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. … Read full obituary

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. … Read full obituary

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. … Read full obituary

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. …

The residue of May 4 remained with him. And he often reflected on it.

“The guardsmen who killed four students and wounded nine others have neither told the truth nor been held accountable for their actions,” he wrote in a guest editorial for the Akron Beacon Journal in March 1996. …

He was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on the crowd at an anti-war rally at Kent State.

“Instinctively, I turned around and started to run away,” he told the magazine. “I took about three or four steps, and that’s when it got me in the back.”

Mr. Stamps recalled sitting in the front seat of the ambulance for the ride to Robinson Memorial Hospital in nearby Ravenna. Behind him were Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller, both of whom died from their wounds. … Read full obituary

July 24, 1900 - May 27, 2008

Veteran who survived the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian armies in 1918

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.

This brought him visitors, inquisitive interviewers and letters from around the world. But he confessed that was “anything but proud, to be the last soldier of the Emperor”. “I was no Hurrah soldier and simply did what I had to do,” he told the German magazine Cicero. “Young people had to kill each other. Is that somehow justified?” was his bitter reflection on what the war had meant. … Read full obituary

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.

Tall, painfully thin and with what local journalists who had met him described as anger-filled eyes, Ayro’s brief life — he is believed to have been in his early thirties when he was killed by an American air strike — was one of unremitting violence.

With little formal education, Ayro became an Islamist fighter as a teenager in the early 1990s after the overthrow of the veteran Somali dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. He is said to have taken part in every major battle involving Islamist militias since then. …

Aden Hashi Ayro is reported to have received military training in Afghanistan, where he almost certainly came into contact with senior al-Qaeda figures, possibly including Osama bin Laden himself. … Read full obituary

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”.

But she kept hidden a meticulous record of all their real names and new identities — created to protect the Jewish youngsters from the pursuing Nazis — so they might later be re-united with their families.

By any measure, Irena Sendler was one of the most remarkable and noble figures to have emerged from the horrors of World War II. But, until recently, her extraordinary compassion and heroism went largely unrecorded.

When the Germans finally caught her, the Roman Catholic social worker had managed to save 2,500 Jewish babies and toddlers from deportation to the concentration camps. …

She was beaten, tortured and sentenced to death by the Gestapo — who even announced her execution. But Irena survived, her spirit unbroken, her secrets untold. … Read full obituary

Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, believed to be the last surviving member of the inner circle of German army officers who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb on July 20, 1944, died on Thursday. He was 90 and lived in Altenahr, in the Rhineland-Palatinate. …

Mr. von Boeselager, disturbed by the Nazi campaign of extermination against the Jews and by German atrocities that he witnessed as a lieutenant on the Eastern Front, joined an anti-Hitler conspiracy in 1942 and later took part in the plot being organized by Col. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. …

Mr. von Boeselager, assigned to an explosives research team, was able to acquire top-grade English explosives. On July 20, von Stauffenberg carried a briefcase stuffed with plastic explosives and a timed detonator into a conference being held in the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia, and placed it under a table being used by Hitler and more than 20 officers. … Read full obituary

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. …

Mr Harel also helped found the militia that was the forerunner of the modern Israeli army and later became a senior intelligence officer. But it was the task of rescuing Holocaust survivors and circumventing British immigration controls on Palestine which was his passion, Mr Kaniuk said. …

Mr Harel, who was born in Jerusalem, was the commander of four of the largest illegal immigration ships that would eventually bring 24,000 Jews from Europe to Palestine, before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

But it is the story of the Exodus which is most famous. … Read full obituary

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.

After 1945, already in his forties, he built an acting career in first West, and then East, Germany, starring in Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble before defying Brecht to turn his attention to film. His relationship with the communist authorities in East Germany was turbulent. Communist loyalties led him to support the regime broadly and even collaborate with its secret police. But the films in which he starred sometimes fell foul of the censor in their challenges to idealised images of communist society. … Read full obituary

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

The death of Sydney Dowse leaves only three British survivors of the “Great Escape” by Allied air force officers from the German prison of war camp Stalag Luft III in March 1944. Hitler issued an order that all those recaptured were to be shot but was allegedly persuaded to reduce the figure to 50. Seventy-six men got away but only three reached safety. The 23 survivors of those recaptured were sent to prison or concentration camps. Dowse was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, north of Berlin, from where he again escaped. In all he made five escape attempts.

As an RAF Flight Lieutenant, Dowse had baled [sic] out from his photo-reconaissance Spitfire of 608 Squadron over Brest in August 1941, after taking photographs of the German battle cruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst sheltering in the port. Landing in occupied Brittany, he tried to make contact with the French Resistance but was taken prisoner… Read full obituary

Related:

Desmond Plunkett

Jimmy James

Ian Tapson

WASHINGTON – 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. …

Al-Masri’s death undercuts Pakistan’s rejection of U.S. claims that al-Qaida’s leadership has been directing terrorist plots from inside the border region’s safe havens of soaring mountains and rugged valleys. … 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. …

Mr. Lewis’ activism on behalf of peace continued through the rest of his life, ending only Friday, when he died in his sleep at his home in Worcester, Mass., at the age of 68. …

Tom Lewis was part of a famed group of Catholic anti-war activists led by Philip and Daniel Berrigan, both priests. The trial of the Catonsville Nine would land Mr. Lewis in prison for more than three years — and become the subject of a play and a movie. …

Mr. Lewis was also a member of the “Baltimore Four,” a group that poured blood on draft records at a city Selective Service office in October 1967. … 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