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War II ended in Europe on May 8, 1945—the surrender was signed on the 8th, but it was aer midnight in Russia, so V-Day is recognized on the 9th—Iosif and his comrades breathed a sigh of relief for surviving an ordeal that killed 23,100,000 people in the Soviet Union, more than 13 percent of the population. Iosif was ready to go home and celebrate the end of the war with his family. In 1945, when Iosif 's unit departed Yugoslavia, they le all their Russian airplanes for Yugoslavia's air force. They arrived in Armenia aer the celebration break, therefore, without planes and were provided with American King Cobra aircras, built especially for the Russian Air Force during the allied relationship. Iosif remained stationed in Armenia working, ironically, on these American aircra for the next four years, at which point he decided to go to military college to become an officer and extend his military career. When Iosif asked for his father's blessing, Shlomo found it difficult to give. It was not hard to understand why Shlomo would be saddened that his Compass In the spring of 1945, guard Red Banner air fighter regimen #117, where Iosif served as a senior flight mechanic/engineer, was based in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia. The Germans, trying to deflect the Soviet Army, started a counteroffensive in the area of Balaton Lake in Hungary. The Russian pilots made six or seven flights per day to fight the Germans om the air. The base commanders feared the Germans would overtake the airport, so they began to prepare the mechanics to evacuate. To each man they handed a compass, three days worth of food, and a German map (which were preferred by the Soviet pilots). Luckily, the Germans were stopped before the soldiers had to run. Jewish son would align himself with an anti- Semitic military organization supporting an anti-Semitic, oppressive government. "He was very upset," Iosif recalls. "'Iosif, don't do it,' my father begged me. But I said, 'Father, I'm 24 years old. I don't know when I will be discharged. Isn't it better to try to improve my situation? Father, you always said education is important. Here is an opportunity for me to get more education.'" Shlomo eventually gave his son his blessing. Not that those blessings made the process any easier. Iosif 's application to attend the Baumann Engineering Institute in Moscow was lost, misplaced, or perhaps even discarded because he was a Jew. Iosif was determined to further his education; he was always very ambitious. "When I finally got accepted and decided to go, my father was very upset, but when I graduated om the Military Air Force College in Kiev in 1949 and later went on to the Military Air Force Engineering Academy in Moscow and was commissioned an officer/ engineer in the Soviet Air Force, he was very proud and happy." During the application process for the academy, the Communist Party required Iosif to provide incredible amounts of information not just about himself, but about his family as well. The Soviet Air Force required all this information to determine if Iosif was fit to become an officer. The military was more concerned about a candidate's political background (and that of his family) than his or her competence. To that end, the authorities conducted endless investigations in an attempt to uncover any political disloyalty among the candidate's family members. So Iosif went to considerable difficulty to reconstruct the names and dates of the Brandes family. Of course, he didn't tell the deeply anti-Semitic military that his mother was om a distinguished family of rabbis. Such a revelation would not have helped his candidacy for officer. Family Is All That Matters 44

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