Across the country men and women have cared for the resting places of their enemy’s fallen, finding peace and hope
For some, tending the graves was an act of reconciliation. For others, it was about acknowledging shared losses and shared grief.
Thousands of Germans who died in Britain during the first and second world wars were laid to rest in local graveyards. British people tended these graves for decades, even laying flowers and wreaths for their former foes.
Continue reading...The pilot, whose squadron shot down 90 enemy aircraft in an 11-day period in 1940, called himself the ‘lucky Irishman’
The last surviving Battle of Britain pilot, John “Paddy” Hemingway, has died aged 105.
The Royal Air Force (RAF) said Hemingway, a member of “the Few” who took to the skies during the second world war, died peacefully on Monday.
Continue reading...Jean-Michel Aphatie stands by comments he made on broadcaster RTL
A prominent French journalist has said he is stepping down from his role as an expert analyst for broadcaster RTL after provoking an uproar by comparing French actions during colonial rule in Algeria to a second world war massacre committed by Nazi forces in France.
Jean-Michel Aphatie, a veteran reporter and broadcaster, insisted that while he would not be returning to RTL, he wholly stood by his comments made on the radio station in February equating atrocities committed by France in Algeria with those of Nazi Germany in occupied France.
Continue reading...Four days of events planned in Britain to commemorate eight decades since end of second world war in Europe
For the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day the Cenotaph will be draped in union flags and there will be a military procession and flypast as well as a new installation of about 30,000 ceramic poppies at the Tower of London, it has been announced.
Four days of commemorations will begin on the bank holiday Monday of 5 May in tribute to the millions of people across the UK and Commonwealth who served in the second world war.
Continue reading...Born in 1912 in Poland, Girone was one of about 245,000 survivors living across more than 90 countries
Rose Girone, believed to be the oldest living Holocaust survivor and a strong advocate for sharing survivors’ stories, has died. She was 113.
She died on Monday in New York, according to the Claims Conference, a New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Continue reading...Crooked Cross, Sally Carson’s ‘electrifying masterpiece’ from 1934, to be republished
Sally Carson was not an oracle or a prophet, just a young woman from Dorset, born in 1901. Yet she foresaw a dark and violent future for Europe and gave voice to those fears in a 1934 novel that is now being hailed as “an electrifying masterpiece”.
Carson’s book, Crooked Cross, predicted the scale of the Nazi threat and is to be republished for the first time this spring, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war. Controversial in its day, her novel had to walk a careful path to avoid the accusation that it was alarmist about the Fuhrer’s aims. A stage adaptation of her story was even censored, shorn of all its “Heil Hitlers”.
Continue reading...Lack of knowledge about Holocaust identified as well as level of denial and disinformation seen on social media
A third of young adults in the UK are unable to name Auschwitz or any of the other concentration camps and ghettoes where the crimes of the Holocaust were committed, according to a study.
Other growing gaps in knowledge – especially among those aged 18-29 – were also identified, as part of a major international survey in countries including the US and UK.
Continue reading...First full-scale replica of Frank’s attic annexe goes on show next week on International Holocaust Remembrance Day
The first-ever full-scale replica of Anne Frank’s attic annex goes on show in New York next week, part of an ongoing effort to maintain awareness of – and combat – antisemitism in the midst of conflict in the Middle East and political tensions in the US.
Eighty years on from Frank’s death, aged 15, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, the exhibition at the Center for Jewish History in downtown Manhattan aims to introduce new audiences to one of the most famous victims of Adolf Hitler’s “final solution”.
Continue reading...Diaries, believed to be genuine, chronicle 139 pre-war meetings between antisemitic aristocrat and Nazi leader
The diaries of an antisemitic British socialite who was obsessed with Adolf Hitler and struck up a personal relationship with the Nazi leader have been discovered, according to the Daily Mail.
The leather-bound journals, which had been lost to historians and unseen for eight decades, appear to reveal the extent of Unity Mitford’s relationship with the dictator.
Continue reading...Some descendants are apprehensive but a historian says making 30m pages of records public is ‘important step’
For 80 years, details of their ancestors’ collaboration with the Nazis have been buried in spotless rows of filing cabinets in The Hague. But thousands of Dutch families face having their relatives’ history laid bare later this week when an archive opens on 425,000 people accused of siding with the occupier during the second world war.
On Thursday, the central archives of the special jurisdiction courts (CABR), established after the allies liberated the Netherlands to bring collaborators to justice, will open under national archive rules.
Continue reading...Gregor Formanek is charged with aiding and abetting 3,322 murders at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
German authorities are pressing for a 100-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard to face trial almost 80 years after the end of the second world war.
The higher regional court in Frankfurt said on Tuesday it had overturned a decision by a lower court under which the suspect had been deemed unfit to stand trial.
Continue reading...Michael Visontay discovered that a ‘crime against history’ in the book world set off a chain of events that led to his family’s delicatessen in 1950s Sydney
It was a brazen act of extreme literary vandalism that desecrated one of the world’s most valuable books. But it also allowed a family of Holocaust survivors to forge a new life in Australia.
The extraordinary tale was uncovered by the author and journalist Michael Visontay while researching his family history during Covid lockdown and has now been published as a book, Noble Fragments.
Continue reading...App planned for public to find emergency shelter in places including underground train stations and car parks
Germany is drawing up a list of bunkers that could provide emergency shelter for civilians, the interior ministry has said, at a time of rising tensions with Russia.
The list would include underground train stations and car parks as well as state buildings and private properties, a ministry spokesperson said.
Continue reading...Lot includes ‘very unusual’ correspondence between celebrated general and American singer Josephine Baker
A stash of never-before-seen correspondence and artefacts belonging to the former French president Charles de Gaulle, including coded letters he wrote to his mother while he was a German prisoner in the first world war and messages from the American singer Josephine Baker, is to go on sale after its unexpected discovery earlier this year.
The correspondence is part of a “treasure trove” of documents and personal belongings belonging to de Gaulle, found in a safe in a bank vault, that will be auctioned in Paris next month.
Continue reading...Kremlin critics fear move is part of Russia’s efforts to whitewash Soviet past and shut independent cultural institutions
Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum announced its surprise closure on Thursday, a move critics attribute to the Kremlin’s efforts to whitewash Russia’s Soviet past.
The closure was officially put down to alleged violations of fire safety regulations but comes amid an intense campaign by Russian officials against independent civil society and those who question the state’s interpretation of history.
Continue reading...British and French leaders will discuss Ukraine and defence amid fears for future of Nato after Trump’s re-election
Keir Starmer will join Emmanual Macron in Paris for the French Armistice Day service in a pointed show of European solidarity days after Donald Trump’s re-election, with Ukraine and defence on the agenda for private talks between the two leaders.
The visit will have a symbolic element with Starmer becoming the first UK leader to attend France’s national commemoration event since Winston Churchill in 1944.
Continue reading...Conscientious objectors refused to take part in military campaign against Indonesian independence in 1940s
Families of 20 men who were jailed for refusing to fight to preserve the former Dutch colony in Indonesia have formally asked for their names to be cleared, arguing that instead of “deserters, traitors and cowards” their relatives deserve to be recognised as having been on the right side of history.
An official investigation into the period when Dutch colonies asserted their independence after the second world war found a failed military campaign in Indonesia had systematically used “excessive violence” and massacred hundreds of innocent villagers, whose families eventually won compensation.
Continue reading...1,000kg US ordnance to be defused at building site after complex evacuation that also included thousands of homes
Authorities in the German city of Cologne have evacuated three hospitals and thousands of homes after the discovery of an unexploded second world war bomb during construction work on a new medical campus.
The 1,000kg US aerial bomb, equipped with a front and rear impact detonator, is due to be defused on Friday.
Continue reading...Unexpected blast at Miyazaki airport makes crater in taxiway and leads to grounding of 80 flights but no injuries
A US bomb from the second world war that had been buried at a Japanese airport has exploded, causing a large crater in a taxiway and the cancellation of more than 80 flights but no injuries, Japanese officials said.
Land and transport ministry officials said there were no aircraft nearby when the bomb exploded at Miyazaki airport in south-western Japan on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Work of German-Jewish sculptor Fred Kormis, who fled Nazis in 1930s, is subject of exhibition in London
The work of an overlooked German-Jewish artist who created the UK’s first memorial to victims of Nazi persecution is to be the focus of an exhibition that shines light on the unreported aspects of his life.
Fred Kormis, who fled Germany in the 1930s and later became a British citizen, was described by the Wiener Holocaust Library in London as a forgotten émigré artist who played a unique role in Weimar culture and 20th-century British art.
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