On this date in 1939, Polish Olympian Edmund Jankowski was shot by the Third Reich.
Jankowski (English Wikipedia entry | Polish) earned bronze in the coxed four rowing event at the 1928 summer games in Amsterdam.
He’s one of more than 1,000 Poles and Jews who were shot in the so-called “Valley of Death” — a site in Fordon during the autumn of 1939. The victims were heavily members of the intelligentsia systematically targeted for elimination by the Pomeranian arm of the Nazi Inteligentzaktion, implemented directly after swift conquest of Poland in September of that year. Jankowski, who by this time worked at a bicycle factory and was a reserve lieutenant in the army, was on such a kill list because of his longstanding activities in a Polish patriotic union.
On this day..
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- 1946: Arthur Robert Boyce, the king's housekeeper's lover
- 1922: Francisco Murguia
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- 1833: Ira West Gardner, creepy stepfather
- 1938: George Brain, Wimbledon murderer
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- 1943: Not Anatoly Kuznetsov, insignificant little chap
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