Poland's last Communist leader, general
Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Communist leader and army general who imposed martial law in Poland to suppress the Solidarity movement in 1981 before ceding power eight years later as his regime collapsed, has died. He was 90.
He died at 3:24 p.m. Sunday at the Military Institute of Medicine in Warsaw, according to a statement from Col. Grzegorz Kade, a spokesman for the hospital, which he confirmed by text message. Jaruzelski had a stroke May 10 while being treated for lymphoma.
Poland's anti-Communist protests, led by Lech Walesa and supported by Polish-born Pope John Paul II, made Solidarity a household name worldwide. Jaruzelski argued that his decision to order troops to sever telephone lines and seal the country on the night of Dec. 13, 1981, was to protect Poland from a Soviet invasion.
Jaruzelski was born into a gentry family July 6, 1923, in the town of Kurow, Lublin province, in eastern Poland. He attended an exclusive Catholic boarding school and was brought up with the conservative, nationalist beliefs espoused by the National Democratic party, Jaruzelski recalled in his memoirs.
In the first years of World War II, his family was deported to the east of the Soviet Union, where Jaruzelski's father died. The teenage boy, with a sick mother and younger sister to support, became snowblind while working as a lumberjack in Siberia. The lifelong affliction forced Jaruzelski to wear the dark glasses that became his trademark.
He is survived by his wife, Barbara; daughter, Monika; and a grandson, Gustaw.
1940s model turned pin-up photographer
The Associated Press
MIAMI BEACH, Fla -- Bunny Yeager, a model turned pin-up photographer who helped jump-start the career of then-unknown Bettie Page, died Sunday, her agent said. She was 85 years old.
Yeager died at a North Miami hospice where she had been for about a week, her agent, Ed Christin said.
Yeager's legacy is her cultural impact, from pin-up photography and fashion, helping to popularize the bikini, and influencing other artists such as Cindy Sherman, who read Yeager's guides on photographing nudes and making self-portraits, Christin said.
"They all wanted to model for me because they knew that I wouldn't take advantage of them," Yeager said in a 2013 interview. "And I wouldn't push them to do nude if they didn't want to do nudes. It wasn't a day when nude photography was prevalent."
Linnea Eleanor Yeager was born in Wilkinsburg, Pa., on March 13, 1929, and in the 1940s became one of the most photographed models in Miami during her early career. She later turned the to work camera herself, posing for self-portraits in bathing suits she handmade for her 5-foot-9 frame. Her self-portraits were turned into a book, How I Photograph Myself, in 1964.
She began taking photos of Page in 1954 as she began her career behind the camera.
Yeager said she had few requests when several magazines began to struggle or went out of business over the past decade, but her career returned to the spotlight in 2010 when the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh held an exhibition of her work. There was also an exhibition in Miami in 2013.
"And I still get that little tingle when I see the photos on the wall," she said in 2013.
A Section on 05/26/2014