Category Archives: Second world war

George Mendonsa, The Kissing Sailor in famous photograph, dies at 95

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Alfred Eisenstaedt photographed sailor kissing Greta Friedman in Times Square at the end of the second world war

George Mendonsa, the sailor who was captured in a famous photograph kissing a woman in Times Square amidst celebrations of the end of the second world war, has died. He was 95.

His daughter, Sharon Molleur, told the Providence Journal her father fell and had a seizure early on Sunday at the assisted living facility in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he lived with his wife of 70 years. He died two days before his 96th birthday.

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Summit cancelled as Israel and Poland row over Holocaust

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Israeli foreign minister accuses Poles of hatred towards Jews in remarks described as ‘racist’ by Polish PM

Poland has pulled out of a planned trip to Jerusalem and scuppered an international summit the same day officials were due to arrive, after Israel’s foreign minister accused Poles of hatred against Jews and complicity in the Holocaust.

Israel Katz, who was appointed acting foreign minister on Sunday, said Poles “suckle antisemitism with their mother’s milk”. Speaking on another radio show on Monday morning, he accused all Polish people of harbouring “innate” antisemitism.

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Compensate African second world war veterans, Labour urges

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Government urged to make amends to ex-soldiers, who were underpaid and beaten

Pressure is mounting on the government to compensate and apologise to Britain’s last surviving African veterans of the second world war after three shadow secretaries of state called on their Conservative counterparts to acknowledge the systematic discrimination of colonial-era troops.

Labour’s Emily Thornberry, Nia Griffith and Dan Carden – the shadow foreign, defence and international development secretaries – demanded in a letter that Theresa May’s administration acknowledge the unfair treatment, launch an investigation into the matter, issue a formal apology and pay veterans compensation.

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Africans who fought for British army paid less than white soldiers

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Document reveals more than 500,000 black soldiers were underpaid in second world war

More than half a million black African soldiers who fought in the British army during the second world war were paid up to three times less than their white counterparts, a newly unearthed document has revealed, prompting calls for an investigation and the government to compensate surviving veterans.

The document, buried in Britain’s national archives, reveals how the government systematically discriminated against African soldiers, paying white personnel – even those living in African colonies and serving alongside African soldiers in British colonial units – far more than their black counterparts.

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Parachutists to fill skies over Normandy on 75th anniversary of D-day

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Wartime aircraft will fly in 6 June event commemorating day that turned tide of war

The skies over the UK and Normandy will be filled with wartime Dakota aircraft as hundreds of parachutists take part in a mass airdrop to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings in June.

The plans, unveiled by Imperial War Museums (IWM), are part of a programme on an “unprecedented scale” for the commemoration of the greatest seaborne invasion in history, to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation, on 6 June 1944.

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One in 20 Britons ‘does not believe’ Holocaust took place, poll finds

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Call for better education after scale of ignorance is revealed in survey to coincide with memorial day

One in 20 British adults do not believe the Holocaust happened, and 8% say that the scale of the genocide has been exaggerated, according to a poll marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

Almost half of those questioned said they did not know how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and one in five grossly underestimated the number, saying that fewer than two million were killed. At least six million Jews died.

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The dark history of Santa’s city: how Rovaniemi rose from the ashes

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After the Finnish city was razed to the ground by the German army in the second world war, architect Alvar Aalto rebuilt it to a reindeer-shaped street grid. Then Santa came to town …

As soon as you land at Rovaniemi airport in Lapland you see a reindeer. Not a real one, admittedly, but somebody in a Rudolf suit cheerily greeting passengers who have just arrived. A couple of miles from “Santa’s official airport” lies Santa Claus Village, an amusement park complete with elves, real reindeers, huskies, shops and restaurants that draws more than 600,000 visitors a year to this isolated spot at the edge of the Arctic Circle.

There are reindeer everywhere in Rovaniemi: humans dressed as them at the airport, real ones pulling sleighs at Santa Claus Village and statues of them throughout the city centre.

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