Wilhelm Heckmann (26 June 1897 – 10 March 1995) was a German concert and easy listening musician. From 1937 to 1945, he was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps in Dachau and Mauthausen. Heckmann founded the first prisoner band in Mauthausen, and was also instrumental in the founding of the large prisoner orchestra there.
Pierre Georges Daix (24 May 1922 – 2 November 2014) was a French journalist, writer and art historian. He was a friend and biographer of Pablo Picasso.As a young man, Daix was an ardent Stalinist. He joined the French Communist Party at the age of 17 in 1939 when the Communist Party was banned for supporting the German-Soviet pact. In July 1940, he created a student club, the Centre laïque des auberges de la jeunesse (Claj), which served as a legal screen for the clandestine Union of Communist Students.When David Rousset (1912-1997) spoke out about Stalin's vast system of prison camps, Daix attacked him as a liar, denying that the GULAG system existed in the Soviet Union, in a 16 page article in Les Lettres Françaises, entitled "Pourquoi M. David Rousset a-t-il inventé les camps soviétiques?". Rousset brought libel charges against Daix and there was a public trial in France, which Rousset, who had told the truth about the camps, won in 1950. As a French communist, Daix continued his uncritical support for the Soviet Union for many years, though late in life he admitted he had been wrong.From 1980 to 1985, he was a journalist for Le Quotidien de Paris.
Pierre Paul Jeanpierre (14 March 1912 – 29 May 1958) was a soldier in the French Army, a French Resistance fighter and senior officer of the French Foreign Legion.
He served in the French Army and fought during World War II, the First Indochina War, the Suez Crisis and the Algerian War, where he was killed in action. Apart from a short time spent in the French resistance and as a deportee during World War II, he served with the Foreign Legion from 1936 onwards. Jeanpierre commanded the 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion, expanded into the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1er REP) until his death during the Algerian War.