Yakov Smushkevich

Yakov Vladimirovich Smushkevich was the Commander of the Soviet Air Forces from 1939 to 1940 and the first Jewish Hero of the Soviet Union. Arrested shortly before the start of Operation Barbarossa on falsified charges of being part of an anti-Soviet conspiracy, he became the only person to receive the Hero of the Soviet Union twice and then be executed. The charges were posthumously dropped and he was rehabilitated in 1954.