In 1939, Jan Karski joined the Polish resistance. He became a courier traveling from occupied Poland to France. During one trip he was arrested in Slovakia. Jan was afraid that during torture he might reveal important information, therefore he tried to commit suicide, but he was saved. The Polish resistance freed him from the hospital, and Jan returned to service.He went to the ghetto in Warsaw, and managed to enter the Izbica concentration camp in disguise. He saw the Nazi crimes with his own eyes. In 1942, Jan Karski made his way to London where he showed the Polish government in exile the microfilms of his report. In December, the Polish government issued an official diplomatic note, which was the first appeal of one of the Allied countries calling for the defense of Jews and informing about the Holocaust.During the following years of the war, Jan met with world leaders to talk about the fate of Jews and Poles under the German occupation. He was hosted by Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House. Unfortunately, he was met with disbelief many times. In order for the world to learn about the Holocaust and the struggle of the Polish Underground State, he published the book "Secret State" in 1944, which became a bestseller in the United States. The memory of Jan Karski and his achievements returned in the 1980s. In 1982 he was awarded the title of "Righteous Among the Nations".

Poland

Jan Karski

Elżbieta Zawacka was part of the department of foreign communications of the Polish Home Army. She set up routes to the west for couriers of the Polish resistance and worked as a courrier herself as well. She crossed the Polish pre-war border over a hundred times during the war while carrying money, reports and news. In February 1943, as the emissary of General Stefan ‘Grot’ Rowecki, she travelled across Germany, France, Andorra, Spain and Gibraltar to reach London where she spoke to the staff of Władysław Sikorski, the prime minister of the Polish government in exile. She had two tasks: to improve the courier service and – at the explicit request of General Rowecki – to ask for the women in the Home Army to receive the same rights as their male colleagues. Elżbieta was given parachute training and was one of the few emissaries to come back to Poland. In doing so, she became the only woman in the elite group called the cichociemni (the silent unseen).From March 1944 she served in the directorate of the Women’s Army Service that operated within the Home Army headquarters. She fought in the Warsaw Uprising, a large operation by the Home Army to liberate their capital from Nazi occupation.After the war she joined the anti-communist movement. In September 1951 she was arrested by the Security Service and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. After being released she worked at the University of Gdańsk and at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. She was one of the founders of the World Association of Home Army Soldiers and the initiator of the “Pomeranian Home Army Archive” Foundation in Toruń.&nbsp;In 2006 she was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the Polish Army to honour her achievements. Elżbieta Zawacka died in 2009.

Elżbieta Zawacka

Tatjana Barbakoff was born as Cilly Edelberg in Latvia in August 1899. She came from a Jewish family with Russian-Chinese roots. From a very early age, Barbakoff began to dance. Her heritage and her preferred styles became part of her later ascribed exotic aura.During the First World War, Tatjana met German officer Georg Waldmann. In 1918, Tatjana followed him back to Germany and eventually married him. In the following years, they became known as an artistic couple, under the names of Tatjana Barbakoff and Marcel Boissier. Together they travelled through Germany and performed in cities, such as Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Berlin. In 1925 the couple settled in Berlin. Tatjana had her final breakthrough with the so-called ‘Berliner Tanzabend’. She broke up with Boissier and met artist Gert Wollheim, who became her new partner. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Gert’s art was labelled as ‘degenerate’. The couple moved to France where Wollheim established the Freie Deutsche Künstlerverband (Liberal German Artist Foundation) and Tatjana continued her dancing career. For a time they were free and safe but after Nazi Germany invaded France in 1940, both Gert and Tatjana were arrested. After some time Gert and Tatjana were released. The couple fled to Nice hoping to avoid further arrest but this turned out to be in vain.&nbsp;In January 1944, Tatjana was arrested by the Gestapo and transferred to a camp in Drancy. In February, she was deported to Auschwitz where she was sent to the gas chambers upon arrival.

Germany

Tatjana Barbakoff

Roza Shanina was born in April 1924 in Arkhangelsk Oblast. After one of her brothers fell during the Siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in December 1941, Shanina volunteered for military service. Unlike in the Western Allied armies, women were allowed to serve in frontline units in the Soviet Union. Shanina applied to become a sniper and was allowed to enrol in the Central Women’s Sniper Training School in June 1943. Just under a year later, she joined the female sniper platoon within the 184th Rifle Division. That same month, she killed her first German soldier. At the end of May 1944, Shanina became the first servicewoman of the 3rd Belorussian Front to receive the Order of Glory 3rd class. At the time, she had scored over 20 kills. Shanina reported in her diary that she became increasingly indifferent to death, cold blooded and saw the meaning of her existence in her profession. In June 1944, it was decided by the Soviet military to withdraw female snipers from the front. Shanina refused the order and continued to support the advancing Red Army together with other sisters-in-arms. She became a celebrity as propaganda pamphlets featured her deeds and was among the first female snipers to receive the Medal for Courage. In January 1945, Shanina took part in the Red Army’s East Prussian Offensive. On 27 January, she was severely wounded by a shell fragment. She died of her wounds a day later at the age of 20. Her body was buried under a pear tree at the shore of the Lava river and later re-interred in the small town of Wehlau.

Roza Shanina

Bushell was born in August 1910 in South Africa. He joined the British Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1932 and became Squadron Leader of No. 92 Squadron in October 1939. During his first war deployment at the Battle of Dunkirk, Bushell was shot down and crash-landed his Spitfire in German occupied territory. He was captured and became a prisoner of war (POW).In the years that followed Bushell troubled his captors by making several escape attempts. Trying to escape was in line with the idea of military honour and regarded as legal by the Geneva Convention. After several failed escape attempts Bushell arrived at the Stalag Luft III prison camp in October 1942. He quickly took over organizing the escape operations in the camp. He became known as the mastermind and was called ‘Big X’ by his comrades. The POWs simultaneously built three escape tunnels, which they dubbed ‘Harry’, ‘Tom’ and ‘Dick’. The most radical part of this plan was not the sheer scale of the construction, but the number of 200 men that Bushell planned to get through the tunnel. Only 76 eventually made it through ‘Harry’ during the night of 24 to 25 March 1944. Bushell and his partner Bernard Scheihauer successfully caught a train at Sagan. However, they were recaptured one day later near Saarbrücken in Germany.Of the 76 men that escaped, three made it back to England. Others were not so lucky. After the escape, Hitler issued the infamous Sagan-order, which ordered that fifty of the escapees that had been recaptured should be shot. Bushell was among the fifty that were murdered and was killed on 29 March 1944. He was buried at Poznan Old Garrison Cemetery in Poland.

Roger Bushell

Irma Grese was born in the town of Wrechen in 1923. She left primary school when she was 14 years old. She worked on a farm and later as a saleswoman at a dairy shop. She repeatedly applied for a training position at the SS-sanatorium at Hohenlychen but was not accepted. Eventually she started working there as an untrained assistant nurse. In the summer of 1942 Grese became a guard at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. From here she would quickly rise through the ranks of the concentration camp system. In March 1943, Grese was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Here she became second in command among the female camp staff. She worked in camp section ‘C’ where she oversaw 20,000 to 30,000 female prisoners. While at the camp she also took part in the ‘selection process’. This meant that when new prisoners arrived to the camp, Grese would decide who was considered fit to work and who was to be sent directly to the gas chambers. In March 1945, Grese was sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she worked as command leader until British troops liberated the camp in April 1945. Grese was arrested during the liberation of the camp and charged at the Belsen trial in Lüneburg. She was found guilty of her crimes, sentenced to death, and eventually hanged in November 1945. Grese’s behaviour at the trial as well as her farewell letter to her sister revealed that she remained loyal to her ideological position and showed no signs of remorse nor recognition of her wrongdoings.

Irma Grese

Horst Willner was born in Dresden in 1919. He joined the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) in 1938 and commanded U-boats throughout the Second World War. In October 1944, he was given command of U-3505, a Type XXI submarine which was one of the most modern weapons of the German fleet. In January 1945, the Red Army launched a large scale offensive aimed at East-Prussia. This resulted in a great wave of refugees among which were Willner’s wife, Ursula Menhardt, and their newborn daughter Barbara. Ursula and her daughter went to Gdansk where they boarded the Wilhelm Gustloff which was being used to evacuate the area. Just before the ship departed Willner picked up his family with the U-3505. By doing so, he saved his family’s life, as the Wilhelm Gustloff was attacked and sunk by a Soviet submarine, leaving only a few hundred survivors.Willner’s decision to evacuate his family, as well as four female friends of his crew, was a clear violation of&nbsp;orders as civilians were forbidden aboard German submarines. The stowaways thus had to be brought on board in secret. Ursula and the other women dressed up as sailors, while the baby was hidden in a pillow inside a duffel bag. U-3505 departed Gdansk in March 1945 and headed towards Hela. Here Willner picked up around 50 boys from the Hitler Youth, between the age of 12 and 16. All passengers and crew eventually safely reached Travemünde.Willner was ordered to bring the U-3505 to Kiel to await further orders. Here the U-boat was destroyed in an American air raid in April 1945. Willner survived this attack. After the war was over he worked for a German shipping company. He died in 1999 in Bremen.

Horst Willner

Slávka Altmanová (née Ficková), was born on 8 August 1923 in the village of Semiduby in Polish Volhynia, (now Ukraine). Her native village was one of many traditionally Czech settlements in this region. Slávka witnessed the terrible events of the Second World War. In 1939 Eastern Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union. Slávka’s family was temporarily displaced and several of her neighbours were deported to Siberia. In 1941, she witnessed the German invasion of Volhynia which was followed by the destruction of several villages and the annihilation of the Jewish population. In 1944 the tide of the war had turned. The German invasion of the Soviet Union had failed and the Red Army once again entered Poland. When it reached Volhynia, Slávka joined the Czechoslovak 1st Army Corps as a radio operator and signaller. Unlike in the armies of the Western Allies, women were allowed to serve in frontline units in the Red Army and Slávka fought in several major battles including the crucial Carpatho-Dukla operation on the Polish-Slovak border. She faced danger many times and saw many of her friends die, but she herself remained unscathed and participated in the triumphant arrival of the Army Corps in Prague. After the war, Slávka settled down in Czechoslovakia. She was given a house that had belonged to the local German population, which had now been expelled. She started working as a dental nurse and after marrying in 1952, she moved to Pilsen, where she lives to this day. Because of her war experience, she had to fight both physical and mental health problems.

Czech Republic

Slávka Altmanová

Richard Smola witnessed the heavy bombings of Pilsen in the last years of the Second World War and was present when American soldiers liberated the city on 6 May 1945. Although Pilsen was liberated by American forces it would fall under communist rule along with the rest of the country after a communist coup. Richard and many others remained thankful to the American soldiers who liberated their city. In 1948, he was part of a group of boy scouts and other citizens who tried to lay a wreath and flowers on the anniversary of the liberation in 1948. As this took place after the Communist party had come to power in February 1948, they were disrupted by the secret police. As an ardent amateur photographer, Richard made unique pictures of these events.With the communist party in power, Richard and his family became targets of state persecution. His father was arrested on false charges and sentenced to a year of prison. Richard’s family was forced to temporarily move out of Pilsen under state organised Operation B – Bourgeoisie. During this action ‘politically unreliable persons’ were forced to leave larger cities and live in smaller towns in the countryside. Richard studied mechanics in Pilsen, but his studies were interrupted by compulsory military service at the Auxiliary Engineering Corps. These were in fact forced labour units in which he had to serve between 1951 and 1954. After his release, he completed his university studies and worked for the Škoda Works.

Richard Smola

A public appeal was made on the BBC radio in March 1942, for holidays photographs taken by civilians during their holidays in France before the war. The public were asked for images of all places in France so as to not draw attention to the proposed landings areas. Family photographs showing groups of all ages were helpful for gauging the slope of the beach; a baby sat on the sand whilst a woman waded in the sea gave a valuable indication as to the gradient of the beach beneath the water. Many of these photographs have been preserved by the Imperial War Museum, such as the one of a group of French civilians on the beach of Arromanches-les-Bains and a holiday postcard sent back from Rue de Bayeux in Caen. Mary Harpem recalled being sent to Notre Dame school in France and staying in a convent for three weeks near Arromanches, taking photos of her girlfriends on a box brownie camera. A photograph from this set was submitted for the appeal.&nbsp;By 1944, over ten million images had been gathered together, which formed a comprehensive picture of the beaches in Normandy, including their gradients, terrain and tidal conditions. Professor John Bernal had been called in to evaluate much of the information and produce a detailed plan of the geological and topographical information. From this information, the most similar beach in Britain could be selected for landing practice. Brancaster Beach in Norfolk proved almost identical and was a valuable resource for the pilotage parties that were tasked with taking measurements from the real beaches and translating this to produce replica shore defences in Britain. Postcards, guidebooks and harbour regulation cards were all valuable and contributed to the work of codebreakers at Bletchley Park, the French resistance and intelligence officers parachuted into France.&nbsp;

United Kingdom

Civilian photography appeal - mapping the beaches

One young boy in Southampton had made friends with two American soldiers named Chuck and Joe who provided a supply of Hershey Bars. He was a little peeved when he saw the troops were on the move and couldn’t receive his essential chocolate ration.By all accounts, the mass mobilisation of the troops marching through the streets on their way to the waiting ships was somewhat confusing. When adults said, “I think it’s happening”, there was little comprehension of what “it” actually was. The lasting impression of the sheer volume of troops, the noise, the waving flags and parents’ reactions at hearing that troops arrived in Normandy the following morning was the most impactful. &nbsp;Another young man, aged four, living in Portsmouth in 1944, stood on the garden path in amazement watching as camouflaged army vehicles stopped outside. The vehicles themselves were very exciting but the food stored within was especially interesting, with one solider sharing his boiled sweets. One soldier was especially kind after he became spooked when a vehicle started up and covered him in fumes. He was taken on a 400-meter ride in a Jeep back to his house, a real adventure. The excitement of their presence contrasted with the confusion of their sudden disappearance was difficult to navigate for the young boy, who asked lots of questions that went unanswered until all became apparent years later. &nbsp;For a young man living in Woking in Surrey, a rail freight yard was commandeered to house third-class carriages to act as temporary accommodation for troops, all Canadian. Despite being warned to not talk to the men, children would visit them on the way to school almost every day as the path they used ran by the yard. The young boy would take them home made food and made friends with a dispatch rider called Howard. Once again, the confusion of their being there one moment and gone the next was upsetting, especially as Howard did not even say goodbye and more questions went unanswered. &nbsp;One ten-year-old girl recalled being on Southsea beach on the morning of D-Day. She had been given a small bag of new pennies by her father and was playing with them on the beach. As a soldier boarded his boat, he asked for a penny for good luck. She thought it helpful to give all the pennies away to a few of the soldiers much to her father’s disapproval as new coins were quite rare at the time.

Children’s perspectives of life in South East England

Situated right alongside the Thames in Fulham, Craven Cottage has been home to Fulham FC since 1896. During the Second World War many Fulham players joined the military and put their footballing career on hold, including Jimmy Tompkins. Tompkins was born in Edmonton in 1914 and had started as an amateur player at Woking, Arsenal and Fulham. He signed as a professional with Fulham in 1934 and made 164 appearances before he eventually joined the territorial army in 1939. He was an especially acclaimed player who, as a left half-back, was well known for his speed and aggressive attacking. &nbsp;The government had temporarily suspended football matches upon the outbreak of war and closed Craven Cottage, but it was reopened just a few months later with a spectator limit of half the usual capacity due to safety concerns. Football did struggle to survive in the war years, but some regular players managed to dip in and out of games despite the club advocating they all join the territorial army. &nbsp;After joining the army, he progressed to be a private in the regular army with the Royal Fusiliers and then enjoyed a meteoric rise to major and provisional lieutenant-colonel with the Hampshire regiment by 1944 to his ability and leadership skill. Whilst seconded to the Hampshire Regiment, Tompkins embarked for France and landed just after D-Day on 10 June 1944 with the aim of leading his regiment to take control of the village of Maltot as a part of Operation Charnwood. Unbeknown to Tompkins and officers from the Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, 7th and 44th tank regiments, Maltot was being held by 2 divisions of German Tiger Tanks who ambushed the Allies upon entering the area. The battle that ensued was fierce and led to substantial Allied losses, including 56 men from Tompkins’ regiment. Included in this number was Tompkins himself, who was believed to have killed during a direct hit from a tank shell, and his body could not therefore be recovered. &nbsp;Major John James Tompkins was just 30 when he was killed and is commemorated on the Bayeux War Memorial in Calvados, France. After his death, it is said that Fulham FC later paid his two children each £500, money that Tompkins was due to receive for his 1939/40 season, but was not paid due to a lack of club revenue. He was one of the first of the team to join up, shortly after getting married too, and was reportedly the first professional player to achieve the rank of major. Tompkins’ death was a substantial loss to the footballing community. He was much loved by his club, the fans and the then manager of Arsenal, who earlier predicted he would be a future international player. &nbsp;

Jimmy Tompkins

Many women assumed wartime occupations and took up military service. Elsie Horton joined the WRNS and in 1944 was a watchkeeper for the commander-in-chief at Fort Southwick, underneath the Portsdown Hills. She turned twenty on 4 June, just before the original date planned for the Normandy landings on the 5th, which she had gleaned from piecing together all of the signal traffic. She watched aircraft overhead on their way to France, and signal work increasingly used ominous codenames.&nbsp;Marjorie Crowe responded to a call for typists to join the Women’s Royal Naval Service. After three weeks of training, Marjorie began work at an office near Victoria in London typing the orders for the landings on Gold Beach. During the execution of the D-Day landings, she worked in Southampton, where she was able to see the full extent of the operation in the volume of equipment being assembled. She and fifteen other WRNS were chosen to board HMS Bulolo when the King visited to inspect the fleet, which indicated something big was about to happen. Come 6 June, she reported feeling at somewhat of a loose end as all of the important preparation had been completed, until her unit was sent to Exbury in the New Forest. She was due to be sent to Normandy after the D-Day landings. However, her commanding officer was taken ill and they could not make the journey. She stayed in the WRNS until July 1946.&nbsp;Joan Dale was a writer for the same Force G unit as Marjorie Crowe, but in the flotilla office on Southampton hard for the 33-landing craft flotilla. Her office was located next to the team of artificers who mended the landing craft and the number of vessels, troops and new equipment grew steadily every day. Even a day trip to the nearby Beaulieu took them close to a marshalling camp, and there were thousands of troops in the roads. There was a lot of waiting for something to happen until one day the flotilla officer predicted the date of 6 June based on tidal and weather patterns. On the morning of the 6th, she reported that the entire port was empty and there was suddenly no work.

The Women of D Day- The Women’s Royal Naval Service

Evelyn Lipmann is just one of the remarkable Holocaust survivors who relocated to England after the liberation of thousands of Jews from the Nazi concentration camps. Evelyn grew up in Vienna prior to the outbreak of war. The limitations imposed upon Jewish people after the annexation of Austria in 1938 meant that her childhood and education were cut short. Despite this, she enjoyed going to art classes for which she would secretly remove her yellow badge, in order to attend unchecked. By 1940, Evelyn and her family experienced even greater anti-Semitic treatment. They were forced to make German Nazi uniforms for hours each day and were effectively under house arrest.&nbsp;Her family was initially relocated to Terezín in 1943, then eventually moved to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Salzwedel camps. Upon arriving at Auschwitz, the family members were separated. Their clothes were taken and burnt, and she was tattooed with a number. Her mother lied about her age, hoping to be selected to work and stand a better chance of surviving. It meant that both she and Evelyn survived the war, a rare occurrence given the Nazi preference for sparing only the young and fit. Little is known of what happened to her father, except that he did not survive the ordeal. When inspected and given the option of remaining at Bergen-Belsen or moving to the labour camp Salzwedel, they chose the latter. Here, they were used as slaves, making ammunition. Evelyn and her mother survived for eighteen months in the camps before being freed by the US 9th army in April 1945. Afterwards, Evelyn remained in the area whilst she recovered from typhoid developed in the camp. Before beginning the journey back to Vienna, she was given a page from a children’s atlas to help her finish her journey, most of which completed on foot. It took longer than expected, however, as many areas were impassable due to Russian control. In October 1945, she arrived at a Jewish resettlement area in Vienna.&nbsp;Evelyn managed to learn some English in Vienna, which earned her a job with the US occupation forces, preparing her for relocation to England. She joined relatives already resident in Walton-on-Thames and quickly met her husband before starting a family. She has lived there to this day and has worked in conjunction with the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Association of Jewish Refugees to share her story.

Evelyn Lipmann

Gustav Krukenberg was born on 8 March 1888 in Bonn. His father was a medical professor at the University of Bonn, and his mother was a feminist author. He studied law in various German and French universities and received his doctoral degree in Heidelberg in 1911. In 1907, he became an officer candidate. During the First World War, he served as an ordnance officer and adjutant, being promoted to captain in 1918. After the war, he served as a private secretary for two foreign ministers. Later, he occupied the position of director of a German industrial company, before being sent to Paris with a German delegation in 1926, where he spent the next five years. Krukenberg proved to be a talented stakeholder and diplomate, and had close contacts with the French industrial elite and press. In April 1932, he joined the NSDAP and until 1939 functioned as a director of a small chemical company in Berlin. When the war started, Krukenberg was reinstated as a major and served in various German staffs as a quartermaster. After he requested to be transferred to the Waffen-SS in 1943, Krukenberg was promptly promoted to major-general and became, at first, inspector and later commander of the new French SS Charlemagne Division. In April 1945, he and his French SS volunteers were transported to Berlin. Here, Krukenberg was promptly appointed commander of the Berlin Defence Sector C, which included another SS Division: Nordland. Krukenberg’s troops managed to inflict serious casualties to the advancing Soviet troops. Nevertheless, they were forced to retreat into the city centre, where Krukenberg established his command post in a wagon in the Stadtmitte subway station. After being informed about Hitler’s suicide, Krukenberg agreed to join the breakout group and provided support for the spearhead to break through the Weidendammer Bridge. Later, he hid for a week in his friends’ apartment, where he surrendered after being discovered by the Red Army. After his captivity, Krukenberg returned to West Germany in 1956, and he was active in the Heimkehrerverband (Homecomers Association). Gustav Krukenberg died on 23 October 1980.

Gustav Krukenberg

Helmuth Weidling was born on 2 November 1891 in Halberstadt and began his military career in the Prussian artillery in 1911. During the First World War, he commanded various Zeppelin units, but later was transferred back as an artillery observer and a battery commander. He occupied various positions in the German artillery units both in the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht and was later promoted to a divisional and corps commander. On 22 April 1945, as commander of the LVI. Panzer Corps, he was by error sentenced to death by Hitler. However, after clearing the incident, he was appointed &nbsp;the commander of the Berlin defence area two days later. Approximately 45,000 men under his command consisted of units of various quality and quantity, from a few Waffen-SS and Panzer divisions to smaller Volkssturm, Hitlerjugend and flak assistant units. On 26 April, the Bendlerblock, an old army headquarters, was chosen as a base of operations for Weidling and his staff, since the complex was not far from the Reich Chancellery. Despite presenting various proposals for a breakout, both breakout and surrender were prohibited by Hitler for the next days, until the dictator finally permitted to try a breakout on the night from 30 April to 1 May, a few hours before his suicide. After receiving news about Hitler’s death and visiting the Führerbunker, Weidling assembled his staff in the Bendlerblock and discussed the situation. On 2 May after Joseph Goebbels’ suicide, Weidling arranged a meeting with Marshal Vasily Chuikov, commander of the Soviet 8th Guards Army, who demanded complete capitulation of the Berlin garrison. The surrender order was signed by Weidling and communicated to the remaining German troops in Berlin. Weidling was taken into custody by the Red Army and transferred to Moscow, where he was intensively interrogated and later sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for war crimes. Helmuth Weidling died from&nbsp;heart failure in the central prison of the city of Vladimir on 17 November 1955 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Helmuth Weidling

Hanna Reitsch was born on 29 March 1912 in Hirschberg (now Jelenia Góra, Poland). Dreaming of becoming a pilot since she was a young child, she often visited local air clubs. Although she studied medicine, she managed to get a pilot license in 1932 and later decided to leave medical school to become a professional test pilot. In the following years, she tested various civil and military airplanes before and during the war, which led to several accidents and injuries. For her successes she – among only a few German women – was awarded with both classes of the Eisernes Kreuz (Iron Cross) and became a propaganda star in the Third Reich. Her political attitude towards National Socialism could be described merely as ‘naïve’, although she proposed the idea of ‘self-sacrificing’ pilots in 1944, which was nevertheless rejected by Hitler. After Hermann Göring was suspended of his duties as the Luftwaffe commander-in-chief on 23 April 1945, Reitsch flew the German Luftwaffe Field Marshal Robert Ritter von Greim to Berlin on 26 April 1945, so that Greim could be appointed the new commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe by Hitler personally. During their flight over Berlin, which was already encircled by the Red Army, their airplane came under&nbsp;anti-aircraft fire with Greim wounded in the right foot and Reitsch taking control and landing it in Tiergarten. After staying for a couple of days in the Führerbunker, they flew from the Ost-West-Achse in the night from 28 to 29 April on the last airplane to the headquarters of Karl Dönitz in Northern Germany and later to Tyrol. After the war, Hanna Reitsch continued her career as a test pilot winning several contests and organizing aviation schools in India and Ghana. She died in Frankfurt am Main on 24 August 1979.

Hanna Reitsch

Brigadier Miroslav Štandera was born in Prague on 5 October 1918. In 1936, he attended the military school of air force cadets and successfully joined the Czechoslovak Air Force. He was mobilised in 1938 when Nazi Germany annexed the Sudetenland but did not see any fighting.After the demobilisation of the Czechoslovak army and the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939, he fled across the border to Poland. Together with other soldiers he sailed across the Baltic Sea to France. He joined the French Foreign Legion and was sent to the German-French theatre of war in May 1940. During his fourth flight, Štandera was shot down near Troyes. He soon left the hospital, escaped to the port of Narbonne and managed to board a ship to Liverpool. After arriving in England, he served with the Czechoslovak 312th Fighter Squadron of the Royal Air Force (RAF) until 1943, when he was transferred to the 68th RAF Nocturnal Fighter Squadron. On 6 June 1944, he participated in the invasion of Normandy. After the war, Štandera returned to Czechoslovakia and served mainly in Pilsen. However, as a ‘western’ combat pilot, he was soon dismissed from the army. In 1949, he learned about his impending arrest and again fled to England where he re-joined the RAF. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Štandera permanently returned to Pilsen in 1994. He died on 19 February 2014 at the age of 95. He is the holder of numerous honours and decorations, including the Order of Merit and the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.

Miroslav Štandera

Miluše Axamitová (née Hesová), was born in the village Zemětice in the Pilsen region in 1929. During the last years of the Second World War, she studied at the Teacher institute in Pilsen. Here she witnessed several Allied air-raids conducted on the town and its military factories. One of these raids took place shortly before Christmas 1944 and destroyed not only the Škoda factory and local Gestapo seat, but also many public buildings. The air raid also cost many lives. In the shelter of the health insurance company, where Miluše stayed, a provisional hospital to treat the wounded was established. After the war, she taught at several grammar schools in Western Bohemia. In 1949, while teaching in Kdyně, she met Antonín Axamit. The couple fell in love and started making preparations for their wedding. It was at this point that Antonín was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment for alleged treason, because he helped three college students escape across the border. Miluše waited ten years for him while he was&nbsp;being held&nbsp;in several infamous communist prison camps. In 1960, Antonín was released on amnesty and the couple got married. Miluše continued to teach in the grammar school in Plzeň-Litice until her retirement in 1984. She has two daughters who&nbsp;were not permitted&nbsp;to study due to their father´s past and also because of their undisguised Christian faith. In 1989 after the Velvet Revolution, Czechoslovakia became an independent and free democracy. Antonín became a member of the Confederation of Political Prisoners. Due to his weak health he was often represented by his wife, who cooperates with the confederation until this day.

Miluše Axamitová

Michal Brummel was born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother on 27 May 1933. Because of this he was classified as being of ‘mixed race’ in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws. These racist laws implemented by the Nazi party stipulated which people were considered to be Jewish by the Nazis. Because of this Michal was not allowed to attend school, but he escaped the deportations that many of his family members fell victim to. Michal stayed in Pilsen throughout the war and witnessed the bombing of the city as well as its liberation by American forces. The story of Michal and the broader story of the Second World War in Pilsen can be exemplified by the house of Michal's Uncle, Jan Brummel, which was built by the famous modernist architect Adolf Loos. Jan and his wife were Jewish and were deported to Nazi concentration camps during the war. Their house was ‘’Aryanised’’ which meant it was given to non-Jewish citizens. After the war, both Jan and his wife miraculously returned to Pilsen having survived the concentration camps and death marches. The house in Husova street returned to its owners. In 1962, the communist government confiscated the house but Michal’s aunt and mother were allowed to live there until the 1980s. Michal himself lived in the house from 1945 to 1964.After the fall of the communist regime the house was given back to Michal. He began a long and complicated renovation process to bring the house back to its original state. After the renovation had been completed, Michal opened the house to the general public in 2015.

Michal Brummel

William McBurney was born in New York and voluntarily enlisted in the American Army in 1942 at the age of eighteen. He later testified that he was neither afraid nor excited to go to war but felt it was what he was supposed to do. Initially, William wanted to be a pilot. His father warned him that “a black man would never fly an airplane,” but William did not believe him and volunteered to go into service to be a pilot anyway. He was not accepted as a pilot and was eventually assigned to the 761st Tank Battalion. One of William’s experiences with segregation in the army was when captured German soldiers were allowed to eat in the same cafeteria as the white U.S. soldiers. In contrast, black U.S. soldiers had to go to another location to eat. The 761st battalion – also known as ‘The Black Panthers’ – fought side-by-side with Patton’s 3rd Army in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. While the unit contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany, William later declared that according to him and his companions, they achieved something even more critical: they demonstrated that they were just as good as white men. Many of the white infantry soldiers they had fought alongside with, eventually learned to treat them as they would any other soldier. Through their accomplishments on the battlefield, the 761st Tank Battalion changed the opinion of at least some of their white countrymen.

United States

William McBurney

The U.S. 761st Tank Battalion was a segregated unit consisting of African American soldiers and black and white officers. Fighting against Nazi-Germany – an enemy known for its racist beliefs – the members of the 761st themselves experienced racism and discrimination throughout their military service. In September 1944, the 761st Tank Battalion was deployed to Europe and assigned to the U.S. Third Army under General George Patton's command. The unit fought in Northern France in October 1944, and in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. It spent the final months of the war on German soil.Warren Crecy was known as ‘Iron Man’ and ‘the baddest man in the 761st’. He was given these nicknames for his bravery in combat and the fact that he inflicted more casualties among the enemy than anyone else in the battalion. After the war ended, Crecy remained in Germany and was assigned several tasks, including prison officer during the Nuremberg Trials. In 1952 he served in the Korean War for three months until he was badly wounded. Crecy never fully recovered from these wounds, and they meant the end of his military career. He was granted a medical retirement at the rank of major and received the Army Commendation Medal along with a citation for meritorious service. He also received the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart with three Oak Leaf Clusters. Crecy died in 1976 at the age of 53 and was buried with full military honors. In his hometown, a street was named after him at the Naval Air Station.

Warren Gamaliel Harding Crecy

Suzanne Grégoire was born in Geraardsbergen into a working-class environment. Both her parents were communist militants, and from a young age, Suzanne started reading communist literature and joined her parents at party meetings. When Suzanne was in her twenties, she became a full-time militant for the Communist Party. As a Belgian woman, she did not possess the right to vote. Nevertheless, Suzanne occupied several positions of high political responsibility. She became a city councilor in her hometown, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and leader of the Party’s national women’s movement. Her political experience, broad network, and ideological conviction would serve her well in her resistance work during the Second World War. During the Nazi occupation of Belgium, Suzanne published a clandestine paper to mobilize women for the resistance: La Voix des Femmes (The Voice of Women). In this paper, she called upon women to protest against the lack of food and to demand the release of their imprisoned husbands and sons. Suzanne was the driving force behind several illegal manifestations and strikes by women in 1941 and 1942. These protests undermined the authority of the Nazi occupier. For many participants, they were the first step towards other resistance activities. In March 1943, Suzanne was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. She survived her captivity and, after returning to Belgium in the summer of 1945, she immediately resumed her responsibilities for the Communist Party. In 1946, she became one of the first women to be elected to the Belgian Parliament. Suzanne would remain a loyal communist militant for the rest of her life.

Belgium

Suzanne Grégoire

After the invasion of Belgium by Nazi-Germany in May 1940, Eupen was integrated into the German Reich. Nikolaus voluntarily joined the Hitlerjugend, and in September 1941, his family obtained German nationality. With German nationality came German conscription, and Nikolaus went to serve in the Wehrmacht. After six months of military training, 19-year old Nikolaus left for the Eastern Front in March 1942. Nikolaus’ military career ended abruptly in August 1943 after he suffered a severe wound to his right leg. The wound was so bad that his leg had to be amputated and he spent the remainder of the war in military hospitals. In May 1945 he was arrested by American troops. After three and a half years of absence, Nikolaus was able to return home in October 1945. With the liberation, Eupen became Belgian territory again and all "German" citizens of Eupen – including Nikolaus and his family – became the subject of investigation. Soon after his return, Nikolaus found himself imprisoned in the Verviers internment camp with several charges against him: taking up arms against Belgium and membership of the Hitlerjugend. He proved his military service was obligatory, was released, and eventually regained his civil and political rights.Despite this, Nikolaus would never be able to leave the war behind him, as his missing right leg and walking stick were a daily reminder of his experiences, impossible to hide from those around him.

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