January 31, 1945

1945Rynn Berry, American historian and author (died 2014)^[†]

Rynn Berry was an American author and scholar on vegetarianism and veganism, as well as a pioneer in the animal rights and vegan movements.

1945Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond, English lawyer, judge, and academic^[†]

Brenda Marjorie Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond,, is a British judge who served as President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom from 2017 until her retirement in 2020.

1945US Army private Eddie Slovik is executed for desertion, the first such execution of an American soldier since the Civil War.^[†]

Edward Donald Slovik was an American soldier who was court-martialed and executed for desertion during World War II. He was the first and only US serviceman to have met such a fate since the American Civil War, though in 1902, during the American-Philippine War, two American soldiers of the 9th Cavalry Regiment were executed for "desertion to the enemy". Although over 21,000 American servicemen were given varying sentences for desertion during World War II, including 49 death sentences, Slovik's death sentence was the only one that was carried out. The case was brought to public attention by the 1954 book The Execution of Private Slovik by William Bradford Huie, later made into a NBC 1974 television movie.

1945World War II: About 3,000 inmates from the Stutthof concentration camp are forcibly marched into the Baltic Sea at Palmnicken (now Yantarny, Russia) and executed.^[†]

Stutthof was a Nazi concentration camp established by Nazi Germany in a secluded, marshy, and wooded area near the village of Stutthof 34 km (21 mi) east of the city of Danzig (Gdańsk) in the territory of the German-annexed Free City of Danzig. The camp was set up around existing structures after the invasion of Poland in World War II and initially used for the imprisonment of Polish leaders and intelligentsia. The actual barracks were built the following year by prisoners. Most of the infrastructure of the concentration camp was either destroyed or dismantled shortly after the war. In 1962, the former concentration camp with its remaining structures was turned into a memorial museum.