News-Info-Alerts

Re: POW-MIA Documents Released to Russians

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: September 12, 2003

"United States Department of Defense
News Release

  No. 677-03
IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 12, 2003

POW/MIA Documents Released to Russians

Jerry D. Jennings, deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/missing personnel affairs, yesterday passed to the granddaughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin important documents clarifying the fate of her father, Senior Lieutenant Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili, eldest son of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
 
The documents were taken from German SS archives that were seized by the U.S. Army toward the end of World War II.  Copies of these files are held at the U.S. National Archives where U.S. researchers found them.
 
Jennings, who exercises policy control and oversight of the effort of the U.S. government to account for Americans missing in action from all conflicts, also sits as a commissioner on the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs.  The commission seeks to clarify the fates of American and Russian service members from conflicts since World War II.  It was through this commission that Jennings passed documents to Stalin’s granddaughter, Galina Yakovlevna Dzhugashvili, describing the capture and killing of her father in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in April 1943.
 
Jennings also passed to the Russians documents clarifying the fates of 202 Soviet servicemen from the Korean War.  American researchers working in Russian and American archives had located this information over the past few months.
 
Today, he visited the Central Archives of the Russian Defense Ministry at Podolsk, outside Moscow.  American researchers work in these archives researching Soviet combat reports from the Korean War detailing shootdowns of American combat aircraft.  These reports lead analysts to conclusions about the fate of missing American pilots and aircrew members.  Jennings also reached agreement with the Russians today on a program of closer cooperation in archival research."