Interesting Facts and Stories

[Louis]

Peter Chemy: from victim to victimizer.

Peter Chemy, a polish national liberated from a concentration camp by Americans in May 1945, spent the first few months of his freedom adrift in Germany.
On a snowy winter night of that year, he found refuge and a meal in the home of a German family : husband, wife, and daughter. After they had gone to sleep, Chemy found a hatchet and murdered them in their beds.
He was tried by an American tribunal, sent to Landsberg, and executed by firing squad in January 1947.

 

[Louis]

Venice is the only city in the world whose name was named a country. In this case: Venezuela: "Little Venice", Venezia, Venezziola in italian.

In 1499 an expedition commanded by Alonso de Ojeda visited the coast of the territory to reach the actual entrance of Maracaibo Lake.
On that voyage, the crew observed the houses built by the Indians "Anu", erected on wooden stilts jutting out of the water.
These stilts reminded Vespucci of Venice-Venezia, in Italian, as stated in a letter to Piero de Medici.
This was an occasion that inspired Ojeda Venezziola give the name of Little Venice or Venezuela, the region-and the gulf they had made ​​the discovery, receiving the name of Gulf of Venezuela.
The name given by the browser then wrap the whole territory.-

 

[Louis]

Manuel Uruchurtu Ramirez (June 12, 1872 Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico - April 15, 1912, in the sea) was a Mexican lawyer, known for being the only passenger of that nationality perished in the disaster of the RMS Titanic.

After becoming Deputy in 1912 decided to go to France to visit his friend Ramon Corral .- In late March or early April of that year Uruchurtu, stay at the Hotel Paris is visited by Guillermo Obregon, son of Ramon Corral and president of the Great Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, with whom he exchanges a first class ticket allow you to navigate the luxury liner RMS Titanic on its maiden voyage .-

The night the Titanic struck the iceberg, Sunday, April 14, Manuel Uruchurtu was uploaded to the lifeboat number 11, won thanks to its privileged status of deputy official visit.-

Then came a lady named Elizabeth Ramell Nye, who begged to be included in the lifeboat, alleging that her husband and son waiting for him in New York. -
The officers refused to board the boat to someone else because that would threaten the stability of this .-

Manuel Uruchurtu got up, left the lifeboat and gave way to the lady. But divining his certain death, he asked her to visit her family in Hermosillo to let them know about his last minutes alive.

Elizabeth Nye Ramell saved his life to be rescued, but not Uruchurtu who died in the sinking of the Titanic .-

Later it was discovered that Elizabeth had lied to Uruchurtu Ramell because he was neither married nor had any children. However, she kept her promise and in 1924 traveled to Hermosillo, Sonora, to tell the story Uruchurtu widow of her husband.

 

[Louis]

Sgt. Albert Stanley Prince (Nov. 22, 1911 - Sept. 4, 1939) was the first canadian military casualty of the WW2 and the first of almost ten thousand canadians to be killed while serving with Bomber Command.

 

[Louis]

Friedrich "Fritz" Walter (31 October 1920 – 17 June 2002) was a German footballer. In his time with the German national team, he won 61 caps and scored 33 goals.

Walter was exposed to football early with his parents working at the 1. FC Kaiserslautern club restaurant. By 1928 he had joined the Kaiserslautern youth academy, and he made his first team debut at 17, continuing an association with the club that would be his only professional club.

Walter debuted with the German national team in 1940 under Sepp Herberger, and scored a hat-trick against Romania.

Walter was drafted into the armed forces in 1942, however, the end of the war found 24 year old Fritz in a Prisoner of War camp in Máramarossziget in which he played with Hungarian and Slovakian guards. When the Soviets arrived they in general took all German prisoners back to a Gulag in Soviet Union where life expectancy was about five years. Fortunately, one of the Hungarian prison guards had seen Fritz playing for Germany, and told them that Fritz was not German but Austrian; his life was thus spared

Upon his return in 1945, Walter, who by now suffered from malaria, again played for Kaiserslautern, leading them to German championships in 1951 and 1953. Sepp Herberger recalled him to the national team in 1951, and he was named captain.

He was captain of the West German team that won their first World Cup in 1954. Ironically, given the intervention of the Hungarian guards during the war, that win came over Hungary. He and his brother, Ottmar Walter, became the first brothers to play in a World Cup winning team.

But in 1956, after the crackdown by the Soviets of the Hungarian Uprising, the soccer team were caught away from home, and for two years, Fritz managed their games and provided the financial backing and in small measure, paid them back for having saved his life. Walter received his last cap during the semi-final against Sweden in the 1958 World Cup, suffering an injury which ended his international career, and retired from football in 1959.

The home stadium of FC Kaiserslautern was renamed the Fritz-Walter-Stadion in 1985.

Fritz Walter was named an honorary captain of the German football squad in 1958. The other four are Uwe Seeler, Franz Beckenbauer, Lothar Matthäus and Bettina Wiegmann.

Walter died in 2002 aged 81. It was his dream to see the World Cup 2006 in "his" town Kaiserslautern as the town had not been selected in the smaller tournament of 1974, but it was denied with his death. But on the fourth year anniversary of his death on June 17, 2006, the United States played Italy in Kaiserslautern and a minute of silence was observed in his memory.

 

[Facman]

A War Story of a Hero I knew personally.



David Overstreet was a native of Abernathy, Texas. His father was a cotton farmer. His mother died when he was young and the family moved to San Angelo, Texas. David took over the task of overseeing his younger siblings. He attended San Angelo schools. David was a 1965 graduate of Abernathy High School, Abernathy, Texas. Abernathy is 35 miles due north of Lubbock, Texas. His family had moved to Eldorado, Texas after he graduated. Eldorado is about 45 miles due south of San Angelo. He attended San Angelo State University in San Angelo as a freshman. He entered the U.S. Navy in 1967 and was trained as a Corpsman. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines in Vietnam.

From the 1/4 Marines Operations Log for 23 March 1969:

"231415 - Co "D" at grid XD676579 found 5 graves with 3 markers, proceded to check out area and was taken under fire by 7 NVA. Pulled back and fired 60mm, 81mm, 105, and 106 and had 2 air strikes. Had 3 friendly KIA and 4 friendly WIAs and 3 confirmed NVA and 4 probables."

"231720 - Co "C" at grid XD677575 went to retrieve 1 friendly KIA [from Co "D"] after air strike was run. Taken under fire by enemy sniper, snipers located in bunkers. Commenced search and clear, resulting in 6 enemy bunkers destroyed. KIA retrieved and Co "C" pulled back and called in air. Results 3 friendly WIA minor and 5 enemy KIAs confirmed."

The three men killed in the engagement at 1415 (2:15 PM) were

* HM3 David D. Overstreet, San Angelo, TX;
* LCpl Steve E. Byars, Lorida, FL; and
* Pfc Norman E. Beck, Rockford, IL.

From an eyewitness (me):

[Please note, that once the firefight begins, all recollections of time are subject to the combat warp, that is to say, I really don't know how long the firefight lasted, but my best estimates suggest about an hour]

This was a platoon patrol of our sector of the FB Argonne perimeter. After leaving behind the sick, lame & lazy, we numbered 20-25 men. We were led by the Plt Sgt (SSG) since the Plt CO was wounded when he rolled over the booby-trapped (grenade) body of the 3rd Plt CO, who had died in the initial assault. The grenade didn't kill him, but when we next saw him in the rear, some 6 mos later, he was a changed man to say the least. (we called him 'Gungie' Gates (2nd Lt) & were not sad to see him go, as he was a dufus that was gonna get some of us hurt) I was the RTO for 1st Plt and was in the hip pocket of the Plt Sgt for the duration of the patrol.

The patrol route did not take us very far outside the perimeter, 2-300 meters at most, but was through thickly wooded jungle on the hillside below the FB and visibility was extremely limited. The first half of the patrol went quietly, with the only interruption coming when we stumbled upon some fresh graves. There we found several recently (2-3 days) dead NVA in shallow graves. After quickly checking the bodies for intel, we re-buried them and continued the patrol. We were soon on the back leg of the route home to the FB, when our point (Beck) walked upon a bunker and was shot dead where he stood. The next 3-4 guys behind him were wounded also, with 'Professor' running back towards the HQ, hurdling a waist high fallen tree, crashing on landing, rolling onto his back and scurrying with his hands and legs another couple of feet away from the enemy fire that had gut-shot him. His first words when he stopped scuttling away were, "They got me!". (it was surreal but humorous, even at the time)

In an instant it seemed, we had reacted to the fire and were returning same. Sarge was barking at me to tell Co. what sit-rep was, while directing the fire & dispo of the platoon. Byars set his Pig (M60) up where Sarge told him to and returned fire for but a few minutes into the firefight, before he too was hit. The call went out for "CORPSMAN!" and 'Doc' responded quickly and was there in seconds. While Doc lay on his left side to avoid the withering fire coming from the bunkers (yes, by now we had seen fire coming from a couple more bunkers) I could clearly see him (5-10 meters) in front of me, struggling to turn Byars over to access his wound. Doc's next move, was one that showed total disregard for his own safety and shall for the rest of my days on this earth, live etched in my memory. He bounced up into a flat footed squat and began to flip Byars over, it was the last thing he ever did, for he fell over like a statue, never coming out of the squat, even in death.

The shock of my Buddy 'Doc', forever a hero in my memory, checking out right in front of me, had put me into another dimension of thought, hate and anger. Time warped, had you asked me how long we were pinned down, I would have said 4 hours, it seemed an eternity. One of the other platoons was sent down to help pull us out of the jam we were in. And contrary to the AAR above, we left all three of our KIAs down there, as we had half a dozen wounded that had to be helped up the hill. I crossed the wire and reentered the FB, jumped into a nearby mortar (60mm) pit that was firing a cover mission for the platoon that had helped us pull out. I started helping pass the ammo, spitting on rounds when I could work up the saliva, all the while cursing the people, lands and gods of Vietnam, with tears streaming down my face. After a few minutes of watching me vent, Gunny jumped in the pit and took me by the arm and guided me back to my hole, where I would spend the next several days in hell.

After the arty & airstrikes went in, they cleaned up the bunker complex and brought back our dead. Doc lay beside our LZ wrapped in a poncho for a couple of days, as we still couldn't take any inbound choppers due to the heavy fire on the LZ coming in from Laos. A dark time had come to my young (19) life.

The epitaph to this story was my search for many years to find 'Doc's' family, that I might tell them the heroic story of their kinsman. In the year 2000, I finally made contact with his family and related his story to his brothers.

So here's to you 'Doc' ~raises a glass~ it wont be long now.

http://www.virtualwall.org/do/OverstreetDD01a.htm

 

[Louis]

Rip (died 1946), a mixed-breed terrier, was a Second World War search and rescue dog who was awarded the Dickin Medal for bravery in 1945. He was found in Poplar, London, in 1940 by an Air Raid Warden, and became the service's first search and rescue dog. He is credited with saving the lives of over 100 people.

He was the first of twelve Dickin Medal winners to be buried in the PDSA's cemetery in Ilford, Essex.

 

[Louis]

POW

Stan Grimsey joined the infantry in 1939. For two years, his first duty was as chauffeur to the brigadier of the 54th infantry brigade.

Stan eventually left his station at Hereford in April 1941 for the Andes, stopping to train - and fight - at Rio, Capetown, Bombay and Singapore.

"I lost a lot of my friends defending Singapore. It was an awful scene there, unbelievable carnage."

Stan was captured in Singapore, and made to work - in the quarry, building a railway - while staying in tents in the jungle. He was kept prisoner for over a year.

"The conditions in the camps were awful. We did 18 hours or more a day sometimes. All we would eat was horrible rice, and maggots. There were so many of them in the rice, that you couldn't even pick them out."

Though he sometimes finds it difficult to bring himself to talk about the traumatic experiences of being kept prisoner, Stan feels that it is important that people know what happened and history is remembered as it was.

"These men knew exactly what they were doing to the lads, it was an evil scene."

"Towards the end of the war, we were taken to Ubon, 500 km north east of Singapore. We had an inclination that the war was over but no one was certain. Suddenly, all was quiet. We hadn’t been ordered to go to work that day. A parachutist walked into the camp and said, ‘you are free’. He told us a bomber would do a trial run over the camp and not to be afraid. When it dropped supplies we just couldn’t believe it! There was tinned food, paper and pencils, and toilet paper. We were so happy when we walked out of the camp.

To this day, I truly believe that it was the atom bomb that saved our lives. “I was a PoW for 3 years and 8 months. We were denied proper food and medicine and given just rice - so I suffered from a lack of vitamin B and lost my sight. Despite this, I’ve done so much in my life. I even did the Hastings half-marathon two years ago – I was 86 then."

 

[Louis]

Thanks for sharing your story, Facman.-

 

[Louis]

William Meade Lindsley "Billy" Fiske III (4 June 1911 – 17 August 1940) was the 1928 and 1932 Olympic champion bobsled driver and was one of the first American pilots killed in action in World War II. At the time Fiske was serving in the Royal Air Force.

Billy Fiske was born in New York in 1911, the son of Beulah and William Fiske, a New England banking magnate.] He attended school in Chicago, and then went to school in France in 1924, where he discovered the sport of bobsled at the age of 16. Fiske attended Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1928 where he studied Economics and History.

Fiske then worked at the London office of Dillon, Reed & Co, the New York bankers. On 8 September 1938, Fiske married Rose Bingham, Countess of Warwick, in Maidenhead.

As driver of the first five-man U.S. Bobsled team to win the Olympics, Fiske became the youngest gold medalist in any winter sport (until eclipsed by Toni Nieminen in 1992), aged just 16 years at the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Billy Fiske and the rest of his four-man bobsled team at the 1932 Winter Olympics.

Fiske competed again at the 1932 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, USA, where he was given the honour of carrying the flag for the United States at the opening ceremony.

He was invited, but declined to lead the bobsled team in the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany. It is believed by some that this decision was due to his disagreeing with the politics in Germany at the time, which may also explain his later decision to join the War-effort in 1940.

Fiske was also a Cresta Champion, and was well-known for jumps from the Badrutt's Palace Hotel's bar chandelier in St. Moritz.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Fiske was recalled to the New York offices of Dillon, Reed & Co, but on 30 August 1939 he returned to England aboard the Aquitania accompanying a bank colleague who was also a member of No. 601 (County of London) Auxiliary Air Force Squadron. Fiske was one of seven US aircrew personnel who fought in the Battle of Britain, although due to the neutrality of the United States, Fiske pretended to be a Canadian. He joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and was promoted to the rank of Pilot Officer on 23 March 1940.

Fiske undertook his flying training at No. 10 Elementary Flying Training School at RAF Yatesbury, Wiltshire, before moving to RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, for advanced flying training. As an American citizen, he "duly pledged his life and loyalty to the king, George VI," and was formally admitted into the RAF. In his diary, a joyous Fiske wrote, "I believe I can lay claim to being the first U.S. citizen to join the RAF in England after the outbreak of hostilities."

On 12 July 1940, Fiske joined No. 601 Squadron RAF at RAF Tangmere, West Sussex, the so-called "Millionaires' Squadron", carrying out his first sorties with the squadron on 20 July, when he flew two patrols. On 16 August 1940, in the midst of the Battle of Britain, No. 601 Squadron RAF were scrambled to intercept a squadron of German dive-bombers. Fiske was flying a Hurricane - code number P3358. The Squadron destroyed eight Stukas, but after just 15 minutes of flying time, a German gunner put a bullet through Fiske’s fuel tank.

With his aircraft badly damaged and his hands and ankles burnt, instead of bailing out, Fiske nursed his Hurricane fighter home, gliding over a hedgerow to the airfield. Although Fiske landed his aircraft safely back at Tangmere, he had to be extracted from the aircraft by ambulance attendants. Shortly after, his fuel tank exploded. Fiske was taken to Royal West Sussex Hospital in Chichester for treatment, but he died 48 hours later from surgical shock. Fiske was 29 years old.

Fiske is buried in St Mary and St Blaise churchyard in Boxgrove, Sussex. The inscription on his gravestone reads simply: He died for England. A memorial stained glass window was dedicated to him on 17 September 2008 at Boxgrove Priory.

 

[Louis]

Pierce Manning Butler Young was a young West Point cadet in 1861 from Cartersville, Georgia. His roommate, George Armstrong Custer, was a Yankee. They were best friends; but their worlds were different.
Union General George Armstrong Custer

When Georgia seceded from the Union, Pierce followed his state; Custer followed the Union. Both soon became generals but for different countries and armies. As fate would have it, they met in conflict.

Early one evening in 1863, General Custer was eating dinner in a commandeered Virginia farmhouse with his staff. Confederates broke through the perimeter and Custer was forced to evacuate before he finishing dinner. Knowing his old roommate was commanding the assaulting Confederates, he told the reluctant hostess to tell his Southern friend, General Young, to enjoy his unfinished dinner.

General Young entered the home a hero and finished his Yankee friend's dinner. After a good Southern night's sleep, breakfast was served by his grateful hostess, but soon interrupted.

Young

This time Custer's Union forces broke through the perimeter and Young and his staff were forced to evacuate before finishing breakfast. Young, knowing his adversary, told the hostesses to tell his Yankee friend Custer to enjoy the rest of his breakfast.

Custer re-entered the Southern home. Legend has it that he left a note for his old Rebel friend thanking him for a most enjoyable breakfast.

After the Civil War Young went on to become a United States Congressman, Ambassador to Guatemala and Honduras, and Consul-General to St. Petersburg, Russia. His Yankee roommate went to the Little Big Horn.

 

[Louis]

In Tokyo you can buy hairpieces for Dogs.

 

[mTk]

That looks better then on some guys I've seen.

 

[Louis]

Eugeniusz Horbaczewski ""Dziubek" (Sept 28th, 1917 in Kiev/Ukrain, Soviet Union - Aug 18th, 1944 Valennes, France)

Horbaczewski was born in 1917 in Kiev but spent his childhood in Poland when his family moved to Brzesc. Since his early years Horbaczewski was fascinated by aviation.
First, he built flying models, but as he matured, he started glider courses. On 14 August, 1935 he received his glider C rating. Next, he went to Officer Flying School in Deblin, where under the instructor Witold Urbanowicz he was awarded the rank of Pilot, Second Leutnant.

He arrived in England in 1940 after fleeing Poland and was posted to No. 303 Squadron. Horbaczewski first met with enemy planes on the 6th of October 1941, when the 303 Squadron escorted bombers over France. He came up empty on his first attack on three Bf 109s. Noticing a formation of eight Bf 109s, "Dziubek" decided not to attack, but soon saw a lone Messerschmitt which he jumped and put several bursts into. The German began burning, but the victim's wingmen forced Horbaczewski to disengage into the clouds. He landed on fuel fumes at West Malling, the first British airfield he spotted.

At the end of 1942 Horbaczewski joined a group of selected Polish pilots in North Africa under the command of Stanislaw Skalski.
After spectacular successes, they received the nickname of 'Skalski's Circus'. After the North African campaign, Horbaczewski took command of the No. 43 Squadron, 324th Fighter Wing. In combat over Sicily and southern Italy, Horbaczewski added more victories to his scoreboard, two of which were Bf 109s he downed within 40 seconds.

On the 18th of October 1944 during a massive air battle in which Horbaczewski's squadron was credited with downing 16 FW-190s (three downed by Horbaczewski himself) he was shot down and killed.

Horbaczewski finished the War with 16.5 victories. He was also credited with downing four V-1' rockets.

In 1947 the wreck of his Mustang with his body was found crashed near Valennes. He was buried on a cemetery in Creil, France.-

 

[Louis]

Sergei Makarovich Kramarenko (born 23 April 1923) was a Soviet Air Force officer who fought in both the German-Soviet War and the Korean War. For his service in Korea became a holder of the Title of Hero of the Soviet Union. He achieved several high command positions in the USSR and was also Air Force advisor in Iraq and Algeria in the 1970s. Retired in 1977 with the rank of Major-General.-

Sergei Kramarenko first saw action in late November 1942 over Stalingrad, as part of the 523rd IAP- equipped with the LaGG-3. Like most inexperienced fliers, he began as wingman to more experienced pilots, such as Capt. Mikhail Baranovskiy and Lt. Yury Ryzhov. In early 1943 his unit was re-equipped with the Lavochkin La-5, which performance-wise proved to be on a par with the German FW-190 and Bf-109.

First aerial victory:

On 23 February 1943 he was flying as wingman in a flight led by Capt. Baranovskiy when they engaged a group of dive-bomber [Ju-87 Stuka]s. Several escorting FW-190s jumped his element leader Ryzhov and he promptly rushed to assist:

In that moment in front of me, with a left turn at 100-150 meters arrived two unknown aircraft of green color - in their fuselages were black crosses. In spite it was the first time I saw them, immediately I knew they were two FW-190s. As soon as they finished their turn, one of them began to shoot at my leader. I opened fire against the trailing airplane and I saw shell strikes all over the aircraft. I watched that suddenly it went upwards turning, and his leader after him. Right then, ahead of me from the left went by tracers. I looked to the left and saw that 300 meters behind at the left were two Focke-Wulfs. They shoot right at me, and the tracers of their aircraft get closer and closer to my airplane. What should I do? To climb was imposible, because there were two more Focke-Wulfs. Immediately broke to the left, underneath the tracers. I dove [...] Many years later, while I described this episode to a journalist friend of mine, he told me that he saw in German memoirs a report of the leader of that schwarm. [...] After the combat with me, while returning home, one of his pilots, because of unexplainable reasons, got into a dive and crashed into the ground. I realized that one of the shells of my cannons hit the pilot's cockpit and wounded the pilot, who because of the loss of blood fainted and crashed to his death.

On 19 March 1944 three La-5FNs of the 19th IAP intercepted a group of Ju-88 bombers escorted by six Bf-110 fighters. Kramarenko's leader - Pavel Maslyakov - shot down one of the Junkers, but was in return jumped by one of the Bf-110s. Kramarenko was ready to cover him, scoring hits on the Messerchmitt. He then fell prey to the Bf-110 wingman, who set his aircraft on fire and forced him to bail out with severe burns to face and hands.

Kramarenko was captured almost immediately by German troops, and as he was unwilling to answer the questions of his SS interrogator he was to be executed. Fortunately for Kramarenko the order was cancelled at the last minute by a Wehrmacht General, who ordered also that Kramarenko be sent to a German field hospital. Two weeks later Kramarenko was rescued by Soviet troops liberating the hospital.-

 

[Louis]

The Diary of Anne Frank has now been published in more than 60 different languages.

Miep Gies (February 15, 1909 – January 11, 2010 ) was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank, her family and several family friends in an attic annex above Anne's father's place of business from the Nazis during World War II. She discovered and preserved Anne Frank's diary after the Franks were arrested.-

Before the hiding place was emptied by the authorities, Gies retrieved Anne Frank's diaries and saved them in her desk drawer. Once the war was over and it was confirmed that Anne Frank had perished in Bergen-Belsen, Gies gave the collection of papers and notebooks to the sole survivor from the Secret Annex, Otto Frank.

Gies did not read the diaries before turning them over to him, and later remarked that if she had she would have had to destroy them because the diary contained the names of all five of the helpers as well as their black market suppliers.

 

[Louis]

In 1983 Sylvester Stallone was paid $500,000 by the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. to smoke their cigarettes in "no less than five feature films".

 

[Louis]

Major Edward 'Mickey' Mannock (1887-1918) was Britain's highest scoring fighter pilot of World War One.

Unfortunate enough to be in Turkey working as a telephone engineer upon the outbreak of Allied hostilities in November 1914, Mannock finally returned home in April 1915 and in time joined the Royal Engineers before his transferral to the Royal Flying Corps.

It wasn't long before Mannock earned a reputation as one of Britain's best fighter pilots, flying Nieuport and (predominantly) SE5a aircraft. During the course of his tally of 73 reputed victories - other figures range from 50 to a more probable 61 - Mannock earned the Military Cross in 1917 to which a bar was later added. The following year he won the DSO and a further two bars. These achievements were all the more remarkable given that Mannock was all but blind in his left eye.

As with so many high-scoring and long-serving fighter pilots (he reached the Western Front in March 1917), Mannock's war ended with a grave. He was shot from the ground on 26 July 1918. His demise was thus similar to that of his German enemy, Manfred von Richthofen (of whose demise three months earlier he had commented, 'I hope the bastard burned the whole way down').

Following representations from his former flying colleagues Mannock was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross in 1919. In spite of his remarkable record Mannock's fame was largely restricted to the armed services rather than among the general public.

 

[Louis]

Witold Pilecki was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic, the founder of the Secret Polish Army Polish resistance group, and a member of the Home Army. He is now recognized as the only known person to volunteer to be imprisoned at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.

Pilecki was born on May 13, 1901 in Karelia, Russia where his family had been forcibly resettled by Tsarist Russian authorities after the suppression of Poland's January Uprising of 1863-1864. In 1910, Pilecki moved with his family to Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania) where he joined the secret ZHP Scouts organization. In 1918, during World War I, Pilecki joined Polish self-defense units in the Wilno area with which he helped collect weapons and disarm retreating German troops in what became the prelude to the Vilna offensive. During the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920, Pilecki commanded a ZHP Scout section that was overrun by the Bolsheviks. He later joined the regular Polish Army and fought in the Polish retreat from Kiev. On August 5, 1920, Pilecki joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the Battle of Warsaw and at Rudniki Forest and took part in the liberation of Wilno.

During World War II, Pilecki smuggled himself into Auschwitz under the false name Tomasz Serafinski in 1940 and began recruiting members for an underground resistance group that he organized into a coherent movement. He began sending information about what was going on inside the camp and confirming that the Nazis were seeking the extermination of the Jews to Britain and the United States as early as 1941. Pilecki used a courier system that the Polish Resistance operated throughout occupied Europe to channel the reports to the Allies. Documents released from the Polish Archives that provided details of these reports again raised questions as to why the Allies, particularly Winston Churchill, never did anything to put an end to the atrocities being committed that they learned of so early in the war.

By 1942, Pilecki's resistance group had learned of the existence of the gas chambers and began work on several plans to liberate Auschwitz, including one in which the RAF would bomb the walls or Free Polish paratroopers would fly in from Britain. In 1943, when Pilecki realized that the Allies did not have plans to liberate the camp, he escaped with two other prisoners after he voluntarily spent 2½ years at the camp smuggling out its darkest secrets to the Allies. The documents released from the Polish Archives also included a Gestapo manhunt alert following Pilecki's escape.

In 1944, Pilecki was captured while fighting in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and spent the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp. He joined the Free Polish troops in Italy in July of 1945 and agreed to return to Poland and gather intelligence on its takeover by the Soviets. Pilecki was caught by the Polish Communist regime, tortured, interrogated on his espionage, and executed following a trial at which he was given three death sentences. Pilecki was executed on May 25, 1948 at Warsaw's Mokotow Prison.

The details of Pilecki's bravery could not truly emerge until after the collapse of Communism in 1989. He received posthumously the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1995 and the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish decoration in 2006.

jewishvirtuallibrary.org

 

[Louis]

On September 13, 1922 a temperature of 57.7°C (135.9°F) was recorded in the city of Al ‘Aziziyah (El Azizia, located on the northern part of the Libya), the hottest recorded temperature ever on the surface of the Earth.

Death Valley in California, USA, comes next. In Death Valley, temperature got up to 56°C (134°F) on July 10, 1913.