The Death of Stalin’s Son

Yakov Dzhugashvili’s death in a German concentration camp 80 years ago was kept a secret for decades.

Yakov Dzhugashvili following his capture, on a German airfield, 1941.
Yakov Dzhugashvili following his capture, on a German airfield, 1941. Alamy.

Shortly after the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, Allied military intelligence agents unearthed a container of top secret files in the garden of a senior German diplomat. One set of microfilmed documents contained a report into the shooting of a Soviet prisoner of war by an SS guard at Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 14 April 1943. The victim was a 36-year-old Red Army artillery lieutenant named Yakov Dzhugashvili.

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