Free Republic

MOSCOW, November 28. /TASS/. Prominent Russian writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya has been named an officer of the French Legion of Honour, the country’s highest honor. Ulitskaya is expected to be awarded the medal, which traces its roots to Napoleon Bonaparte, at a formal ceremony to be attended by French Ambassador to Russia Jean-Maurice Ripert later on Friday. “France pays homage to the spirit of freedom, openness and tolerance, which interfuse all her writings,” said Madeleine Courant, a press counsellor of the French Embassy in Russia. Ulitskaya is the author of Kukotsky's Case novel, which was awarded Russian Booker Prize in 2001,...

A World War II fighter pilot who gained fame for dramatically flying beneath the Eiffel Tower's arches to take down a German aircraft has died aged 92. William Overstreet Jr. died on Sunday at a hospital in Roanoke, Virginia, according to his obituary, but there was no indication of the cause of his death. Overstreet's famously flew his P-51C 'Berlin Express' beneath the Eiffel Tower in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1944, which has been credited with lifting the spirits of French Resistance troops on the ground. For his valiant service, the French ambassador to the United States presented Overstreet with France's...

The government of France awarded the Legion of Honor on Tuesday to a Bay Area man who was shot down over occupied France during World War II and then joined up with a secret French underground to fight the Germans. William Kalan, 91, a retired advertising executive who lives in the Rossmoor retirement community in Walnut Creek, received France's highest decoration from Pierre-Francois Mourier, the French consul general in San Francisco, during a ceremony at Rossmoor. Mourier called Kalan "an exemplary human being." "You left your country, your family and friends to fight at the risk of your life," he...

PARIS (Reuters) - President Jacques Chirac made U.S. film director Steven Spielberg a knight in the French Legion of Honor on Sunday, hailing him as a great filmmaker committed to fighting hatred and intolerance. Chirac praised Spielberg's ability to touch people and said films such as "Schindler's List" ensured the world did not forget about acts of heroism in dark periods of history. "In this difficult time when intolerance, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and fanaticism are on the rise again, it is essential that cinema, which touches each one of us deep inside, recalls the horror of what is unutterable," Chirac...

A Carbondale native will receive France's highest honor for his part in the D-Day invasion that led to the country's liberation from the Nazis and marked the beginning of the end of World War II in Europe. On Sunday's 60th anniversary of the invasion, the French government will award the Legion of Honor to retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Alvin Ungerleider, 82, who led a platoon on Normandy's Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. "I yelled out, 'Step where I step!'" Gen. Ungerleider remembered in a Tuesday telephone interview from his home in Virginia. A lieutenant and platoon leader at...

HARRISBURG - With his draft number coming up and his anger rising over reports of Nazi Germany's human-rights abuses, Abe Plotkin says it was an easy decision to close his Scranton shoe store and enlist in the Army in 1942. "We knew they were mistreating the people," Plotkin recalled in a recent interview. "We didn't know how bad, but we knew they were mistreating them." Plotkin soon found out: After participating in some of the Army's biggest battles in France and Germany, he witnessed the aftermath of Nazi Germany's mass murders at the Ohrdruf labor camp. The experience motivated him:...