France says Russia can be represented but president will not be invited because of war in Ukraine
Russia will be invited to send representatives to an international ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-day – but not Vladimir Putin, the French organisers have announced.
The Élysée is reported to have accepted that the country should be represented but said its leader is not welcome because of Moscow’s ongoing war on Ukraine.
Continue reading...Lou Conter, who was a quartermaster on battleship that exploded and sank during bombing, died following congestive heart failure
The last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor has died. Lou Conter was 102.
Conter passed away on Monday at his home in Grass Valley, California, following congestive heart failure, his daughter, Louann Daley, said, adding she was beside him along with two of her brothers, James and Jeff.
Continue reading...Documentary on deportation of 48,000 Jewish Amsterdammers during Holocaust prompts city to act
On 8 August 1944, an Amsterdam tram took Anne Frank from Weteringschans prison, past the “secret annexe” where she had hidden from the Nazis, on the start of a journey to her death.
It was one of a series of Dutch night trams that deported 48,000 Jewish Amsterdammers during the Holocaust, trams commissioned by the Nazis and paid for with the Jewish wealth they stole.
Continue reading...Richard Bong downed 40 aircraft in a Lockheed P-38 Lightning before it crashed while being flown by another pilot
A Wisconsin museum is partnering with a historical preservation group in a search for the wreckage of the second world war ace fighter pilot Richard Bong’s plane in the South Pacific.
The Richard I Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior, Wisconsin, and the non-profit second world war historical preservation group Pacific Wrecks announced the search on Friday, Minnesota Public Radio reported.
Continue reading...Hundreds of Engelandvaarders took various routes from occupied Netherlands to Britain to fight in second world war
They travelled over land and water, braving the North Sea, trekking across the Pyrenees or fleeing north through Sweden to reach Britain and join the fight against the Nazis.
Now a project at the Dutch national archives, opening on Thursday, is for the first time publishing the stories of 2,150 “England voyagers”. These brave Dutch men and women escaped the occupied Netherlands during the second world war and found their way to London to volunteer.
Continue reading...Investigation of items that were stolen during the Okinawa battle began after family discovered them in late father’s belongings
The FBI has returned 22 centuries-old artifacts to Okinawa, Japan, after a family discovered them in their late father’s attic in Massachusetts.
Agents with the FBI’s Boston division on Friday announced that the return of the looted items followed a lengthy investigation that began when they received a call from a family who came across the items while sorting through their dead dad’s belongings.
Continue reading...Names of 77 ex-students of women-only Newnham College who worked at Bletchley Park are revealed for first time
They worked day and night during the second world war, deciphering Nazi messages, breaking Enigma codes and analysing top-secret military documents. But until now it was not known just how many of the intrepid female codebreakers who worked at Bletchley Park had studied at the same place, forming a hidden network of scholars who secretly changed the course of history.
The names of the 77 alumnae of Newnham College – a women-only college that is part of Cambridge University – who were recruited to intercept, decrypt and translate military messages during the war have been revealed for the first time in a college exhibit and roll of honour.
Continue reading...Monument has long been a source of tension between Canada’s Ukrainian diaspora and Jewish and Polish communities
A controversial memorial to Ukrainian soldiers who served in a Nazi unit during the second world war has been removed from a Canadian cemetery following years of protests by community groups who described the shrine as “painful” and offensive.
The cenotaph, which had stood in the privately owned St Volodymyr Ukrainian cemetery in Oakville, Ontario, was removed on Saturday.
Continue reading...Residents tell of concerns and community spirit after discovery and removal of 500kg second world war explosive
Usually as the weekend approaches, the streets, shops and pubs around Devonport, the largest naval dockyard in western Europe, hum with life.
But an eerie hush fell over the area on Friday after more than 10,000 people were evacuated from homes and workplaces so a second-world-war bomb dropped on Plymouth by the Luftwaffe could be extracted from a back garden.
Continue reading...Second world war bomb now in the water by Plymouth after its removal from a garden
The large Naval Dockyard at Devonport and the presence of the Air Force and Army in the city made it a prime target for Hitler’s Luftwaffe. The people of Plymouth experienced their first air raid alert at 12.45am on 30 June 1940.
Between July 1940 and April 1944, the people of Plymouth experienced 602 alerts and 59 bombing raids, resulting in the deaths of 1174 civilians. More than 4,000 properties were destroyed with a further 18,000 damaged.
Continue reading...President said he was against members of far-right RN attending ceremony for Missak Manouchian
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is set to defy requests to stay away from a national ceremony to honour a second world war resistance hero.
A spokesperson for Le Pen described President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion she should not attend the event on Wednesday as “outrageous”.
Continue reading...Images taken secretly some 80 years ago are being published for the first time to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day
A remarkable series of photographs of Jewish families being forced to leave their homes in Germany in the middle of the second world war has been published for the first time, following a chance discovery.
The images are a striking new testament to the sudden upheaval and terror of the Holocaust and were taken secretly by an amateur photographer. He is believed to have wanted to pass down the scenes he was witnessing, despite the risk to himself. They show groups of people gathering outside a restaurant near the railway station in the Silesian city of Breslau, now Wrocław in Poland. Jewish men, women and children of all ages were held here for a few days before deportation by train. Almost all are certain to have been killed just a few days later in a documented shooting in Lithuania. Others were killed at a later date in Poland.
Continue reading...A DNA test has helped Shalom Koray find relatives in the US after escaping the Holocaust in a rucksack at the age of two
In 1943, a two-year-old boy found wandering the streets of the Warsaw ghetto at the height of the Jewish uprising was smuggled out in a rucksack, probably by a police officer.
The identity of the child could not be known. There was no one to attest even to a first name. His early life would be spent hidden away in orphanages, still not safe from antisemitic persecution, and without any real understanding of what it was to have a parent.
Continue reading...Vincent Reynouard discovered living double life in Scottish village where he worked as a tutor, reports say
A Holocaust denier who was arrested in a Scottish fishing village will be extradited back to France after spending two years on the run from the authorities.
Vincent Reynouard lost his extradition battle after his arrest in November 2022. He had been discovered living a double life in Anstruther, Fife, where he worked as a private tutor, according to reports.
Continue reading...Burials can go ahead of men who never returned from bombing mission over Germany in 1943
Eighty years after they were shot down by the Germans over Dutch waters, British airmen Arthur Smart, Raymond Moore and Charles Sprack can be laid to rest after the Dutch defence ministry confirmed their remains had been identified.
Two silver-plated cigarette cases were found with the initials of the 27-year-old flight engineer Smart and 21-year-old wireless operator Moore.
Continue reading...Eighty-five years after the ‘brutal prelude’ to Nazi crimes, the emphasis falls on contemplating its influence on the present day
It has long been the most delicate day in the German calendar, 9 November. It brings a balancing act of remembrance for the state-sanctioned murderous devastation of the Nazi pogroms across the country in 1938, and, 51 years later, the overnight collapse of the most famous barrier in the world, the Berlin Wall.
Both had international repercussions which are still felt today. The former dominates the nation’s collective memory.
Continue reading...Allowing structure in Tustin, California, to collapse is only way to fight the fire, officials say
Fire raged Tuesday in a giant second world war-era wooden hangar that was built to house military blimps based in southern California.
The Orange county fire authority said in a social media post that allowing the structure to collapse was the only way to fight the fire.
Continue reading...Remembrance poppy created from renewable sources introduced as 2023 appeal launched
More than a century after its introduction, the Royal British Legion poppy has had a plastic-free makeover in its first major redesign in a generation.
With the launch of the 2023 poppy appeal on Thursday details of the symbol of remembrance are unveiled, revealing a paper poppy created from renewable sources including half from offcuts from the production of takeaway coffee cups.
Continue reading...Louis Feutren joined a nationalist group in occupied France and went on to teach at a prestigious Dublin school
There was never any mystery about the fact that Louis Feutren, a French teacher at St Conleth’s school in south Dublin, was a Nazi collaborator.
He had a taste for violent punishments and bizarre humiliations that terrorised pupils. He liked to reminisce about the second world war, when he had joined a Breton nationalist group that fought on the side of Germany. And he showed pictures of himself in uniform.
Continue reading...Archaeologists to survey waters off coast of northern France using latest technology to scour seabed
Churchill called the mass evacuation of allied forces from the beach and pier at Dunkirk a “miracle of deliverance”, but the operation to rescue more than 330,000 troops trapped by German forces in May 1940 came at a heavy cost.
Of the up to 1,000 vessels, from military warships to fishing boats, lifeboats and pleasure craft, that scrambled to help the stranded men, hundreds were sunk during the nine-day Operation Dynamo with the loss of many lives.
Continue reading...