Dead Celebrity Alert

January 29, 1916 - May 22, 2008

The Czech actress Hana Pravda was a survivor of both the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz concentration camps. She was a leading light in Prague theatre and later, from the 1960s, enjoyed a successful career in British television and films. Then, when she might have expected to move into quiet retirement, her moving wartime diary of her escape from a Nazi death march was rediscovered. Published in Czech and in English as I Was Writing This Diary for You, Sasha, it was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 2000, and was recognised as one of the most vivid memoirs of the Holocaust. …

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December 9, 1914 - May 9, 2008

A leader of the Jewish militia force that bombed Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946, Samuel Katz went on to become one of the most prominent figures to claim that since the late 1970s the Israeli Right had become too soft.

A one-time Fleet Street journalist, Katz moved to British Mandate Palestine after the war and spent his life fighting for his right-wing Zionist principles, first through the Irgun underground militia, then as a parliamentarian, and subsequently as a writer and ideologue. …

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During the first week of the war in Iraq, a Military Times photographer captured the arresting image of Army Spc. Joseph Patrick Dwyer as he raced through a battle zone clutching a tiny Iraqi boy named Ali.

The photo was hailed as a portrait of the heart behind the U.S. military machine, and Doc Dwyer’s concerned face graced the pages of newspapers across the country. …

On June 28, Dwyer, 31, died of an accidental overdose in his home in Pinehurst, N.C., after years of struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. During that time, his marriage fell apart as he spiraled into substance abuse and depression. He found himself constantly struggling with law, even as friends, Veterans Affairs personnel and the Army tried to help him. …

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Robert “Robby” Stamps, one of 13 students shot by Ohio National Guardsmen during a Vietnam War protest May 4, 1970, at Kent State University, has died of complications from pneumonia.

Mr. Stamps, 58, died Wednesday in Tallahassee, Fla. A private funeral is scheduled for Monday at a friend’s house. A memorial service is planned in San Diego. …

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July 24, 1900 - May 27, 2008

Franz Künstler was not overimpressed with the sudden attention he attracted at the very end of his extraordinarily long life. Living quietly in the small German town of Niederstetten, in Baden-Württemberg, he was discovered to be one of the very few former First World War soldiers still alive, and the only one who had fought in the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. …

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197? - May 1, 2008

Aden Hashi Ayro was one of the most feared and notorious figures in Somalia whose powerful influence in the country showed most starkly the depths of anarchy and brutality to which it has sunk. …

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She smuggled out the children in suitcases, ambulances, coffins, sewer pipes, rucksacks and, on one occasion, even a tool box. Those old enough to ask knew their saviour only by her codename “Jolanta”. …

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Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, one of a group of German army officers who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb in 1944.

The man who gained legendary status as commander of the ship Exodus, attempting to bring thousands of Jewish Holocaust refugees to the holy land after the Second World War, has died.

Yossi Harel, whose journey at the helm of a ship carrying 4,500 frail survivors from Germany to then-British Mandate Palestine was immortalised in the film Exodus, where he was portrayed by Paul Newman, died of a heart attack at the age of 90. …

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Actor and communist who was mostly loyal to the East German regime

The stage, film and television actor Erwin Geschonneck was one of East Germany’s most popular performers. Brought up in poverty in Berlin, he became a Communist, endured exile during the 1930s purges in the Soviet Union, spent several years in Nazi concentration camps and was one of the few survivors when a ship containing thousands of former camp prisoners was bombed by the RAF at the end of the war. …

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An Italian woman artist who was hitch-hiking to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote world peace has been found murdered in Turkey.

The naked body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, known as Pippa Bacca, was found in bushes near the city of Gebze on Friday.

She had said she wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people. …

Ms di Marineo was hitch-hiking from Milan to Lebanon with a fellow artist on their “Brides on Tour” project. … Read full story

Also:

Police arrested Murat Karatas, who later confessed that he first raped and killed di Marineo. Turkish people condemned the murder as the leading newspaper Hurriyet wrote “We are ashamed” in the headline.

Italian artist, also known as Pippa Bacca, was last seen on March 31. She was raped and then killed on March 31, according to the initial autopsy results, Dogan News Agency (DHA) said. …

Di Marineo’s mother Elena Manzoni told reporters her daughter was trying to prove that people could be reliable. …

Turkish people condemned the murder and expressed their feelings in the internet. Turkey’s leading newspaper Hurriyet said “We are ashamed” in the headline of its internet edition. … Read full story

RAF pilot who was shot down, sent to Stalag Luft III and took part in the Great Escape of 1944 … Read full obituary

Related:

Desmond Plunkett

Jimmy James

Ian Tapson

A senior al-Qaida operative involved in the 2005 London subway and bus bombings and a 2006 plot to blow up commercial airliners over the Atlantic Ocean has died in Pakistan’s tribal region, U.S. counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

The militant, an Egyptian who used the nom de guerre Abu Ubaida al-Masri, succumbed to hepatitis, they said. … Read full story

Forty years ago next month, Tom Lewis and eight other Vietnam War protesters strode into the offices of U.S. Selective Service Board 33 in Catonsville and left a mark on history.

The “Catonsville Nine” emptied file cabinets, hauled 600 draft records into the parking lot and burned them with homemade napalm. Then they prayed and waited to be arrested.

That act of civil disobedience on May 17, 1968, inspired headlines — and more than 200 protests at draft board offices across the country. … Read full obituary

Related:
Peace activist Philip Berrigan, 79

The last Turkish veteran of the First World War who also fought for the independence of Turkey

The last Turkish veteran of the First World War, Yakup Satar, who has died at the age of 110, fought at the Second Battle of Kut in the Mesopotamian campaign. He was captured there by the British in February 1917, as Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Maude’s British and Indian army drove the Ottoman Empire’s forces back up the Tigris from Basra towards Baghdad. … Read full obituary

NEW YORK (AP) — Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country’s murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film “The Killing Fields,” died Sunday. He was 65. … Read full obituary

The number of US troops to die in Iraq since the invasion began five years ago hit 4,000 last night after a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed four soldiers. …

A US military spokesman played down the significance of the 4,000th death, which followed a day of bombings and rocket fire across the country that killed at least 60 Iraqis and left many more wounded. … Read full story

LONDON (AP) — Philip Jones Griffiths, a photojournalist who spent years traveling across Vietnam to capture the effects of the war on its people, died Wednesday. He was 72. …

Jones Griffiths was perhaps best known for his book “Vietnam Inc.” … Read full obituary

REDDING, Calif. — Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the original U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, has died at age 82. …

Jacobs retired in 1992 from KTVU-TV in Oakland, where he worked 34 years as a reporter, anchor and news director. … Read full obituary

RAF pilot who was awarded the Military Cross for his part in the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III …

Squadron Leader B. A. “Jimmy” James, MC, survivor of the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III, was born on April 17, 1915. He died on January 18, 2008, aged 92 … Read full obituary

Related:
Desmond Plunkett

TOLEDO, Ohio — J. Russell Coffey, the oldest known surviving U.S. veteran of World War I, has died. The retired teacher, one of only three U.S. veterans from the “war to end all wars,” was 109. … Read full obituary

WASHINGTON, July 18 — Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who fought in jungles and deserts and commanded American Special Operations forces before becoming a senior adviser to President Bush for counterterrorism, died Wednesday in Peoria, Ill., where he was born and returned to live in retirement. He was 67. … Read full obituary

Kurt Waldheim, 88, a seemingly colorless diplomat who became secretary general of the United Nations and president of his native Austria only to be barred from the United States for suspected involvement in Nazi war crimes, died today at a Vienna hospital. He had been treated for an infection since last month. … Read full obituary

Abe Weissbrodt, an attorney whose career included work at the Nuremberg war crime trials, died in a Washington hospital at age 93. He succumbed to pneumonia April 16. … Read full obituary

BERLIN (AP) — Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker, a physicist who researched atomic weapons for the Nazis and became a philosophy professor who espoused pacifism after the Second World War, died Saturday, his family said. He was 94. … Read full obituary