Timeline May 1944

Events in May 1944 11

• 1849 – 1944 Bertha Benz The investor who was not allowed to be one Bertha Ringer put her dowry into Carl Benz's failing workshop in 1870, while still unmarried and therefore still legally able to invest. On marrying him in 1872 she lost that standing under the law of Baden, and continued funding him anyway. She wound ignition coils, argued down the doubters, and in August 1888 took the Patent-Motorwagen and her two sons on an unauthorised hundred-kilometre drive that invented the brake lining, exposed the need for a lower gear, and turned an unsellable curiosity into a product. She was ninety-five when she died, and still driving into old age.
• 1858 – 1944 Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) Died 8 May 1944, aged 86 English composer and suffragette whose works include the opera The Wreckers. Her March of the Women became the anthem of the suffrage movement. She was the first female composer to be made a dame.
• 1896 – 1944 Milena Jesenská (1896-1944) Died 17 May 1944, aged 47 Czech journalist and translator, known as the recipient of Franz Kafka's Letters to Milena. She was active in the resistance after the German occupation. She died in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
• 1944 Battle of Monte Cassino Four assaults break the Gustav Line Allied forces made four major assaults on the German defensive position anchored on Monte Cassino. The Allied bombing of the historic abbey in February remains controversial. Polish troops finally raised their flag over the ruins on 18 May.
• 1944 No Exit Premieres Hell is other people Sartre's best-known play, Huis Clos (No Exit), premiered in Paris in May 1944, presenting three deceased characters trapped together for eternity in a single room. The play's closing line, "L'enfer, c'est les autres" ("Hell is other people"), became one of the most quoted phrases in modern philosophy and literature. It remains among the most frequently performed works of twentieth-century French theater.
• 1944 Honorary senator, on her 95th birthday Karlsruhe, at last The Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe — where her husband had studied and where she had not been permitted to — makes Bertha Benz an honorary senator on 3 May 1944, her ninety-fifth birthday. It is the only formal recognition she receives in her lifetime.
• 1944 Bertha Benz dies at Ladenburg Two days later Bertha Benz dies at home in Ladenburg on 5 May 1944, two days after the honour and her birthday, at ninety-five. She had gone on driving well into old age.
• 1944 Deportation of Hungarian Jews Over 430,000 sent to Auschwitz in eight weeks After Germany occupied Hungary, the Hungarian gendarmerie and Adolf Eichmann's unit organised the deportation of Jews from the provinces. Most of those deported were murdered on arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Regent Horthy halted the deportations in early July under international pressure.
• 1944 Deportation of the Crimean Tatars Soviet exile of an entire people The NKVD deported the whole Crimean Tatar population of around 190,000 people to Uzbekistan and other regions within three days. A large share died from disease and starvation in the first years of exile. Crimean Tatars call the event Sürgünlik.
• 1944 – 2001 W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) Died 14 December 2001, aged 57 Sebald was a German writer, long resident in England, whose genre-blurring books such as The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz mixed travelogue, memoir and history around themes of memory and the Holocaust. He was often named as a future Nobel contender. He died in a car crash in Norfolk.
• 1944 – 2014 Joe Cocker (1944-2014) Died 22 December 2014, aged 70 Joe Cocker, the English singer known for his raspy voice and cover of "With a Little Help from My Friends" at Woodstock, died in Colorado. He had a string of hits over a five-decade career, including the Grammy-winning duet "Up Where We Belong." His performing style was widely imitated and celebrated.