Category Archives: Second world war

‘Every piece of evidence is vital’: Holocaust survivor calls for victims’ shoes to be salvaged

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Manfred Goldberg, 94, urges authorities to preserve fragments of thousands of shoes left to rot at Stutthof concentration camp site

One of the last remaining survivors of the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp has appealed to authorities to salvage fragments of tens of thousands of shoes belonging to murdered Holocaust victims that were recently discovered in a forest at the site.

Manfred Goldberg, who was imprisoned as a teenager at Stutthof, 24 miles (38km) east of Gdańsk, said he was “shocked and dismayed” to hear of the existence of the remnants, eight decades after the shoes’ owners were forced to remove them before being gassed and cremated.

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RAF grounds Spitfire fleet after death of pilot in Battle of Britain air display

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Announcement raises questions about aircraft’s participation in national D-day event in Portsmouth

The RAF has grounded a fleet of Spitfire planes after the death of a pilot over the weekend, raising the prospect of the legendary aircraft being absent from the 80th anniversary of the D-day landings next month.

Sqn Ldr Mark Long – a Typhoon pilot based at RAF Coningsby – was killed in a crash while flying a Spitfire belonging to the Battle of Britain Memorial Fleet as part of a memorial event.

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Vladimir Putin not welcome at French ceremony for 80th anniversary of D-day

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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.

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Last living survivor aboard USS Arizona during Pearl Harbor attack dies aged 102

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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.

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Amsterdam to mark role of tram system in transportation of Jews to death camps

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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.

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Group to search for celebrated US pilot’s fighter plane in South Pacific

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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.

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Dutch project tells wartime stories of intrepid ‘England voyagers’

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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.

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FBI returns 22 looted artifacts to Japan after discovery in Massachusetts attic

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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.

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Cambridge college unmasks alumnae who were Bletchley Park codebreakers

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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.

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Canada memorial to Ukrainian soldiers in Nazi unit removed after protests

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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.

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‘It’s been scary’: relief in Plymouth as German bomb is floated out to sea

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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.

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Plymouth bomb: device to be detonated tonight or tomorrow, say police – as it happened

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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.

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Marine Le Pen to defy Macron’s request not to attend event for WW2 resistance hero

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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”.

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Breslau 1941: clandestine photos tell of the Holocaust’s upheaval and terror

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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.

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‘I knew nothing’: the Warsaw ghetto boy who found his family at 83

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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.

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French Holocaust denier found in Fife loses extradition fight

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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.

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WW2 bomber crew’s remains identified 80 years after plane shot down over Netherlands

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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.

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Tensions high as Germany prepares to mark Kristallnacht

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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.

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Fire destroys second world war-era blimp hangar in California

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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.

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Royal British Legion gives poppy plastic-free makeover

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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.

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