Category Archives: Nazism

Bella Ciao: a brief history of the resistance anthem sung to Viktor Orbán

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A look at the origins and appeal off the song MEPs used to serenade the Hungarian PM in Strasbourg

“This is not Eurovision,” said the speaker of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola, as she tried to silence leftwing MEPs greeting the visiting Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, with a rowdy rendition of the classic anti-fascist anthem Bella Ciao.

The bang-your-fists-on-the-table motif at the heart of this earworm of a ditty – whose title means “Goodbye, beautiful” – may indeed sound like something cooed through dry fog by a spandex-clad blond at the European song contest. But the story it tells reaches far deeper into the continent’s history than the annual kitsch music extravaganza, telling an age-old tale of the left’s determined struggle against political oppression.

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Show shines light on overlooked artist who made UK’s first Holocaust memorial

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Work of German-Jewish sculptor Fred Kormis, who fled Nazis in 1930s, is subject of exhibition in London

The work of an overlooked German-Jewish artist who created the UK’s first memorial to victims of Nazi persecution is to be the focus of an exhibition that shines light on the unreported aspects of his life.

Fred Kormis, who fled Germany in the 1930s and later became a British citizen, was described by the Wiener Holocaust Library in London as a forgotten émigré artist who played a unique role in Weimar culture and 20th-century British art.

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Dutch row over which victims of Nazis get ‘stumbling stone’ plaques

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Commemorations of 45 people ‘experimentally’ gassed reveal dark moments in the Netherlands’ history

They call them stumbling stones – little brass plaques in the pavement marking addresses where Holocaust victims once lived.

As the Netherlands marks 80 years of liberation, a row has sprung up about placing Stolpersteine for 45 Dutch political prisoners – Jewish activists, communists, critical Christians – who were “experimentally” gassed by the Nazis at the Bernburg psychiatric clinic in Germany in 1942.

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German court rejects appeal by ex-Nazi secretary over role in 10,500 murders

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Irmgard Furchner, 99, was found guilty in 2022 of being an accessory to killings at Stutthof concentration camp

A German court has rejected an appeal by a 99-year-old woman who was convicted of being an accessory to more than 10,500 murders during her role as a secretary to the SS commander of the Nazis’ Stutthof concentration camp during the second world war.

The federal court of justice upheld the conviction of Irmgard Furchner, who was given a two-year suspended sentence in December 2022 by a state court in Itzehoe, northern Germany.

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German court fines senior AfD politician €13,000 for using banned Nazi phrase

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Björn Höcke, party’s candidate to lead Thuringia state, found to have deliberately used SA slogan in 2021 speech

A German court has fined a leading member of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party for using a banned Nazi phrase at a political rally, in a high-profile trial just months before an election in which he aims to become a state leader.

The state court in Halle convicted Björn Höcke, the firebrand chief of the AfD in the eastern region of Thuringia, of deliberately using a slogan associated with the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing, the SA, in a speech at a campaign event in May 2021.

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Berlin wants to give away Joseph Goebbels’ countryside villa

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Berlin’s finance minister says property owned by Hitler’s propaganda minister will be demolished if taker not found

Berlin’s government is offering to give away a villa once owned by Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, hoping to end a decades-long debate on whether to repurpose or bulldoze a sprawling disused site in the countryside north of the German capital.

“I offer to anyone who would like to take over the site, to take it over as a gift from the state of Berlin,” Berlin’s finance minister, Stefan Evers, told the state parliament, the German Press Agency reported.

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Four Germans caught marking Hitler’s birthday at his house

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Police in Upper Austria province said the four were laying white roses at Nazi dictator’s birthplace

Four Germans were caught laying white roses in memory of Adolf Hitler at the house where the Nazi dictator was born in western Austria on the anniversary of his birth, and one gave a Hitler salute as they posed for photos, police have said.

Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn. After lengthy wrangling over the future of the house where he was born, work started last year on turning it into a police station — a project meant to make it unattractive as a pilgrimage site for people who glorify Hitler.

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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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‘Sport is never just sport’: Olympics exhibition in Paris reflects 20th century’s highs and lows

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Les Jeux Olympiques: Miroir des Sociétés opens ahead of Paris Olympics and puts previous games in context of conflicts and injustices

From the Nazi stadium propaganda in 1936 Berlin to the 1968 Mexico City podium protest of medal-winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who were expelled from the competition after raising their gloved fists in a Black Power salute against racial injustice, the Olympic Games have held a mirror up to some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history.

Now, as the Paris Olympics prepares to open this summer against a backdrop of war from Ukraine to the Middle East – with Emmanuel Macron saying Russia will be asked to observe a ceasefire in Ukraine during the Games – a new exhibition in Paris takes an unflinching look at the social and geopolitical impact of the Games over the last century.

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Racially extremist materials found in home of Ohio Walmart mass shooter

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Nazi materials among items retrieved by FBI from house of gunman who killed self after wounding four people

The FBI said the gunman who opened fire inside a Walmart in Ohio on Monday, wounding four before killing himself, may have been “at least partially inspired by racially motivated violent extremist ideology”.

It confirmed two of the victims were white and the other two were Black.

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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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Former pupils demand apology from Irish school over Nazi teacher’s bullying

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Louis Feutren joined a nationalist group in occupied France and went on to teach at a prestigious Dublin school

There was never any mystery about the fact that Louis Feutren, a French teacher at St Conleth’s school in south Dublin, was a Nazi collaborator.

He had a taste for violent punishments and bizarre humiliations that terrorised pupils. He liked to reminisce about the second world war, when he had joined a Breton nationalist group that fought on the side of Germany. And he showed pictures of himself in uniform.

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Canada parliament speaker resigns after calling Ukrainian Nazi veteran a ‘hero’

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Anthony Rota steps down after meeting with party leaders in Ottawa having invited Yaroslav Hunka to special session

The speaker of Canada’s parliament has resigned after inviting a Ukrainian Nazi veteran to attend a special session of parliament, and then calling the man a “hero” amid two standing ovations.

Anthony Rota stepped down as speaker on Tuesday after meeting with party leaders in Ottawa amid growing cross-party calls for his resignation.

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Prospective AfD mayor ‘will be barred from Holocaust events’

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Jörg Prophet, who wants Germany to abandon its ‘guilt cult’, could become party’s first city mayor

Directors of a memorial at a former Nazi concentration camp have raised alarm about the revisionist views of a far-right politician expected to become its local mayor, saying he will be barred from attending events to commemorate the Holocaust if he is elected.

The Alternative für Deutschland politician Jörg Prophet last Sunday finished almost 20 points clear of the runner-up in municipal elections in Nordhausen, a city of about 42,000 in the eastern state of Thuringia.

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Coco Chanel exhibition reveals fashion designer was part of French resistance

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Previously unseen documents to go on display at V&A alongside evidence of her collusion with Nazis

A major retrospective of Coco Chanel has unearthed evidence that the fashion designer was a documented member of the French resistance. The previously unseen documents will go on display, along with contradictory evidence that she operated as a Nazi agent.

The documents relating to Chanel’s activities in wartime Paris strike a serious note within what is likely to be the most glamorous exhibition of the year, with more than 50 tweed suits – including a bubblegum pink set belonging to Lauren Bacall – on view at Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto, when it opens at the V&A in London on 16 September.

“We couldn’t do a show about Chanel and not address her wartime record,” said the curator, Oriole Cullen, who has expanded a show first created at the Palais Galliera in Paris in 2020 with a new curation that delves more deeply into Chanel’s links with Britain as well as her wartime activities.

Previously unseen documents highlight the name “Gabrielle AKA Coco Chanel” on a list of 400,000 people whose part in the resistance is backed up by official records. “We have verification from the French government, including a document from 1957, which confirms her active participation in the resistance,” said Cullen.

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Former guard at Nazi death camp charged with being accessory to murder

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Gregor F, 98, who worked as guard at Sachsenhausen between 1943 and 1945, to be tried in juvenile court due to age at time

A former Nazi concentration camp guard has been indicted on charges of acting as an accessory to murder in the latest of a string of eleventh-hour attempts to gain justice for Holocaust victims and survivors.

The 98-year-old, identified as Gregor F, worked as a guard at the Sachsenhausen camp north of Berlin between 1943 and 1945.

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Channel Island Nazis inquiry under pressure to find out why perpetrators never faced justice

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Thousands of people may have perished on Alderney during the second world war but their murderers never stood trial

The official inquiry into Nazi atrocities committed on Alderney in the Channel Islands is under pressure to investigate why those responsible for committing war crimes on British soil were never brought to trial in the UK.

Prof Anthony Glees, the security and intelligence expert who advised Margaret Thatcher’s war crimes inquiry, told the Observer: “This is a vital opportunity to establish all the facts, and it must examine why those who perpetrated such heinous war crimes were never brought to trial in this country. The review into the atrocities on Alderney is to be warmly welcomed, but I believe it should not just focus on the numbers killed, as important as that is.”

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‘No more cover-up’: Nazi concentration camps on Channel Island finally to be officially investigated

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Review could show that thousands more Jews and prisoners of war died on Alderney than previously thought

The full horrors of the only Nazi concentration camps to exist on British soil will finally be investigated in an official government inquiry, the Observer can reveal.

Eighty years on from one of the darkest episodes in British history, the government is to carry out a review into the numbers of prisoners murdered by the Nazis on Alderney, the tiny Channel Island and British crown dependency.

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‘Avalanche’ of demand for Nazi artefacts ahead of Australian ban on sale of hate symbols

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Jewish groups decry ‘vomit-inducing’ frenzy of auctions before impending law change that will also prohibit public display of items

Australian militaria shops say there is an “avalanche” of demand for Nazi artefacts in anticipation of an impending ban on the sale of Nazi symbols.

A bill introduced to federal parliament in mid-June will ban the public display and sale of Nazi symbols, making it an offence to seek to profit from such material in stores or online. It will not ban private ownership or transfers of artefacts that are not for profit.

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Australian politicians bought Nazi artefacts, auction house director claims

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Gold Coast auction house sold huge collection including photo album of concentration camps and signed pictures of Hitler ahead of federal ban on display and sale of Nazi symbols

An Australian auction house that sold an extensive collection of Nazi artefacts online has defended the sale by stating politicians were among the buyers.

Jewish groups are outraged at the sale of the “blood-stained items” that included signed pictures of Hitler, Himmler and Rommel, a striped concentration camp cap, a “Jewish winter overcoat” with yellow star attached, picture albums of dead soldiers and PoWs and personal photo albums of SS officers.

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