenant Strogonov. The leading German barely had time to react before being shot down by the young lieutenant and crashing near the outskirts of the Hungarian capital.

Lieutenant Rabinovich, whose collection of awards was augmented by the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st Class, soon had luck on his side again. On March 20, 1945, eight Yak fighters under the command of Senior Lieutenant Strogonov escorted a group of sixteen IL-2 aircraft from the 235th Attack Aviation Proskurovsky Regiment. After a while, the pilots received orders from the command post of the 5th Attack Aviation Corps: "Attention, there are 'Fockers' in the air, do not complete the mission, switch to a sweeping flight, return home." The attack planes turned around, but over the village of Környe, they were intercepted by dozens of German fighters attacking the cover group and the combat formation of the Soviet attack aircraft from different directions.

In the ensuing aerial battle, Lieutenant Rabinovich, repelling the attack of a pair of FW-190s targeting a Soviet attacker, managed to approach them from above. From a short distance of 100 meters, the leading German received a burst from Nyusik's OKB-16 motor cannon. The enemy aircraft disintegrated right in the air, and its wreckage, along with the pilot, fell behind the village. The aerial battle continued. This time, Rabinovich acted in tandem with his comrade, Lieutenant Yevseyev, with whom he went on the attack against a pair of "Fockers". Rabinovich opened fire, and Lieutenant Yevseyev supported him. One enemy aircraft fled, while the other caught fire and crashed 7-8 kilometers south of the town of Tata.

In addition to the fierce battles with the enemy, there were plenty of unpleasant incidents on the front. When one of Nyusik Rabinovich's fellow servicemen, Lieutenant Grigoryev, took off for a combat mission on April 2, 1945, nothing foreshadowed trouble. Accompanying the attack aircraft to the area near the village of Pernék, near Bratislava, Soviet pilots saw on the horizon four enemy aircraft of an unknown type to them. The twin-engine twin-tailed aircraft, silver in color, had significantly higher speeds than the Yak-9. The unknown aircraft immediately attacked the cover group and began pursuing it. Only the fire of anti-aircraft artillery, which repelled the attackers, saved the Soviet pilots from complete defeat. Lieutenant Grigoryev did not return from that ill-fated flight. However, it turned out that on that day, Soviet pilots encountered not Germans, but American long-range fighters, the "Lockheed P-38 Lightning". There was no interaction with the Americans, and the Soviet pilots were not warned that allies might appear in this sector of the front. The Americans, in turn, were unaware of the flights of Soviet aircraft. There was another incident involving American allies. Returning from a mission, Naum saw a seriously damaged American B-17 "Flying Fortress". It was obvious that the aircraft would not make it back to its base. He was afraid to approach too closely, fearing the infamous friendly fire. After prolonged maneuvers, he positioned himself in front of the bomber and, by wagging his wings, signaled it to follow him to the airstrip of the attack aircraft (the huge bomber simply couldn't land at the fighter airstrip). The aircraft landed safely. The next day, Naum was given a ring with a blue stone - from the crew of the B-17. When his friend was shot down by friendly fire from the Americans a few days later, Naum threw the ring into the bushes.