On this date in 1941, the fascist artist Alexandru Bassarab was killed in World War II — generally believed to be among captured Romanian prisoners of war summarily executed by Soviet troops.

A woodcut/linocut specialist — as evidenced by his gaunt self-portrait to the right — Bassarab was an early adherent of the Iron Guard and became one of its outstanding propagandists.

His very Deus Vult-vibing work Arhangel, for example, was used by the Guard as a banner at the 1940 state funeral it threw for far-right martyr Corneliu Codreanu. (The Iron Guard was shorthand nomenclature for an organ formally named the Legion of the Archangel Michael — and its members hence known as Legionnaires.)

But the Iron Guard’s moment at the political apex was a brief one, and when it was sidelined by a different right-wing strongman, Ian Antonescu, Bessarab found himself arrested and forced into a front-line army unit recapturing (appropriately) Bessarabia. He disappeared into presumed Soviet custody and execution near Tiganca, in present-day Moldova.

His work, including apolitical pieces, was taboo in postwar Communist Romania, but has enjoyed a bit of rediscovery since the end of the Cold War

On this day..

• 1797: Abraham Johnstone
• 1825: Tahvo Putkonen, Finland's last peacetime execution
• 1835: Dean and Donovan, white abolitionists
• 1617: Eleonora Galigai, Marie de' Medici favorite
• 1949: Antoun Saadeh
• 1814: Two War of 1812 deserters
• 1771: Henry Stroud and Robert Campbell, for revenge
• 1486: Humphrey Stafford of Grafton, no sanctuary
• 1938: Anthony Chebatoris, in death penalty-free Michigan
• 1538: Diego de Almagro, explorer of Chile
• 1839: William John Marchant
• 1999: Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis, the end of the road for Old Sparky