Junior Sergeant Lydia Spivak (Лидия Спивак), Red Army Traffic Regulator, June 1945. She became locally famous in this role and was tagged the Brandenburg Ballerina or The Mistress of Brandenburg Gate. She would have been 19 or 20 years old at the time and had been in the Red Army since she was 17. She was a Ukrainian, and served in a transportation unit. Like most Red Army soldiers, not that much is known about her in the West and indeed she's often confused with another female Soviet soldier who served in the same role. Having said that, this role did make her into a type of celebrity and she did resurface from time to time, including once in the 1950s when she toured the area in which this video was shot.* She passed away at age 59. This is a truncated interview, and there is more to it. It was impromptu, which is impressive.
US forces took Tuguegarao and Gattaran on Luzon.
Australian forces completed the occupation of the Miro oilfield on Borneo.
The Simla Conference to discuss the future Indian government of India began in Simla, India.
Seán T. O'Kelly became 2nd President of Ireland and Einar Gerhardsen became Prime Minister of Norway.
Footnotes:
*Ms. Spivak by that time was aging rapidly. By the 50s she'd gained a lot of weight and by the time of her sad early death she had aged rapidly by western standards and looked much older than her 59 years. She was undeniably cute and lively in 1945, and in later photographs the liveliness seems undiminished in spite of her aging. She achieved her original goal of becoming a teacher, and in fact became a university professor and married another professor
Spivak is often confused with Maria Limanskaya (Мария Лиманскаяwho) served in the same role in Berlin. She was a Russian and lived to age 100, dying last year, although oddly enough in some ways had a harder post war life, marrying than divorcing her first husband, and raising two children for a time on her own.
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