Mehdi Huseynzade

Mehdi Huseynzade was born in 1918 in the village of Novkhani near Baku. Wounded and captured in the war, he escaped from a camp and joined Yugoslav and Italian partisans.

Under the name "Mikhailo" he carried out daring sabotage in and around Trieste, blowing up a cinema, a soldiers' hostel, bridges and railway targets; the German command put a large price on his head.

He died heroically when surrounded in November 1944. He was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1957, and his life was portrayed in the film On Distant Shores.