Background: Erich Mielke was born in a tenement in Berlin-Wedding, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire, on 28 December 1907. During the First World War, the neighborhood was known as "Red Wedding" due to many residents' Marxist militancy. In a handwritten biography written for the Soviet secret police, Mielke described his father as "a poor, uneducated woodworker," and said that his mother died in 1911. Both were, he said, members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
Context: In February 1992, Mielke was put on trial for the first degree murders of Captains Anlauf and Lenck as well as the attempted murder of Senior Sergeant Willig. The evidence for Mielke's guilt was drawn from the original police files, the 1934 trial transcripts, and a handwritten memoir in which Mielke had admitted that, "the Bulowplatz Affair," had been his reason for fleeing Germany. All had been found in Mielke's house safe during a police search in 1990. Mielke was believed to have kept the files for purposes of "blackmailing Honecker and other East German leaders." Former Associated Press reporter and White House Press Secretary John Koehler also testified about how Mielke had boasted of his involvement in the Bulowplatz murders during a confrontation at Leipzig in 1965.  During his trial, Mielke appeared increasingly senile, admitting his identity but otherwise remaining silent, taking naps, and showing little interest in the proceedings. In a widely publicized incident, Mielke appeared to mistake the presiding judge for a prison barber. When a journalist for Der Spiegel attempted to interview him in Plotzensee Prison, Mielke responded, "I want to go back to my bed" (German: "Ich mochte in mein Bett zuruck."). Opinion was divided whether Mielke was suffering from senile dementia or was pretending in order to evade prosecution.  After twenty months of one-and-a-half hour daily sessions, Erich Mielke was convicted on two counts of murder and one of attempted murder. On 26 October 1993, a panel of three judges and two jurors sentenced him to six years' imprisonment. In pronouncing sentence, Judge Theodor Seidel, told Mielke that he "will go down in history as one of the most fearsome dictators and police ministers of the 20th century."
Question: Did he know the murder victims?
Answer: 

Background: Cronin was born in Excelsior District of San Francisco, California. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake had cost his Irish Catholic parents almost all of their possessions. Cronin attended Sacred Heart High School. He played several sports as a child and he won a city tennis championship for his age group when he was 14.
Context: Cronin was named player-manager of the Senators in 1933, a post he would hold for two years. In 1935, he was traded to the Boston Red Sox by Griffith, also as player-manager. Cronin retired as a player in 1945, but remained manager of the Red Sox until 1947.  As early as 1938, it was apparent that Cronin was nearing the end of his playing career. Red Sox farm director Billy Evans thought he had found Cronin's successor in Pee Wee Reese, the star shortstop for the Louisville Colonels of the Triple-A American Association. He was so impressed by Reese that he was able to talk Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey into buying the Colonels and making them the Red Sox' top farm club. However, when Cronin went to scout Reese, Cronin realized that they were asking him to scout his replacement. He deliberately downplayed Reese's talent and suggested that the Red Sox trade him. Reese was eventually traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers, where he went on to a Hall of Fame career. As it turned out, Evans' and Yawkey's initial concerns about Cronin were valid. His last year as a full-time player was 1941; after that year he never played more than 76 games in a season.  Over his career, Cronin batted .300 or higher eight times, as well as driving in 100 runs or more eight times. He finished with a .301 average, 170 home runs, and 1,424 RBIs.  As a manager, he compiled a 1,236-1,055 record and won two American League pennants (in 1933 and 1946). His 1933 Senators dropped the 1933 World Series to the New York Giants, and his 1946 Boston Red Sox lost the 1946 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals.
Question: What is a player-manager?
Answer: 

Background: James Whale (22 July 1889 - 29 May 1957) was an English film director, theater director and actor. He is best remembered for his four classic horror films: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Whale also directed films in other genres, including what is considered the definitive film version of the musical Show Boat (1936). He became increasingly disenchanted with his association with horror, but many of his non-horror films have fallen into obscurity.
Context: After the armistice he returned to Birmingham and tried to find work as a cartoonist. He sold two cartoons to the Bystander in 1919 but was unable to secure a permanent position. Later that year he embarked on a professional stage career. Under the tutelage of actor-manager Nigel Playfair, he worked as an actor, set designer and builder, "stage director" (akin to a stage manager) and director. In 1922, while with Playfair, he met Doris Zinkeisen. They were considered a couple for some two years, despite Whale's living as an openly gay man. They were reportedly engaged in 1924, but by 1925 the engagement was off.  In 1928 Whale was offered the opportunity to direct two private performances of R.C. Sherriff's then-unknown play Journey's End for the Incorporated Stage Society, a theatre society that mounted private Sunday performances of plays. Set over a four-day period in March 1918 in the trenches at Saint-Quentin, France, Journey's End gives a glimpse into the experiences of the officers of a British infantry company in World War I. The key conflict is between Capt. Stanhope, the company commander, and Lt. Raleigh, the brother of Stanhope's fiancee. Whale offered the part of Stanhope to the then barely known Laurence Olivier. Olivier initially declined the role, but after meeting the playwright agreed to take it on. Maurice Evans was cast as Raleigh. The play was well received and transferred to the Savoy Theatre in London's West End, opening on 21 January 1929. A young Colin Clive was now in the lead role, Olivier having accepted an offer to take the lead in a production of Beau Geste. The play was a tremendous success, with critics uniform and effusive in their praise and with audiences sometimes sitting in stunned silence following its conclusion only to burst into thunderous ovations. As Whale biographer James Curtis wrote, the play "managed to coalesce, at the right time and in the right manner, the impressions of a whole generation of men who were in the war and who had found it impossible, through words or deeds, to adequately express to their friends and families what the trenches had been like". After three weeks at the Savoy, Journey's End transferred to the Prince of Wales Theatre, where it ran for the next two years.  With the success of Journey's End at home, Broadway producer Gilbert Miller acquired the rights to mount a New York production with an all-British cast headed by Colin Keith-Johnston as Stanhope and Derek Williams as Raleigh. Whale also directed this version, which premiered at Henry Miller's Theatre on 22 March 1929. The play ran for over a year and cemented its reputation as the greatest play about World War I.
Question: did james work in theatre
Answer:
he worked as an actor, set designer and builder, "stage director" (akin to a stage manager) and director.