Benito Mussolini Mussolini was rescued from captivity in the Gran Sasso raid by German paratroopers and "Waffen-SS" commandos led by Major Otto-Harald Mors. Adolf Hitler, after meeting with the rescued former dictator, then put Mussolini in charge of a puppet regime in northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic (, RSI), informally known as the "Salò Republic". In late April 1945, in the wake of near total defeat, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee to Switzerland, but both were captured by Italian communist partisans and summarily executed by firing squad on 28 April 1945 near Lake Como. His body was
A Protégée of the Mistress A Protégée of the Mistress A Protégée of the Mistress ("Vospitannitsa", Воспитанница; also, "The Ward Girl") is a play by Alexander Ostrovsky, first published in the No.1, January 1859 issue of "Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya". Refused the permission to be produced at the Imperial Theatres in October 1859, it premiered in Maly Theatre, Moscow, only on October 21, 1863. Ostrovsky conceived "A Protégée of the Mistress" in 1855 as a two-act play. On July 12 of that year he prepared a rough draft of the Act 1 and compiled a list of characters, some of which (retired official Zakhar Zveroboyev, merchant