Category Archives: Second world war

‘I seek a kind person’: the Guardian ad that saved my Jewish father from the Nazis

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In 1938, there was a surge of classified ads in this newspaper as parents – including my grandparents – scrambled to get their children out of the Reich. What became of the families?

On Wednesday 3 August 1938, a short advertisement appeared on the second page of the Manchester Guardian, under the title “Tuition”.

“I seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent Boy, aged 11, Viennese of good family,” the advert said, under the name Borger, giving the address of an apartment on Hintzerstrasse, in Vienna’s third district.

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Guardian film Colette wins Oscar for best documentary short

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Film about a former resistance fighter travelling to visit the concentration camp where her brother died wins prize at the 93rd Academy Awards

• Watch the Guardian’s Oscar winning film, Colette

Colette, a film released by the Guardian, has won the Oscar for best documentary short at the 93rd Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Anthony Giacchino, and produced by Alice Doyard, Annie Small and Aaron Matthews, Colette tells the story of 90-year-old former French resistance member Colette Marin-Catherine, who visits the concentration camp where her brother was murdered during the war with a young history student, Lucie Fouble.

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The city my grandfather used to call home no longer exists – except in our minds

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After his death, I wanted to know more about his life, and the city that made him and very nearly killed him

Every Hanukkah through my childhood, if I was visiting my grandparents’ Liverpool home, my Grandpa Oskar told me the exact same story. With a pickle on his side plate – my grandma serving up his favourite dinner of latkes, vusht (smoked sausage) and eggs – he’d recount the night during this very Jewish festival in 1937 that his family – our family – fled for their lives from the Nazis.

The preparations for their escape might have been secretly in motion for weeks, but the first he knew of the plan was as it was happening: he arrived home from school to be told he and his brother were going on a trip that very December night. They’d be travelling with their mum; their father – my great-grandpa – would meet them on their journey. It was only later that he’d learn their destination was England, a new permanent home for our family, now refugees.

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Ray Lambert, US army medic wounded on D-Day, dies aged 100

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  • Lambert also took part in invasions of north Africa and Sicily
  • Alabama native was in first wave at Omaha Beach in 1944

Ray Lambert, a US army medic who survived multiple wounds on D-Day and was saluted by a president on the 75th anniversary of the battle, died on Friday. He was 100.

Lambert died at home in Seven Lakes, North Carolina, with his wife and daughter by his side, said neighbor and friend Dr Darrell Simpkins. The physician, who accompanied Lambert to France in June 2019, said the veteran succumbed to an aggressive form of facial cancer and congestive heart failure.

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Harvard professor sparks outrage with claims about Japan’s ‘comfort women’

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Academics reject J Mark Ramseyer’s claim women were not forced into sexual slavery during second world war

A Harvard University professor has sparked outrage among fellow academics and campaigners after claiming that women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military had chosen to work in wartime brothels.

J Mark Ramseyer, a professor of Japanese legal studies at Harvard Law School, challenged the accepted narrative that as many as 200,000 “comfort women” – mostly Koreans, but also Chinese, south-east Asians and a small number of Japanese and Europeans – were coerced or tricked into working in military brothels between 1932 and Japan’s defeat in 1945.

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Suspected second world war bomb detonated in Exeter after homes evacuated

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Explosion heard for miles around and leaves crater the size of double-decker bus

Thousands of people have been forced to spend a second night out of their homes after a suspected second world war bomb discovered in Exeter was detonated.

The noise of the explosion heard for miles around and left a crater the size of a double-decker bus, police said on Saturday night, as well as sending debris up to 250 metres away from the site of the blast.

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Boris Johnson ‘a liar’ who will blame Brexit costs on Covid, says diplomat

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Sylvie Bermann, former French ambassador, puts PM’s handling of pandemic alongside Donald Trump’s

Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.

She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.

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‘A gift for Holocaust deniers’: how Polish libel ruling will hit historians

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The authors of a study on the fate of Polish Jews under Nazism have been told to apologise to a woman for defaming her uncle. The implications for future historical work are alarming

Poland’s nationalists have won their latest battle to defend the country’s wartime reputation. On Tuesday, the Warsaw district court ordered two leading historians to apologise to a woman for defaming a relative in their book about the Holocaust. The landmark ruling has serious implications for academic freedom and the future of Holocaust research, with historians around the world condemning the judgment.

“These are not matters to be adjudicated by courts, this is a point that can be discussed by scholars or interested readers in the exchange of opinions. In that sense, it’s really scandalous,” says Jan Tomasz Gross, whose seminal book Neighbours was a watershed in Poland’s public discussion of the Holocaust more than 20 years ago. “It’s part of a broad effort to stifle any inquiry and particularly the complicity of the local population in the persecution of Jews during that time.”

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Man, 100, charged in Germany over 3,518 Nazi concentration camp murders

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Man is alleged to have been Nazi SS guard at Sachsenhausen camp between 1942 and 1945

German prosecutors have charged a 100-year-old man with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he served during the second world war as a Nazi SS guard at a concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin.

The man is alleged to have worked at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1942 and 1945 as an enlisted member of the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing, said Cyrill Klement, who led the investigation of the centenarian for the Neuruppin prosecutors’ office.

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Fears for Polish Holocaust research as historians ordered to apologise

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Court tells professors to apologise to 81-year-old woman who claims they defamed her late uncle

A court has ordered two prominent historians to apologise to an elderly woman who claimed they had defamed her late uncle over his wartime actions, in a case seen as critical to independent Holocaust research in Poland.

Prof Jan Grabowski of the University of Ottawa and Prof Barbara Engelking of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research were accused of defaming Edward Malinowski by suggesting in a book that he gave up Jews to Nazi Germans.

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Fears rise that Polish libel trial could threaten future Holocaust research

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Case brought in wake of rightwing government criminalising blame of Polish nation for Nazi crimes could have implications for further research

Two Polish historians are facing a libel trial over a book examining Poles’ behaviour during the second world war, a case whose outcome is expected to determine the future of independent Holocaust research under Poland’s nationalist government.

A verdict is expected in Warsaw’s district court on 9 February in the case against Barbara Engelking, a historian with the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research in Warsaw, and Jan Grabowski, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa. While the case is a libel trial, it comes in the wake of a 2018 law that makes it a crime to falsely accuse the Polish nation of crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The law caused a major diplomatic spat with Israel.

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Registration cards of Dutch Holocaust victims to go on display

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Red Cross returns nearly 160,000 records, many of which belonged to Dutch Jews sent to Nazi death camps

Nearly 160,000 registration cards belonging to Dutch Jews and people from other persecuted minorities, many of whom were destined for Nazi death camps, will be put on display for the first time in the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam after being handed over by the Red Cross.

The cards include name, address, date of birth, profession, marital status, family composition and, in three out of four cases, the date of their transport to a concentration camp written in red pencil. They ended up with the Red Cross after the war and were used to locate missing persons.

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Nazi art dispute goes to US supreme court in landmark case

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Heirs of Jewish art dealers bring case over Guelph Treasure that defence lawyers say could open floodgates

A 12-year wrangle over a rare collection of medieval ecclesiastical art sold by Jewish art dealers to the Nazis in 1935 will arrive in front of the highest court in the US on Monday, in a landmark case defence lawyers say could open the floodgates for restitution battles from all over the world to be fought via the US.

The supreme court will hear oral arguments on whether the dealers’ heirs can sue in US courts to retrieve the church reliquaries, known as the Guelph Treasure or Welfenschatz, from Germany.

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German minister condemns lockdown protesters’ Nazi victim comparisons

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Heiko Maas criticises young protester who compared herself to Sophie Scholl, a German student executed by the Nazis

German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, on Sunday lashed out at anti-mask protesters comparing themselves to Nazi victims, accusing them of trivialising the Holocaust and “making a mockery” of the courage shown by resistance fighters.

The harsh words came after a young woman took to the stage at a protest against coronavirus restrictions in Hanover on Saturday saying she felt “just like Sophie Scholl”, the German student executed by the Nazis in 1943 for her role in the resistance.

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Daniel Cordier, one of last heroes of French resistance, dies aged 100

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As secretary to the great resistance leader, Jean Moulin, he helped organise fight against Nazi occupation

One of France’s last remaining French resistance heroes Daniel Cordier, has died aged 100.

One of only two remaining Compagnons de la Libération, an honour awarded by France’s exiled wartime leader, Charles de Gaulle, to those who risked their lives to liberate France from Nazi occupation, Emmanuel Macron said there would be a national ceremony to honour his memory.

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Colette: former French Resistance member confronts fascism and family trauma after 75 years

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On the anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg trials, 90-year-old Colette Marin-Catherine confronts her past by visiting the Nazi concentration camp in Germany where her brother was killed. As a young girl, she had been a member of the French resistance and had always refused to set foot in Germany. That changes when a young history student named Lucie enters her life. Prepared to reopen old wounds and revisit the terrors of that time, Marin-Catherine offers important lessons

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‘I’ll never be the same again’: facing family trauma in a Nazi concentration camp

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Filmmaker Anthony Giacchino and producer Alice Doyard explain how a young history student persuaded Colette, 90, to visit the German concentration camp where her brother died

The new Guardian documentary, Colette, follows the remarkable story of a former member of the French resistance, as she travels to Germany for the first time to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp where her brother died 75 years ago. Persuaded to go on the journey by history student Lucie, 17, the pair support one another through an emotional journey into the past. “When I cross into Germany I’ll never be the same again,” says Colette, 90.

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Rothschild descendant claims initial victory in legal battle with Vienna

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Geoffrey Hoguet is suing Austrian authorities for control of trust set up by his ancestors, but seized by Nazis in 1938

A Rothschild descendant has claimed an initial victory in a legal battle with the city of Vienna over a medical trust set up by his ancestors, seized by Nazis and now controlled by the city.

Geoffrey Hoguet is suing Austrian authorities for control of the trust, which he claims has been hollowed out by town hall officials who have made themselves administrator and potential beneficiary of assets worth up to €110m (£98m).

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