John and Phyllis Le Breton receive Uzbekistan's posthumous Order of Friendship
Updated
Updated · BBC.com · May 5
John and Phyllis Le Breton receive Uzbekistan's posthumous Order of Friendship
7 articles · Updated · BBC.com · May 5
The honour will be presented in Jersey on Wednesday to their daughter Dulcie, after BBC teams identified the rescued prisoner as Bokejon Akramov from Namangan, Uzbekistan.
The Le Bretons hid Akramov for more than two years after his 1943 escape from a Nazi forced-labour camp on Jersey, risking punishment under German occupation.
Akramov returned to the USSR after liberation, lost contact with the family and died in 1996; his descendants have now reconnected with the Le Bretons after more than 80 years.
Why was a Soviet hero, saved from Nazis by a British family, met with suspicion upon returning to the USSR?
How did a secret diary, hidden for 80 years, finally connect two families separated by war and the Iron Curtain?