Category Archives: Second world war

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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‘Crush the fascist vermin’: Belarus opposition summons wartime spirit

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Partisan tactics once used to fight the Nazis have been turned against Alexander Lukashenko’s brutally repressive regime

In Minsk, what people here call the Great Patriotic War is never far away. Monuments, street names and museums venerate the memory of the awful years from 1941 to 1945, when the Soviet Union was at war with Nazi Germany.

Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, has used the years of partisan resistance against the Nazi occupation of the country, and the eventual victory by the Red Army, as the basis for a neo-Soviet, Belarusian identity.

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Stop blowing up bombs on sea floor, say whale campaigners

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Wartime relics need to be cleared for wind farms but explosions can kill cetaceans

The detonation of wartime bombs left on the seafloor around the UK must end to stop the deaths of whales and dolphins, campaigners say.

The offshore wind industry is expanding rapidly and this may lead to a sharp rise in such explosions as the seafloor is cleared before construction. A quieter “burning” technique is already available, say the campaigners.

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Kazakh-American group claims Borat Subsequent Moviefilm ‘incites violence’

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The Kazakh American Association has released a letter on social media accusing Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest Borat film of ‘justifying harassment’

A group of Kazakh-Americans has demanded that Amazon withdraw Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Sacha Baron Cohen’s new satirical comedy which – like its 2006 predecessor Borat – identifies Kazakhstan as the home country of its fictional journalist character Borat Sagdiyev.

In a letter published on social media shortly before the film’s official launch, addressed to three senior Amazon executives, the Kazakh American Association says that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm “may cause irreparable harm to to Kazakhstan’s national image and people as its comedic nature may justify ethnicity-based harassment”. It adds: “This film incites violence against a highly vulnerable and under-represented minority ethnic group.”

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Dutch war museums tighten security after raids on Nazi items

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SS uniforms, firearms, parachutes among Nazi memorabilia targeted in apparent thefts to order

War museums across the Netherlands are scrambling to tighten their security after raids by highly organised thieves targeting memorabilia linked to Adolf Hitler’s Waffen-SS and other parts of the Nazi regime.

Amid huge global demand for second world war memorabilia, museums in Ossendrecht, in north Brabant, and in Beek, Limburg, have been ransacked in recent days and months.

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Holocaust survivor’s daughter sues historian over claim of lesbian liaison with Nazi guard

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Warwick University academic ‘broke German court ruling that protected dead woman’s reputation’

The daughter of a Holocaust survivor has begun a legal battle to protect her deceased mother’s reputation from allegations that she had a lesbian relationship with an SS guard.

Earlier this year, a German court ruled that Dr Anna Hájková, associate professor of modern continental European history at Warwick University, had violated the woman’s postmortem personality rights by publicly claiming that she had a sexual relationship with the Nazi guard while imprisoned in concentration camps.

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Nazi shipwreck found off Poland may solve Amber Room mystery

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Polish divers locate Karlsruhe, which they hope holds treasure Nazis looted from Russia

Polish divers say they have found the wreck of a German second world war ship that may help solve a decades-old mystery about the whereabouts of the Amber Room, an ornate chamber that the Nazis looted from a tsarist palace in Russia.

Decorated with amber and gold, the room was part of the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg. It was last seen in Königsberg, then a Baltic port city in Germany but now the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

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Asylum seekers and lessons from history | Letters

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Paul Secher on the refugees housed in an army barracks on the outskirts of Sandwich in 1939, Rachel A Elliott on the judge who stopped the expulsion of 20 asylum seekers on a charter flight, and David Edwards Hulme on the origins of the boat name Speedwell

There is an interesting parallel to the proposal to house 400 asylum seekers in a disused army barracks in Folkestone, about which the local Conservative MP, Damian Collins, and district councillors have registered their protest with the home secretary (Former Kent barracks to house asylum seekers who arrived by boat, 15 September).

In the summer of 1939, some 4,000 refugees, also mainly men in their 20s and 30s (including my father and uncle), were housed in the derelict Kitchener Camp army barracks on the outskirts of nearby Sandwich. Similar objections were raised by some local politicians to the imminent arrival of so many foreigners, mainly from Germany and Austria. While the influx could have overwhelmed the small Kentish town with a population of just 3,500, they were largely welcomed – to the benefit of both the refugees and the local community.
Paul Secher
London

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Nearly two-thirds of US adults unaware 6m Jews killed in the Holocaust – study

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According to survey of adults 18-39, 23% said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, had been exaggerated or they weren’t sure

Almost two-thirds of young American adults do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and more than one in 10 believe Jews caused the Holocaust, a new survey has found, revealing shocking levels of ignorance about the greatest crime of the 20th century.

According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48%) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war.

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Australia has never been good at acknowledging its troops have been guilty of acts of inhumanity | Paul Daley

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Australia’s telling of the Pacific war story is correctly replete with Japanese atrocities. But crimes against Japanese prisoners do not feature prominently

Seventy-five years after the end of the second world war in the Pacific, the human suffering of millions of combatants and civilians is easily overlooked in a binary focus on allied victory and Japanese surrender.

Three-quarters of a century later, Japanese humiliation still simmers in politics and among families of the surrendered or dead. On the other side, meanwhile, countless were the returned soldiers and their families who have long harboured seething hatred for the Japanese.

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Holocaust denial graffitied at site of Nazi massacre in France

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Justice minister vows to ‘find and judge’ vandals who defaced Oradour-sur-Glane

Vandals have scrawled graffiti denying the Holocaust on a wall in the village that was the site of the Nazis’ biggest massacre of civilians in France during the second world war.

The justice minister vowed on Saturday to bring those responsible to justice.

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Hunt is on for rightful owner of Nazi-looted French painting

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Sign hangs next to Nicolas Rousseau artwork in Verdun asking public for information

A 19th-century oil painting stolen from Nazi-occupied France during the second world war has gone on display in an attempt to trace its rightful owners, after being returned by the son of the German soldier who was ordered to take it.

After 76 years in Germany, the small untitled artwork by the French painter Nicolas Rousseau is back in France and being exhibited at the World Centre for Peace, Liberty and Human Rights in the north-eastern town of Verdun.

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Royal family marks VJ Day anniversary in the UK – video

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The royal family leads the UK’s commemorations on the 75th anniversary of VJ Day – the day the second world war ended with Japan’s surrender.

Prince Charles led a two-minute silence at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, as part of a service of remembrance. The prime minister also spoke at the event.

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