British soldier Bill Norways was captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore and forced to work on the infamous Thai-Burma railway. During his time as a PoW he created sketches and artworks under appalling conditions
• Families of British prisoner and Japanese guard united by poem 70 years on
Continue reading...Writing to her missing son was an act of longing and hope, but the years of silence took their toll on my great-great grandmother
Seventy-five years ago on 15 August 1945 Japan surrendered, bringing the second world war to an end. My great-aunt Faye, who was 23 at the time and living in Melbourne, described how the day unfolded in an exercise book she used as a diary:
“Soon after I started work the announcement of the end of the war was made so we were given the rest of the day off and tomorrow as well. This is the moment we waited almost six years for and we thank God and our wonderful allied combined forces for its successful conclusion and hope for a permanent and happy peace.
Continue reading...‘It’s the same every year. He talks gibberish and leaves,’ says one survivor after plagiarism app detects 93% match in speeches given days apart
Survivors of the atomic bombings of 75 years ago have accused Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, of making light of their concerns after he delivered two near-identical speeches to mark the anniversaries of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A plagiarism detection app found that Abe’s speech in Nagasaki on Sunday duplicated 93% of a speech he had given in Hiroshima three days earlier, the Mainichi Shimbun reported.
Continue reading...War Office feared war movie would ‘not go down well with British public’
The adventure war film The Bridge on the River Kwai may have swept the board of awards and attracted acclaim as one best films of the 20th century, but the War Office was very nervous “it would not go down well with the British public”, documents reveal.
Letters between the Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel and the UK War Office, from whom he was seeking permission for RAF cooperation in making the 1957 film, show tensions over how its plot depicted the conduct of British officers.
Continue reading...City remembers world’s first atomic bombing with downsized ceremonies due to coronavirus and mayor urging nations to reject nationalism and unite to fight all threats
Continue reading...Diaries and manuscripts turn spotlight on little-known acts of endurance and bravery
From quiet acts of bravery, to overt acts of rebellion, Jewish resistance to the Holocaust took many forms, yet research shows they remain largely unacknowledged in traditional UK teachings about the genocide.
A new exhibition, drawing on thousands of previously unseen documents and manuscripts, is placing some of the little-known personal stories of heroism, active armed resistance, and rescue networks in the extermination camps and ghettos at the forefront.
Continue reading...Salo Muller secured €50m from Dutch railway for transporting people to Nazi camps
A Holocaust survivor who successfully campaigned for the Dutch railway to pay compensation for transporting people to the Nazi concentration camps has tabled a legal claim against the German state over the wartime role of the Deutsche Reichsbahn.
Salo Muller, 84, whose parents were taken by rail from Amsterdam to the Dutch transit camp Westerbork, and on to their deaths at Auschwitz, is demanding an apology and financial recompense for about 500 Dutch survivors and about 5,500 next of kin.
Continue reading...Pleased at the verdict, insulted by the penalty: Manfred Goldberg tells of his reaction to last week’s conviction of Bruno Dey for his role in 5,000 deaths at Stutthof
They were both German teenagers when they arrived at Stutthof concentration camp within a few weeks of each other in 1944. One was a 17-year-old recruit to the SS, the other a 14-year-old Jewish boy who had already spent three years incarcerated by the Nazis.
Manfred Goldberg, now 90, doesn’t know if Bruno Dey, now 93, was one of the guards that watched his every move from a tower, ready to shoot at any sign of transgression. But he is convinced of Dey’s part in the deaths of thousands of inmates. The SS guards committed “crimes beyond description”, he told the Observer. “Atrocities of that magnitude cannot be forgotten.”
Continue reading...Russia is holding its postponed Victory Day military parade despite rising coronavirus infections. The parade celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany and has grown since Vladimir Putin came to power
Continue reading...French president holds talks with PM on UK visit to mark second world war anniversary
Boris Johnson has told Emmanuel Macron that he sees little point prolonging UK-EU talks on a future trading relationship into the autumn.
The French president was in London on Thursday for a largely ceremonial visit. No 10 said Johnson had welcomed a recent agreement to intensify talks on the issue in July. However, comments dismissing the idea of “prolonged negotiations” suggest that Johnson is increasingly prepared to end the talks without an agreement and thinks both sides would need time to prepare for this rather than make last-minute adjustments in December when the existing transition period expires.
Continue reading...Normandy locals mourn the absence of the Allied soldiers forced to stay at home for the first time in 76 years
In Ranville cemetery, a lone piper playing Amazing Grace walked solemnly between the graves as the early morning sun reflected off the rows of white headstones.
Every 6 June for the last 75 years, the soldiers who made it off the Normandy beaches in 1944 have returned to remember comrades who did not. Every year, the pilgrimage became a different kind of battle but still they came, in fewer numbers but just as determined to overcome the odds as they were when they landed to liberate France.
Continue reading...Jaston Khosa was one of 600,000 men from African countries who fought for Britain. He was quietly buried on VE Day after a life of abject poverty
In a crowded, Zambian slum on VE Day, a family gathered to bury one of the last veterans of Britain’s colonial army. Jaston Khosa of the Northern Rhodesia Regiment was laid to rest on the day the world commemorated the end of the war in which he fought.
The 95-year-old great-grandfather was among 600,000 Africans who fought for the British during World War Two, on battlefields across their own continent as well as Asia and the Middle East. Although their service has largely been forgotten, the mobilisation of this huge army from Britain’s colonies triggered the largest single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade.
Continue reading...A recently discovered document sheds new light on the wartime leader’s ‘iron curtain’ address
It was a speech that electrified the world, one that coined a phrase that was to characterise the political era that followed the second world war. But its content could have been very different, reveals a document freshly unearthed by a historian researching the life of Winston Churchill.
On 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, before a huge crowd which included the US president, Harry Truman, Britain’s wartime leader issued a famous description of the political division that was opening across Europe between the Soviet-dominated Communist east and the western democracies. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” Churchill declared, “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”
Continue reading...In a tale of two cities, Moscow keeps its distance while in Minsk, thousands turn out for the traditional military spectacular
In any other year, hundreds of thousands of Russians would have marched with portraits of relatives who fought in the second world war in a memorial called the Immortal Regiment.
But on Saturday, the images of Soviet veterans and their families floated past on Russian television, a public vigil adapted for the era of social isolation.
Continue reading...The story of global conflict is all the more powerful when it isn’t seen in black and white. Artist Marina Amaral explains her latest work
On a stretcher lies a patient; his ashen face protrudes from under a green blanket, eyes closed. Two uniformed women carry the stretcher, wearing face masks. It looks as if it’s a lovely day: the sun is shining, the shadows dark, the sky blue. But this is not a happy picture. Is the casualty even alive, or has he already been taken by the killer virus that has wrapped itself around our planet like a python, squeezing the life from it?
The photograph was taken at an ambulance station in Washington DC. Within the past couple of months? It could have been, if it weren’t for the uniforms (I don’t think today’s nurses wear lace-up leather boots) and the stretcher. In fact, it was taken more than a century ago, in 1918, during the Spanish flu epidemic, which killed so many millions. The photographer is unknown, forgotten. But the black and white picture was recently “colourised” by Marina Amaral.
Continue reading...With coronavirus lockdown subduing VE Day, contrasts with 75 years ago were many and varied
Somehow the quiet made it louder. By rights, marking the 75th anniversary of VE Day in the midst of a pandemic that has confined us to our homes – forcing us to keep our distance from one another, denying us the right to gather in crowds – should have muffled this commemoration. A celebration in private would surely feel like no celebration at all. Katherine Jenkins singing to an empty Albert Hall, streets with no street parties and the pubs all shut: how could that add up to anything other than a damp squib?
And yet Friday’s marking of the end of the second world war struck a deeper chord than it might, had it been just another sunny bank holiday. Yes, the usual rituals had to be suspended. There could be no wreath-laying at local memorials; instead, Prince Charles and Camilla laid two small wreaths on their own, in a crowdless corner of Balmoral, watched by a lone piper. There could be no veterans’ parades, no reunions for those who had served, no grateful handshakes from the politicians: 102-year-old former staff sergeant Ernie Horsfall had to make do with a Zoom call from Boris Johnson. And there were limited opportunities for silliness: the Winston Churchill impersonators were all dressed up with nowhere to go, forced to perform their cigar-and-V-sign shtick online.
Continue reading...Televised broadcast includes extracts from Churchill’s historic victory speech
The Queen led tributes to the wartime generation on Friday night, recalling the “never give up, never despair” message of VE Day as the country marked the 75th anniversary of victory in Europe.
In a special broadcast, on a unique day of remembrance, reflection and celebration taking place during the coronavirus lockdown, she said: “Today it may seem hard that we cannot mark this special anniversary as we would wish. Instead we remember from our homes and our doorsteps.
Continue reading...People including veterans observe Victory in Europe Day amid lockdown
Continue reading...Quiet commemorations held to mark 75 years since end of war on continent
Seventy-five years ago crowds massed in the streets of Europe, singing and dancing as their leaders announced the end of six years of bloody war. Today, the streets were empty, and leaders stood alone in silence at places of commemoration, as a continent marked the heroics of the war generation in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...Latest updates as Europe marks 75 years since official surrender of Nazi Germany to Allied forces
A picture from VE Day celebrations at Holly House residential home in the village of Milton Malsor in South Northamptonshire.
Naeha Menon from Holly House said:
We went into lockdown on March 9th to stop our residents getting coronavirus, and with the support of our great staff we remain covid free, but taking precautions to ensure everyone can celebrate happily and safely.
Footage of Prince Charles reading an extract from his grandfather George VI’s diary entry for 8 May 1945, has been broadcast to mark VE Day 75.
The extract reads:
The Prime Minister came to lunch. We congratulated each other on the end of the European War. The day we have been longing for has arrived at last, & we can look back with thankfulness to God that our tribulation is over.
No more fear of being bombed at home & no more living in air raid shelters. But there is still Japan to be defeated & the restoration of our country to be dealt with, which will give us many headaches & hard work in the coming years…
“The day we have been longing for has arrived at last.”
The Prince of Wales reads an extract from his grandfather King George VI’s diary which describes The King’s experience of #VEDay on 8th May 1945.#VEDay75 pic.twitter.com/Rx0bsrh0SI