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1937 June 11, GENERAL YONA YAKIR ( Russia)
Along with eight other high ranking officials and officers (five of them Jewish) were killed by Stalin. Yakir, holder of two Orders of the Red Banner and one of the founders of the Red Army, had just been appointed commander of the Leningrad military region less then three weeks earlier. This marked the beginning of the Great Purge in which 30,000 officers and political commissars were murdered, an act that would almost cost Stalin WWII. It is estimated that at least 1,500 of them were Jewish.
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