Mystery of death of Stalin’s son solved

Press, 25 February 1980, Page 9

Mystery of death of Stalin’s son solved

NZPA-Reuter London The suicide of Jospeh Stalin’s eldest son in a German .concentration camp has been revealed in full detail by official documents just .made public, a British newspaper has reported. Jakov Stalin’s death in Sachsenhausen concentration lamp in 1943 remained a mystery for yr -s and .at me stage his father offered a reward to anyone who could find the grave. But. the “Sunday Times” tewspaper said yesterday, British and American Authorities had known all Hong about Jakov. It said the full facts,, desfibing how Jakov ran to the camp’s electrified fence Ind taunted a guard into; ihooting him. were kept select -to avoid upsetting \ w!o-Soviet relations. I

Captured German documents, only just made public bv the British Foreign Office, show that British and Soviet prisoners in the camp I had been arguing constantly. ! The newspaper said that ’according to the documents [it had scrutinised, Stalin’s I son, who had been an artillery commander on the German front, . became particularly provocative. He said that when the war was over, the Red Army would drive through to Spain, and English dukes, earls, barons, and landowners would all be murdered. „ , On April 14, 1943, there was a violent argument ending in a fight in the camp and when Jakov’s request to see the camp commandant was turned down he appeared to have gone berserk, the “Sunday Times” said.

He ran to the electrified fence, and in broken German challenged a guard to shoot him. The German documents describe how an SS officer, Konrad Harfich. shot Stalin’s son in the head, the “Sunday Times” said. It added that the British Government wanted the incident kept secret and obtained United States Government agreement. A British Foreign Office official wrote in 1945, “Our own inclination here is to recommend that the idea of communicating to Marshal Stalin should be dropped. . . It would naturally be distasteful to draw attention to the Anglo-Russian quarrels which preceded the death of his son.” Stalin's wife also committed suicide and his daughter, Svetlana, defected to.the West in the mid-60s.-