Stalin's son days after his capture
On July 21, the Russians sent a motorcycle unit to the area where it
believed Stalin's son was to be found. The men encountered Red Army
soldier Popuride, who had managed to escape with Yakov. Rumyanyev's
letter reads: "They buried their papers together and put on civilian
clothing. When they reached the lakeside, Comrade Dzhugashvili told
Popuride to keep going, but that he wanted to stay and rest." The
episode Rumyanzev described suggests that Yakov had allowed himself to
be taken prisoner.
On July 25, a group of intelligence officers set out to find Yakov
once again, but they also returned empty-handed. By then, Yakov was
already in German hands.
Interrogation
Dzhugashvili's first interrogation took place on July 18. After the
end of the war, the Soviets found the original interrogation report in
the archives at the Aviation Ministry in Berlin. The document provides
insight into the young officer's mind. Stalin's son was proud and
defended the political system in his country, and yet he made no
secret of his disappointment in the Soviet army, whose
commander-in-chief was his own father:
When they were surrounded, they went into such a panic that everyone
Question: How did this affect the leadership?
Dzhugashvili: They were completely worthless because they spent all
their time in the field camps. That's all they did for three years. We
lost about 70 percent of the tanks.
Question: What exactly are the reasons for your army's poor fitness
for action?
Dzhugashvili: The German Stuka bombers, the unwise actions of our
the fire, directly into the fire.
Another segment of the interrogation is noteworthy -- when the Germans
discuss the role of the Jews with Yakov.
Dzhugashvili: Based on my personal experience, I can tell you that the
Gypsies are the same -- they simply don't want to work. In their view,
making business deals is the most important thing. The Jew doesn't
want to work because he can't.
What Stalin's son said about the Jews reflected popular opinions in
the Soviet Union. It just sounded especially disconcerting because his
wife, Yulia, was Jewish. When the Germans asked him whether she was to
be notified of his capture, Dzhugashvili said: "If you want to do me
one favor, then don't do it." Perhaps he had an idea of what was in
store for her.
In fact, Stalin had Yulia Dzhugashvili arrested that fall. "Yasha's
daughter should stay with you for now," he told his daughter,
Svetlana, referring to Yakov's daughter Galina. "His wife is
apparently a dishonest person, and we have to look into that."
Disputes about His Fate
In her memoirs, Svetlana Alliluyeva wrote that their father had
believed that Yakov, instigated by his wife, had deliberately
surrendered to the Germans. "That absurd idea got Yulia Isaakovna
several years in prison. First it was Lubyanka, with nightly
interrogations, the ice chamber and constant electric light. Then the
prison in the city of Engels, and then back to Moscow, to Lefortovo
(Prison)."
Stalin remained suspicious when it came to his son. In the winter of
1943, after the Battle of Stalingrad, he told Svetlana that the
Germans had proposed trading Yakov for a few of their own. "I will not
negotiate with them," Svetlana quoted her father as saying.
In his memoirs, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the winner of the Battle of
Berlin, describes a walk he took with Stalin, during which he had
asked the Soviet leader about Yakov. According to Zhukov, Stalin said
nothing for a while and then replied: "Yakov will not escape
captivity. The fascists will shoot him."
Zhukov also said that Stalin was pained by his son's fate, but that
seems unlikely. When director Mikheil Chiaureli later made the 1949
film "The Fall of Berlin," he tried to portray Yakov Dzhugashvili as a
tragic war hero, but Stalin prevented him from doing so. And when
Stalin received a telegram from the Soviet military administration in
Germany in 1945 that informed him about the search for his son's
remains, Stalin didn't even feel the need to respond.
Dzhugashvili's odyssey through the German camps lasted almost two
years. From Hammelburg in the Franconia region of Bavaria, he was
as the British had started bombing the city. After that, he was sent
east to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
The years leading up to his death are well documented. Nevertheless,
to this day, many Russians do not believe that Stalin's son was ever
in German captivity. Some believe he later fled to Italy, the United
States or Canada, while others were convinced that he had gone to Iraq
and married into the family of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
His daughter, Galina, who saw her father for the last time when she
was three, also believed that the Germans had presented the world with
a look-alike and claimed that her father had been killed in an
unevenly matched battle in the middle of July 1941. The Germans, she
insisted, had merely acquired his papers.
Of course, the documents contradict such claims, but there was a
reason why the speculation over how Yakov died never ended: The urn
containing the ashes of the man killed in Sachsenhausen arrived in
Berlin, but then it mysteriously disappeared -- and, with it, the last
traces of Yakov Dzhugashvili.
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