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Genealogy Blog

6 February 2013

Battle of Midway Hero Jim Muri Dies At 93

Jim Muri, a Montanan whose legendary flying prowess saved his stricken bomber and crew during the Battle of Midway in World War II, died Sunday at age 93.

Muri earned national recognition and became the subject of a popular song for his exploits during the battle, June 4-6, 1942. He piloted a twin-engine B-26 bomber, one of dozens of land-based aircraft that attacked a massive Japanese invasion fleet on the opening morning of the battle.

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5 December 2012

World's 'Oldest Person' Besse Cooper Dies Aged 116

The US woman listed as the world's oldest person has died. She was 116. Besse Cooper died peacefully on Tuesday at a nursing home near Atlanta, Georgia, said her son, Sidney Cooper.

Guinness said Ms Cooper is succeeded as the world's oldest living person by fellow American Dina Manfredini from Iowa, who is 115. The oldest person ever was French-born Jeanne Calment, who lived to be 122 before dying in 1997.

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23 October 2012

Antoni Dobrowolski, Oldest Auschwitz Survivor, Dies

The oldest known survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp has died aged 108 in Debno, north-west Poland, officials say. A teacher, Antoni Dobrowolski was imprisoned for giving secret lessons during Germany's occupation of Poland.

Mr Dobrowolski was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Nazi concentration camp in 1942. He was later transferred to the Gross Rosen and Sachsenhausen camps in Germany, before being freed in 1945.

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18 September 2012

WWII Navy Medic who Witnessed First Iwo Jima Flag Raising Interred

Truett Wood, a Navy medic who witnessed the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi, was hailed at his funeral Monday as a "wonderful patriot."

“It was always an honor and a blessing to be associated with Truett Wood,” said Jesse Goldman, the chaplain for the Riverfront Marines, Detachment No. 1132, to a small gathering at Posey’s Funeral Home in North Augusta.

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26 June 2012

Last Gay Jewish Holocaust Survivor Dies

Gad Beck, an anti-Nazi Zionist resistance fighter and the last known gay Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, died on Sunday in Berlin. He passed away in a senior citizens' home six days before his 89th birthday, which would have been on June 30.

Beck was a pioneering gay activist and educator in a severely anti-homosexual, repressive post-World War II German society. He was famous for his witty, lively style of speaking.

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15 June 2012

Daughter of Civil War Veteran Dies at the Age of 94

The daughter of a Civil War veteran has died at the age of 94 in a retirement home after a battle with cancer. Stella Mae Case, who was born in 1918, was one of the last living Americans whose father fought in the epic conflict, according to U-T San Diego.

Although her father John Harwood Pierce died when she was seven years old, Case remembered seeing him dressed in his Civil War uniform for a Memorial Day parade.

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8 June 2012

Europe's Oldest Woman Dies in France Aged 114

The oldest known woman in Europe, French national Marie-Therese Bardet, has died just days after celebrating her 114th birthday at her retirement home in the village of Pontchateau in the western Loire-Atlantique region of France.

Bardet was the sixth oldest person in the world, according to the US-based Gerontology Research Group, which compiles birth certificates of people aged over 110 years.

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12 April 2012

French WWII Resistance Hero Raymond Aubrac Dies Aged 97

One of the leading figures of the French resistance against the Nazis, Raymond Aubrac, has died aged 97, his family says. His daughter said he had died at Val de Grace military hospital in Paris on Tuesday evening.

Raymond Aubrac and his late wife Lucie became important members of Jean Moulin's underground Resistance movement in 1942. Aubrac was arrested in June 1943 with Moulin, who died after torture.

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29 February 2012

'Band of Brothers' Soldier Lynn Compton Dies Aged 90

Lynn D. "Buck" Compton, a veteran whose Second World War exploits were depicted in the HBO TV series "Band of Brothers," has died aged 90. Compton died on Saturday in Washington state after having a heart attack last month, the family said.

In January, nearly 200 guests, including actors from the Second World War miniseries, attended his 90th birthday party, the Skagit Valley Herald said. "To us he wasn't really a war hero, he was just a hero, period," Tracy Compton told the Herald.

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17 February 2012

Florence Green: Funeral Held for Last WWI Veteran

The funeral of a woman thought to be the last person to serve in the armed forces during the WWI has taken place in west Norfolk. Florence Green, 110, from King's Lynn, served as a mess steward at RAF Marham and RAF Narborough in 1918.

She died on 4 February at Briar House care home, King's Lynn, 15 days before she was due to celebrate her birthday. The funeral was held at Mintlyn Crematorium, Bawsey, and marked with a flypast by a Tornado from RAF Marham.

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8 February 2012

'World's Last' WWI Veteran Florence Green Dies Aged 110

A woman thought to be the world's last known surviving service member of World War I has died aged 110. Florence Green, from King's Lynn, Norfolk, served as a mess steward at RAF bases in Marham and Narborough.

She died in her sleep on Saturday night at Briar House care home, King's Lynn. Mrs Green had been due to celebrate her 111th birthday on 19 February. The world's last known combat veteran of World War I, Briton Claude Choules, died in Australia aged 110 in May 2011.

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30 January 2012

Auschwitz Survivor Dies on 67th Anniversary of Camp’s Liberation

Kazimierz Smolen, a 91-year-old Auschwitz survivor who after World War II became director of the memorial site, died Friday on the 67th anniversary of its liberation.

Smolen died in a hospital in Oswiecim, the southern Polish town where Nazi Germany operated Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II, said Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum.

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9 January 2012

World War II Navajo Code Talker Keith Little Dies at Age 87

Keith Little, who joined the Marine Corps at age 17 and became one of the famed Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, died Tuesday at an Arizona hospital. He was 87.

Little, the longtime president of the Navajo Code Talkers Association, spent his last years touring the country to gain support and funding for a museum honoring the men whose use of the Navajo language in radio transmissions confounded the Japanese during the war in the Pacific.

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13 August 2011

Great Australian WWII Heroine Dies at 98 in London

Nancy Wake, Australia's greatest World War II heroine and a prominent figure in the French Resistance known as the "The White Mouse" for her ability to evade the Germans, has died in London. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the woman who was once the Gestapo's most wanted person, was "a devastatingly effective saboteur and spy".

"Nancy Wake was a woman of exceptional courage and resourcefulness whose daring exploits saved the lives of hundreds of Allied personnel and helped bring the Nazi occupation of France to an end," Gillard said.

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4 August 2011

Rudolf Brazda, Believed Last Surviving Gay Concentration Camp Prisoner, Dies at 98

Rudolf Brazda, believed to be the last surviving person who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp because of his homosexuality, has died, a German gay rights group said Thursday. He was 98. Brazda was sent to the Nazis’ Buchenwald concentration camp in August 1942 and held there until its liberation by U.S. forces in 1945.

Nazi Germany declared homosexuality an aberration that threatened the German race, and convicted some 50,000 homosexuals as criminals. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 gay men were deported to concentration camps, where few survived.

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