Yakov Dzhugashvili had married Yulia Meltzer, a well-known Jewish dancer from Odessa. After meeting Yulia at a reception, Yakov fought with her second husband, NKVD officer Nikolai Bessarab, and arranged her divorce. Yakov became her third husband and was survived by two children. His son, Yevgeni, gave many interviews about his grandfather. He also had a daughter,… Read more »
ERICH HARTMANN, the world’s top-scoring fighter pilot, shot down the equivalent of almost 15 Allied squadrons in aerial combat. The Russian pilots both feared and hated him, and called him the “Black Devil of Ukraine”. Flying 1,425 missions over the Caucasus, southern Russia, Romantica, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, Hartmann engaged in over 800 dogfights and suffered… Read more »
On 1 August 1944, Dietrich von Choltitz was promoted to General der Infanterie, and on 7 August was appointed military governor of Paris. At a meeting in Germany the following day, Hitler instructed him to be prepared to leave no Parisian religious building or historical monument standing. After von Choltitz’s arrival in Paris on 9 August, Hitler confirmed… Read more »
Private Robert Wildsmith and Alfred Tombs of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment were captured during the battle of Wormhoudt, Tombs a mortar man in the 2nd Battalion had been holding a line in front of the village when he and his company were overrun by tanks. The nine survivors, led by captain James Lynn-Allen and the… Read more »
Emil Haussmann, born 11 October 1910 in Ravensburg was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He was part of Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppe D, which perpetrated the Holocaust in occupied Ukraine. Haussmann was charged with crimes against humanity in 1947 in the Einsatzgruppen Trial. He committed suicide while in prison. Einsatzgruppe “task forces” or “deployment groups” were Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for… Read more »