When Malka was 10 years old she migrated from Poland to Antwerp with her brother and parents. In school, Malka excelled in languages, gaining proficiency in Dutch, French, German, English, and Polish.During the Nazi occupation of Belgium, Malka’s family was obliged to subscribe to the Jewish register. From June 1942 she had to wear the Jewish Badge. Malka was arrested at Antwerp Central Station in July 1942. She was on her way back from Brussels, where she had attempted to find a hiding place for her family. Malka was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in September 1942. Upon arrival she was selected to work as an interpreter and messenger because of her language skills. This job meant Malka was in a privileged position that allowed her to help fellow prisoners. She tried to have inmates assigned more comfortable jobs; she got food and medicine for people in need and cheered people up. She would also warn hospital patients of coming ‘selections’, urging them to leave the hospital as quickly as possible. This is where Malka received the nickname Mala la Belge. Malka fell in love with the Polish political prisoner Edek Galiński. Together, the couple managed to escape in June 1944, but they were caught only two weeks later. Back in Auschwitz, Edek and Malka were executed at the camp's assembly square, in front of the other prisoners to deter further escape attempts. After her death Mala la Belge became a symbol of solidarity, bravery, compassion, and resistance because of her behavior in the most extreme conditions imaginable.

Belgium

Malka Zimetbaum

Marie Vassiltchikov was born on 11 January 1917 to the family of Prince Hilarion Vassiltchikov, who was a member of the Russian parliament. After the Bolshevik Revolution, her family emigrated from Russia. Subsequently, Marie grew up in various European countries, including Germany, France and Lithuania, where she worked as a secretary at a British legation. From January 1940, Marie and her sister Tatiana, despite not being German citizens, started working at the German broadcasting service and then at the information department of the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. Here Marie maintained contact with members of German aristocracy, which her family had already established in the Weimar Republic. Among them were Claus von Stauffenberg and Adam von Trott zu Solz, who was Marie’s boss. During this time, Vassiltchikov started writing a diary. It became a detailed documentation of the German resistance in Berlin and of the future participants of the 20 July plot in particular. The diary also reflected the discussion and views of the German aristocracy on war and Nazism. Another part of her diaries reflected her experiences in wartime Berlin and the Allied air raids, especially the bombing of the Berlin Zoo. In the last months of the war, she was evacuated to Vienna, where she worked as a nurse.After the war, she married a US Army officer and moved to Paris, where they opened a small architectural firm. When her husband died, she moved to London, where she edited her diaries to prepare them for publishing. She also visited her native city of Leningrad a year and a half before her death. Marie Vassiltchikov died on 12 August 1978 in London.

Germany

Marie Vassiltchikov

Valery Faminsky was born on 15 May 1914 in Moscow. Before the war, he worked in an aviation chemistry factory, first as an assistant and later as a director of the photo lab. He also participated in some mountain expeditions in the Soviet Union and worked as a photo reporter for various Soviet institutions until the German invasion in summer 1941. Due to his bad eyesight, he was conscripted to the rear service of the NKVD troops in 1941. However, in 1943, Faminsky was able to demobilise himself and became a photo correspondent for the Military Medical Museum of the Red Army. From 1943 to 1945, he accompanied the advancing Soviet troops at seven fronts and marched with the 1st Belorussian Front into Berlin in April 1945. Here, Faminsky took series of photos for the museum as well as his private collection. Contrary to official Soviet propaganda footage, his photos often showed wounded or even dead Soviet soldiers, everyday scenes of the Red Army and German civilians in Berlin and its suburbs. After collecting enough material from his photo sessions, Faminsky would return from the frontline to the nearest first aid station or hospital to develop his film rolls and send them to Moscow. In addition, he created 50 panoramas with war photos for the museum. After the war, Faminsky worked in the Moscow branch of the art fund of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as a photographer; his work was exhibited several times. He also worked as a retoucher. Valery Faminsky died in Moscow on 8 September 1993. His private photographical archive was discovered by the Russian photographer Arthur Bondar during a private auction in 2016. Bondar later revealed the archive on various platforms and media, including The New York Times. Subsequently, Faminsky’s photos became widespread and gained the same recognition as the photos of Yevgeny Khaldei and Robert Capa.

Valery Faminsky

Wilhelm Mohnke was born on 15 March 1911 in Lübeck to a carpenter family. After receiving his education and working shortly as a salesman, he joined the SS in 1931. Two years later, Mohnke was transferred to a new SS unit in Berlin, which would later become the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s infamous bodyguard unit. He became a company commander and took part in the Polish and French campaign, where he was involved in the murder of British and French prisoners of war near Wormhout. On the first day of the Balkan campaign, Mohnke suffered a severe leg wound from a Yugoslavian air attack. Part of his foot had to be removed, which led to him not returning to service until 1942. In 1943, Mohnke was named commander of the later SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 26 of the newly established SS Division Hitlerjugend. His unit suffered heavy casualties during the Battle of Normandy and was again involved in war atrocities, this time against the Canadian troops. In August 1944, he was named commander of the Leibstandarte and lead it during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. However, he was forced to give up his position after being wounded in the head in February 1945. After recovering, Wilhelm Mohnke was appointed commander of the Berlin Central Defence Area Z on 23 April 1945. He led a small battle group, Kampfgruppe Mohnke, which consisted of 2,000 men from various Leibstandarte guards of the Reich Chancellery. The group was involved in heavy fighting against the Red Army. On the day of Hitler’s suicide, 30 April 1945, Mohnke was granted permission to break out from the city centre. His group, including Hitler’s personal adjutant Otto Günsche and personal secretary Traudl Junge, followed a complicated route towards the Friedrichstraße Station and avoided the main breakout point on the Weidendammer Bridge. On 2 May 1945, Mohnke’s group was discovered and arrested by the Soviet troops. After spending ten years in Soviet prisons and camps, he returned to West Germany in 1955 and settled in Hamburg. Wilhelm Mohnke died on 6 August 2001.

Wilhelm Mohnke

Vasily Chuikov was born on 12 February 1900 in the village Serebryanye Prudy near Moscow to a peasant family. From April 1918, he served in the Red Army and took part in the Soviet campaigns in Poland and Finland between 1939 and 1940. From 1940 to 1942, he was a military attaché and advisor to Chiang Kai-shek in the occupied China. In 1942, he returned back to the Soviet Union and took command of the Soviet 62nd Army, which saw heavy combat during the Battle of Stalingrad. For its achievements in this battle, the army was renamed to 8th Guards Army in April 1943, with Chuikov remaining its commander. With his army, he participated in the Soviet offensives in the Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, reaching the German border in January 1945. The 8th Guards Army took heavy casualties during the front attack on German positions at Seelow Heights in April 1945 and advanced towards Berlin from the southeast. In Berlin, Chuikov’s troops were involved in heavy fighting during the assault of the Teltow Canal and the Tempelhof Airport, and reached the city centre by 1 May 1945. On the same day, Chuikov met general Hans Krebs from the Führerbunker, who arrived at his command post with a white flag and informed Chuikov about Adolf Hitler’s death. On 2 May 1945, general Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin defence area, also arrived at Chuikov’s headquarters to sign the capitulation of the Berlin garrison. After the war, Chuikov remained at various key administrative positions in the Soviet Military Administration in Germany and was the commander-in-chief of the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany from 1949 to 1953. In 1955, he was promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union. From 1960 to 1964, Chuikov was the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Ground Forces and played an important role in the secret transportation of the Soviet missiles on Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Vasily Chuikov died on 18 March 1982 in Moscow and was buried among the Soviet soldiers he commanded during the Battle of Stalingrad on the Mamayev Kurgan hill in present-day Volgograd.

Vasily Chuikov

Hans Fritzsche was born on 21 April 1900 in Bochum to a family of a postal clerk. He took part in the First World War in 1918 and was active in the right-wing press agencies in the Weimar Republic. In 1932, he became chief of the German government press agency under chancellor Franz von Papen, which was incorporated into the new Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda) after Hitler came to power. In 1938, Hans Fritzsche became head of the Press Division of the ministry. During the war, Fritzsche remained one of the most prominent radio commentators. After a short service as a member of a propaganda company on the Eastern Front, he was appointed to the head of the Radio Division of Goebbels’ ministry in November 1942 and was also responsible for the political organisation of the German radio. In April 1945, Fritzsche remained in Berlin and was present in the Führerbunker when Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide. After Goebbels, who prohibited any surrender attempts, also committed suicide, Fritzsche moved to the Propaganda Ministry’s office at the Wilhelmplatz near the Reich Chancellery and drafted a surrender letter addressed to Marshal Georgy Zhukov. Despite the attempt of General Wilhelm Burgdorf to stop him, Fritzsche went over to the Soviet lines and offered to surrender the city to the Red Army, since he claimed to be the highest ranked official that still remained in Berlin. On 2 May 1945, representatives of the 8th Guards Army ordered him to read the capitulation order on radio. After that, Fritzsche was taken prisoner and helped to identify the remains of the Goebbels family near the Führerbunker. Subsequently, he was sent to the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow and later delivered to Nuremberg. Here he was charged, among 23 other persons, by the International Military Tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was acquitted but later sentenced to eight years in prison by a German denazification court. In 1950, he was pardoned and married his second wife. Hans Fritzsche died of cancer on 27 September 1953 in Cologne.

Hans Fritzsche

In the United States alone, some six million women joined the civilian work force. Furthermore, some 350,000 women served with the US armed forces as, among other, nurses, typists, translators, and engineers. In the Soviet Union, some women were even deployed in combat units operating as, for instance, pilots or snipers.After the war, many women returned to domestic life, but the war had a lasting effect on the roles of women in society. Women had shown themselves being capable of performing jobs that were previously carried out exclusively by men. The recognition of their efforts paved the way for a gradual integration of women into the workforce.&nbsp;The contribution made by women from all countries to the war effort has previously been largely overlooked. In general, much more attention is given to the military aspects of the war. However, the female contribution to the war effort was a vital one, without which the history of the Second World War would have looked very different.

The role of women in World War Two

After the German invasion of 22 June 1941 Ignati was quickly drafted. Sergeant Dementyev was attached to the staff of his unit as a clerk.On 5 February 1943 in the vicinity of Voronezh he was captured by the Germans and transferred to a camp in the Ruhr Area, where he was put to work. Due to the awful conditions Ignati fell ill. After having been liberated by the American army in April 1945 he was admitted to a hospital in Senne. There he died of tuberculosis on 10 May 1945.The Americans did not want to bury Allied soldiers on hostile soil and brought his remains to the closest military cemetery outside of Germany. That was in Margraten, in the Dutch southern province of Limburg. He was buried on 15 May. After the construction of the Soviet War Cemetery in Leusden this is where he found his last resting place. His name is on gravestone # 832.In March 2011 researcher Remco Reiding managed to trace two of his daughters. They were told that their father was no longer missing in action but lay buried in Leusden. Unfortunately it was physically impossible for them to undertake the trip to the Netherlands.Link: <a href="http://www.sovjet-ereveld.nl" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">www.sovjet-ereveld.nl</a>

The Netherlands

Ignati Feodotovich Dementyev

As a soldier in the Red Army he was taken prisoner. That is when he first became a number, a different one: 91926. This is how he was registered in Stalag 308 (VIII E) in Neuhanner, nowadays the Polish Swietoszowie Sprotowski. 91926, that is how many prisoners were already locked up in this one camp. And there were many, many dozens of these POW-camps with millions of Soviet soldiers altogether.Most of the soldiers died in the camps of the hardship: starvation, illness. But not him. He survived the wretchedness. And his liberation was near.But then – and we will never know why – the Germans ended his life. ‘G.S.W. PEN. HEAD’ the Americans listed on his Report of burial. Gun Shot Wound Penetrating Head. A bullet through the head. On about 10 April 1945 in Pansfelde.Pansfelde, a village in the Harz, between Hannover and Leipzig. Pansfelde, barely 500 residents. There were hardly any men around. Eighty had fallen in battle. They received a beautiful monument after the war.The Americans found him in a shallow grave in the woods near Pansfelde. They noted: Personal affairs: one ring, one lighter.’He was given a grave in Eisenach, on the American military cemetery. But the Americans did not want to bury Allied dead on enemy soil. So he was disinterred and reburied in Margraten, June 1945, at the American Cemetery.The Americans gave him his number X-2212. So designated he was transferred in a new casket to Leusden, to the soviet War Cemetery, December 1947. There he received a new number: 772. Which can be seen behind his tombstone. The 772nd soldier to be buried at the Soviet War Cemetery.A gravestone and a document. All that remains of the human being who became X-2212 and later 772. At least with us. Not of course with his family who does not know he has become number 772 and who will never learn that their father, grandfather, brother lies buried here.No one in Pansfelde who erected a monument for him. No one who gave him his name back. No one who adopted his grave.Link: <a href="http://www.sovjet-ereveld.nl" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">www.sovjet-ereveld.nl</a>

X-2212

Unfortunately not much is known of Andrey. He fought in the Soviet army as ‘krasnoarmeets’, soldier of the Red Army. Where and when he was called up and was taken prisoner is unclear. His family never got any letters from the front.In any case Andrey ended up in a POW-camp in the west of Nazi-Germany, probably Stalag VI K (326), and otherwise either Stalag VI D or Stalag VI A. In this camp in April 1945 the Americans encountered tens of thousands of starving, severely weakened prisoners of war from the Soviet Union. Liberated did not mean cured: many thousands of soldiers died of tuberculosis and other diseases. Most of those buried in Leusden succumbed to tbc.Several prisoners were so hungry that they looted the surrounding area. Others were so happy the war had finally ended that they consumed large quantities of alcohol. To forget the horrors of what they had gone through. Or out of fear for what awaited them back home from a regime that regarded prisoners of war as potential traitors.At any rate it did not occur to them that their bodies had become so weak that they were taking huge risks. Many died of ‘acute alcoholism’. So too Andrey Mikhailovich. He passed away on 31 May 1945 in Lippstadt.The Americans brought his remains to the American Military Cemetery in Margraten, where he was buried on 4 June 1945 at 13.00 hours in section GGG, row 2, grave # 35.On 15 December 1947 his body was exhumed and on 22 December reburied at the Soviet War Cemetery on the municipal boundary of Leusden and Amersfoort. His name is depicted on the stone numbered 743, as noted by the Americans: Simachow, Andrej (Cимахов Андрей).His family never knew what happened to Andrey. In December 2010 researcher Remco Reiding traced his relatives. The soldier’s sister, Klavdia, died in 1979 in the same village where Andrey was born. In the sixties she had made enquiries about the fate of her brother, but in vain.Only a niece, Nina Andreyevna Zenchova-Semycheva was still alive. There is no photograph of AndreyLink: <a href="http://www.sovjet-ereveld.nl" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">www.sovjet-ereveld.nl</a>

Andrey Mikhailovich Semychev

His relatives respond with disbelief and joy. Elizbar was listed as missing in action since the war. Only after seeing the photo of his tombstone dare they believe the wonderful news from the far off Netherlands.Elizbar was unmarried and had no children when in 1941 as a 21-year old he left for the front to fight against Nazi-Germany. His mother waited for him all her life. She was convinced that he would come back. Before passing away she bought a grave for two persons so that her son could later join her.But Elizbar never returned. He had been taken prisoner by the Germans. Elizbar fell gravely ill in captivity. He died of tuberculosis on 14 May 1945 in the German town of Herne, 25 years of age. His body was laid to rest at Margraten and in 1947 transferred to the Soviet War Cemetery in Leusden, where 865 Soviet war victims lie buried&nbsp;For decades those soldiers lay there more or less anonymously. Their identity not established, their families not traced. Until the Amersfoort researcher Remco Reiding of the Soviet War Cemetery Foundation latched on to it. By now he has identified over 250 soldiers and traced the relatives of over 220.Elizbar was only identified in April 2021. He lay buried under a wrong name all that time. Then one day volunteers of the foundation started looking for his family. They found not only his next of kin, but also his photo: on the empty grave that his mother had meant for him. Because of that the soldier in grave # 252 at the Soviet War Cemetery was given not only a name but also a face.For more information, visit: <a href="http://www.sovjet-ereveld.nl" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">www.sovjet-ereveld.nl</a>

Elizbar Chitashvili

Zoya’s father, Ivan Gavrilov, departed for the front immediately after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. He was reported missing in action and never returned. Zoya’s mother died straight after war’s end, so that she grew up in an orphanage.Zoya (74) never knew that her father had been made a prisoner. When the American army liberated his camp in Hemer, Gavrilov was already terminally ill. On 4 May 1945 he was admitted to a hospital in Lüdenscheid where he died of tuberculosis on 31 May. The Americans transferred his remains to Margraten. In 1947 he was reburied at the newly established Soviet War Cemetery in Leusden.That he was interned in the Netherlands was unknown to his family. Researcher Remco Reiding traced his relatives to Siberia and this is how Zoya came to stand at her father’s grave on the date when the Dutch remember their war dead.It turned out to be a long day that ended with the annual silent march from Kamp Amersfoort to the Soviet War Cemetery and the Dutch and other Allied war graves at Rusthof. Zoya took part and stood among the Dutch during the two minutes silence. At the Soviet War Cemetery she was introduced to the mayors of Leusden and Amersfoort.The day after she was sitting on the terrace of a café in Spakenburg. The fried fish went down well. But she was totally overwhelmed by all the impressions. Amsterdam tomorrow? Not really. Enough was enough. “I saw the most important thing yesterday.”Link: <a href="http://www.sovjet-ereveld.nl" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">www.sovjet-ereveld.nl</a>

Ivan Ivanovitch Gavrilov

After his return Konstantin works for some time as a night guard in a bank, where he is then promoted to administrative duties. He moves to the village of Alexeyevka and gets an appointment as tax inspector.Konstantin marries Lubov Kandakova, who is three years his junior. They get five sons. Vladimir, Valentin, Yuri, Yevgeni and Oleg. The last son is born when Konstantin has left home already. When war breaks out he is immediately called up. As sergeant first class they put him in charge of a platoon. It does not take long before he is captured. In a POW-camp Konstantin runs into fellow villager Nikolai Merkulov.“He returned after the war and told us that they had arranged for an escape”, remembers Konstantin’s son Valentin. “But they were caught and severely beaten. They were lucky to get off with merely a thrashing, for they could just as well have been shot.”Yet Konstintin makes another attempt to flee. He hides in the reeds with a large group of escapees, says Merkulov to Valentin. But they are discovered and chased from their hiding place with machine guns and dogs. They can hear the artillery fire of the Allies close by, but the prisoners are driven onwards. When someone falls down from exhaustion and receives no help from his mates, the guards shoot him or have him finished off by their dogs.In villages where there is a Red Cross presence the guards hand over the weakest captives. Konstantin is also left behind. When the Americans arrive the dangerously ill Konstantin is brought to a hospital: the Auguste-Viktoria clinic in the German town of Bad Lippspringe. On 14 May 1945 he succumbs to tuberculosis.On May 22 he is buried in Margraten and on 27 November he is moved to his last resting place at the Soviet War Cemetery in Leusden. His name is written in the grave register after number 519.His family is never told what happened to Konstantin. In 2004 Remco Reiding traces his relatives and informs them of his fate. A year later his son Yevgeni Butorin kneels at the grey tombstone of his father.Link: <a href="http://www.sovjet-ereveld.nl" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">www.sovjet-ereveld.nl</a>

Konstantin Grigoryevich Butorin

After the war mama returned to her native soil, to Bystrushka. This is where we received word that papa had gone missing in action. All those years we knew nothing of his fate. Mama waited for many years, hoping that father would come home.One day a man came by who had been a prisoner of war along with my dad. He said that father had been very weak after the liberation, worn out and sick. Only then did we lose all hope of his return&nbsp;“One time they drove us to work”, remembered papa’s comrade. “Your father bent down to pick up a cigarette, he fell and could not get up anymore. That’s the last time I saw him.”What the family does not know and does not learn until April 2005 from researcher Remco Reiding:Mikhail is admitted to the sick barracks of the POW-camp Stalag VI A. He is liberated in April 1945 and in a severe state of weakness taken to an emergency hospital in Lüdenscheid by the Americans. Where he dies of tuberculosis on 15 May 1945.The Americans bury Mikhail at Margraten (in the south of the Netherlands). In 1947 he receives his last resting place at the Soviet War Cemetery in Leusden. (grave # 292)&nbsp;For more information, please visit www.sovjet-ereveld.nl

Mikhail Ivanovich Vorobyov

At the kolkhoz, where Kazikhan worked as a bookkeeper, they were struggling to get by after the collectivization of agriculture. But here – thousands of kilometres from home – he is being systematically starved and neglected by the Nazis.They were transported from the East front by cattle wagons, across Nazi-Germany, arriving two weeks later – on 27 September 1941 – in Amersfoort, totally exhausted. Amersfoort, Kazikhan had never heard of the place.The inhabitants gawked at them in surprise. They had heard rumours of a camp in the woods, but they have no idea what is happening there nor have they ever seen such a large group of prisoners. Let alone Russians. Admittedly, he is not a Russian – most of the POWs are Uzbek or Kazakh – but the Dutch do not know the difference.The Germans are said to have picked Kazikhan and his comrades in the Red Army on account of their Asiatic features. Hoping to persuade the Dutch to join them in their fight against the Soviet Union when they see what sub humans these people are.Now Kazikhan and a hundred other Soviet soldiers sit in a cage in the open air, surrounded by barbed wire, with two drums serving as latrines. “These apes are now your allies”, scoffs Hans Stöver, deputy commandant of Kamp Amersfoort, to the Dutch inmates.The Nazis chuck bread over the barbed wire, hoping that the ‘Russians’ will turn on each other like a pack of wolves. That would generate great propaganda images. But the bread is caught and carefully divided among the men. Disappointed the Germans slink off.In Kamp Amersfoort the ‘Russians’ are only given half portions of the already meagre food: 120 grams of often bad bread and half a litre of watery cabbage soup a day. If in their exhaustion they have dropped a heavy container with sand, the guards dish out a beating. And at night they are told they will not be getting any food ‘because of laziness at work’.“Valiant people these Germans! Brave fellows that beat these children to death’, writes fellow inmate Jan Roorda.Kazikhan’s comrades eat the pitch off the roofs. They hunt field mice. It does not worry them that they are beaten aplenty when they steal sugar beet from the lorry of a supplier. When fellow inmates share their meal with the ‘Russians’ the entire camp is punished by having to go without food for 24 hours.One by one the Soviet soldiers report to the Revier, the sick barracks. But they should not expect any sympathy from the camp doctor, the Amersfoort surgeon Nicolaas van Nieuwenhuysen. For instance he will pull the wrong tooth, on purpose and without a sedative.From 1 January 1942 the ‘Russians’ no longer receive any medical care. Those first months 23 Soviet soldiers die. Van Nieuwenhuysen has the heads of two dead soldiers cut off and uses their boiled skulls as medical study objects on his desk.“’Great fertilizer’, I once heard a Jerry say about the Jews and Russians”, writes fellow inmate Dirk Folmer. “That is about the value of a human life in here.”Prisoner Geert Borst, professor of internal medicine, notes that over thirty percent of the Dutch inmates suffers from malnutrition. The Soviet soldiers are worn out from starvation.Kazikhan is relatively well off. He has been hidden in the sick barracks for several weeks. “He was a very intelligent guy”, says Borst. “He tried hard to learn Dutch.”“On April 3rd I had my first lesson in Russian”, writes fellow inmate Jan Roorda. “On 9 April the tuition was halted indefinitely. For Kazikhan left with all other Russians. He came to say goodbye and it affected us all greatly.”Borst, “When he was about to be taken away, he said, ‘I’m going to be shot.’ He asked us, ‘Can’t you hide me?’ He clinged to us, but there was nothing we could do.”“They left the camp at dawn. As the first shots rang out, weeping and singing were heard from the lorries. “They were driven off without their wooden shoes, so we knew what had happened.”After the war the remains of Kazikhan were found in a pit behind the camp. Borst and Roorda mention his first name, but his full identity has never been established. He lies buried as an anonymous Soviet soldier, in row 1 of the Soviet War Cemetery. Since 2014 candles are annually lit at the place of execution. One burns for Kazikhan.For more information, visit: <a href="http://www.sovjet-ereveld.nl" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">www.sovjet-ereveld.nl</a>

 Kazichan

The Corps Féminin des Transmissions (C.F.T) (Women's Signal Corps), better known as Les Merlinettes, was a corps consisting of only women. The nickname derived from Colonel Merlin, who established the corps in 1942. Their training took place in French Algeria and they were considered the first female soldiers of the French Army. By the end of the war, there were around 2.000 Merlinettes. &nbsp;They participated in the Liberation of France, the advance towards Germany and in Italy. Merlinettes worked as telephone operators, signals analysts, teletype, and radio operators.&nbsp;Colonel Merlin assigned them these communication functions to free up men for other tasks. In 1944, they became officially part of Charles de Gaulle's Free French Forces.&nbsp;Some Merlinettes were able to continue their training in London and were being parachuted back to France as Special Operations Executive agents.&nbsp;Of the eleven women who were dropped behind enemy lines, four of them, Suzanne Mertzizen, Marie-Louise Cloarec, Eugénie Djendi and Pierrette Louin, were captured, interrogated, and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp where they were executed on 18 January 1945.

France

Les Merlinettes

Private Sidney Cornell was born in Portsmouth to an African American father. He soon joined the British airborne forces and showed his passion for flying. In 1943, he attended a parachute training and had excellent skills. His report states that he was the best performer and that he was intelligent and keen. &nbsp;Cornell was posted to the 7th Parachute Battalion as a company runner and took part in Normandy campaign. Here he saw action at Le Mariquet woods and Le Bois de Bavent. Cornell was wounded four times but this did not stop him from carrying out his mission. For his brave conduct he was awarded with the Distinguished Conduct Medal in February 1945. He also received a promotion to the rank of sergeant. &nbsp;Cornell saw further action during the Battle of the Ardennes and took part in Operation Varsity in March 1945. During this operation, Cornell’s battalion was tasked with securing a bridge in the German city of Neustadt. A local civilian warned Cornell’s commanding officer, Major Reid, that the bridge would be blown. Reid decided to rush to the bridge and attempt to capture it intact. A small group of men made it across the bridge but many others, including Cornell, died when German forces blew up the bridge. &nbsp;Sidney Cornell died aged 29 years. He was given a field burial next to the bridge along with the other members of B Coy who were killed. He is now buried at Becklingen War Cemetery overlooking Luneberg Heath, Germany.

United Kingdom

Sidney Cornell

Audie Murphy was born in 1925 in Texas in a family of sharecroppers. His father left the family and at the age of 16, his mother died and thus he started working. When hearing of Pearl Harbor, he decided to enlist in the army at the age of 17. He joined the infantry with a falsified document because he was not yet 18. &nbsp;He followed a basic training and entered his first combat in July 1943. He participated in the landing in Licata, the Voltuno River campaign, and the invasion of Southern France, where he became the most decorated man of his company. &nbsp;He received the medal of Honor for an act in January 1945, when he single-handedly repelled the Germans in a burning tank destroyer, while he was wounded, near Holtzwihr. The courageous act led to a counterattack that drove the Germans away from Holtzwihr. &nbsp;At the end of the war, Murphy was the most decorated soldier of his country, with 28 medals. When victory was declared in Europe in May 1945, he had not yet reached the age of 21. He returned to the United States where he was welcomed as a hero. He there started a career as an actor. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder which entailed depression and due to the nightmares, he claimed that he slept with a loaded gun under his pillow. He died in 1971 in a crash of a private plane near Roanoke, Virginia.

United States

Audie Murphy

Corporal Woodson was born in Philadelphia in 1922. He became a pre-med student at Lincoln University, but he paused his studies to enlist in the Army in 1942. Woodson attended the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Officer Candidate School but before finishing the training, he was told that there were no officer positions open to him. This was one of the many instances of discrimination he had to face within the army. Before finishing his course, Woodson was sent to go train as a medic and assigned to the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion.&nbsp;On 6 June 1944 the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion was the only African American battalion to participate in D-Day, Woodson participated as well but had been attached to a British Division for the landings. Although he was wounded during D-Day, he treated many wounded soldiers, regardless of their skin colour. Woodson’s commanding officer nominated him for the Distinguished Service Cross. When his story reached higher command, General Lee felt that his actions merited the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration in the United States.&nbsp;Despite Woodson’s exceptional bravery he never received the Medal of Honor he was recommended for. Racist beliefs within the U.S. armed forces at the time of the Second World War seem to be the main reason for this. Woodson received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his actions and family members and politicians are currently lobbying for a posthumous Medal of Honor to give proper credit to this remarkable soldier.

Waverly Woodson Jr.

Commissioned by Helene, the construction of a bomb shelter in a sand dune on the Veluwe begins in 1939, but it is not yet finished when the war breaks out. On 22 July 1940, the entire collection is moved there. The works of art are packed in order of value and transferred to the shelter in small groups. Within a week all the works are safe and sound, the result being that the museum closes its doors.An emergency HospitalIn the final year of the war, the museum serves as an emergency hospital for the Red Cross. The museum provides accommodation for 310 adults and 40 children. The patients are housed in the rooms of the Van de Velde wing. St Hubertus hunting lodge is the nurses’ accommodation and the service building is used as a maternity ward and a storeroom.Canadians help reopen the museumOn 15 April 1945 the museum was liberated by the Canadians, who also helped to reinstate the art so the museum could be opened to the public more quickly. 'It is interesting to think that it was Canadian troops […] who carried this collection out of the caves and painstakingly transported it to the museum where it could once more be hung for people the world over to see,’ said the lieutenant colonel.The museum was officially reopened on 6 October 1945.Van Gogh's 'The Potato Eaters'Van Gogh’s masterpiece The potato eaters is purchased after the war by Willy Auping Jr, the museum’s first curator. According to H.P. Bremmer, the acquisition is ‘a crown on the collection’. The Van Gogh painting would ‘make the collection of works from his Dutch period complete’. Purchased previously by Helene, the collection already includes a study for The potato eaters and sketches of Nuenen peasant heads that constitute the prelude to Van Gogh’s first ‘masterpiece’.For more stories about the museum during the war years, including unique visual materials, visit www.krollermuller.nl/timeline.

Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller during the war years

When Allied forces landed in Normandy on 6 June 1944 they left the Channel Islands in their wake. The Islands had been occupied since the summer of 1940 and would remain so until the end of the war.
When it first became clear that the Islands would be invaded, the civilian populations faced traumatic decisions. Should they leave their homes and move to England, divide their family by evacuating just their children, or remain together living under German rule? Those choosing to remain experienced five hard and hungry years living under stifling rules and regulations.
Almost half of the resident population of Guernsey remained on the Island during the German occupation; four fifths of the children and 12,000 adults chose to evacuate at short notice prior to the bombing of St. Peter Port and St. Helier by the Luftwaffe on 28 June 1940. Around 6,500 of a population of 47,000 evacuated from Jersey. Conversely, virtually all residents of Alderney were evacuated and the occupying forces arrived to an almost uninhabited Island. In contrast, all residents of Sark chose to remain on the Island. One family lived in Herm Island and Lihou was abandoned. Mainly used for hunting and training exercises, these smaller Islands remained largely unoccupied by German forces.
The Islands were freed by Liberation Force 135 from 9 to 16 May 1945. While the liberation was achieved without armed conflict, sadly both British and German soldiers went on to lose their lives clearing mines.
The effects of the occupation were far reaching. Food shortages had emaciated the inhabitants of the Islands and German fortifications scarred the landscape. Many evacuated children suffered an inability to re-connect with their families, which would linger throughout their lives.&#13;
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Jersey

The Liberation of the Channel Islands

The concentration camp of Stutthof is quite unknown, compared to camps like Auschwitz, Dachau or Buchenwald. Right after the outbreak of the war Nazi leaders from Pomerania imprisoned and killed many male Polish citizens in Stutthof, all according to plans devised years before the war. The Nazi’s regarded Poles as “subhumans”, to be exterminated in order to germanise the region.&#13;
During the war, the role of Stutthof changed. It became an important place within the system of concentration camps established all over Europe. Thousands of Jews (mostly women) from Auschwitz and many more from ghettos and camps in the Baltic states were brought here. They were imprisoned in the so called “Jewish camp” where they were decimated by hunger, disease and the stress of forced labour. In addition, thousands of other women were killed in the gas chambers.&#13;
Because of its location near East Prussia, already at the beginning of 1945 Stutthof was within reach of the advancing Red Army. The prisoners who had managed to survive till then, were forced to take part in an extremely brutal evacuation. Already in bad condition, in the middle of a severe winter and half-starved, they were forced to march to the West. Those unable to walk were killed by German guards.&#13;
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Poland

Liberation of Stutthof

On 5 May 1945 the population of Pilsen rose up against the Nazi occupation. Citizens entered the streets and began to tear down Nazi symbols. German forces reacted by besieging the city in an attempt to suppress the uprising. The civilian population of Pilsen desperately needed American forces to arrive as soon as possible.
Early in the morning of 6 May American tanks from the 16th Armoured division set out for Pilsen, reaching the city around 08.00 hours. The first unit into town was Combat Command B led by Colonel Charles Noble. The American forces encountered sporadic resistance from German soldiers and were shot at from the tower of the cathedral. It soon, however, became apparent that further fighting was futile and the German commander, General von Majewski decided to surrender. Around 14.15 hours General von Majewski signed the capitulation ordering is troops to put up no further resistance. Afterwards he committed suicide before the eyes of his staff and wife.
The 16th Armored Division was followed by the 2nd Infantry Division and the 17th Belgian Fusilier Battalion which included 700 volunteers who had joined the U.S. Army after the liberation of Liege. There are several monuments in the city of Pilsen commemorating the Allied forces that took part in the liberation of the city.&#13;
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Czech Republic

Liberation of Pilsen

On 22 June 1944, two weeks after the Allied landings in Normandy, the Soviet army initiated its campaign against the German forces. On 16 October Soviet troops crossed the German border. Joseph Stalin, the head of State of the Soviet Union, was in a hurry to get to Berlin before the Americans. He wanted above all to demonstrate Soviet military might and achieve a favourable post-war negotiating position. However, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt was not interested in conquering Berlin. He wanted the Soviet Union as an ally in the war against Japan, and above all as a partner in the creation of a stable post-war world order.&#13;
On 16 April 1945, the Soviet forces started the final offensive against the German capital. They tried to encircle Berlin in a pincer movement. But the attempted fast breakthrough into Berlin did not materialize. Instead it took them four days and many casualties to get past the Seelow Heights, situated about 70 km east of Berlin.&#13;
On 21 April, the first Soviet units finally entered Berlin. In house-to-house fighting the Soviet soldiers faced desperate German resistance. The Western Allies stopped their air attacks on 16 April 1945. The Soviet Union continued the air war to support the ground offensive in Berlin. On 2 May 1945, the Berlin garrison surrendered to the Soviet army. The human cost of the battle of Berlin had been enormous. The Soviets counted over 80.000 dead. German losses are estimated at almost 50.000.&#13;
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