Ommeren became hive of activity after Dutch National Archive unveiled map featuring a red ‘X’ in January
A Dutch village that became the focus of a frenzied treasure hunt after a map allegedly showed Nazi loot buried there during the second world war has declared the search over – and said nothing was found.
The small hamlet of Ommeren did conclude that there had indeed been treasure buried there, but that it was removed after the war.
Continue reading...Images found in attic taken by Polish firefighter who risked life to record how Jewish Poles fought the Nazis despite impossible odds
The photographs are blurry, composed hastily and taken surreptitiously, sometimes with heads or objects in the foreground obscuring part of the view.
But Holocaust historians say the imperfect pictures, discovered last month in a Polish attic decades after their creator died, are nonetheless priceless. They are the only known photographs from inside the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising not to be taken by Germans.
Continue reading...Analysis: Someone in the NSW premier’s own corner seems determined that he should pay for his 21st birthday mistake
In his maiden speech to parliament 11 years ago, the New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, shared an anecdote from his childhood, in which he explained his “love of politics” began from a young age.
In the speech, Perrottet said that from the age of 10 he and his siblings were “required to present an article on current affairs to the family” at the dinner table.
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Continue reading...Second world war document revealing a stash of coins and jewels hidden by German soldiers is put online by Dutch archivists
As the Nazis fled occupied Europe in the final days of the second world war, four German soldiers buried a hoard of gold coins and jewels in the middle of nowhere in the Dutch countryside. Nearly 80 years later, hopes of finding the buried loot have been raised after the National Archives of the Netherlands released a trove of documents – and a map to the treasure where X marks the spot.
The treasure – four ammunition cases laden with coins, watches, jewellery, diamonds and other gemstones – is thought to have been worth at least 2m or 3m Dutch guilder in 1945, the equivalent of around £15.85m in today’s money.
Continue reading...Irmgard Furchner, 97, who worked at Stutthof concentration camp during the second world war, is given a two-year suspended sentence
A 97-year-old former secretary at a Nazi concentration camp has been found guilty of complicity in the murder of more than 10,500 people imprisoned there, and handed a two-year suspended sentence.
Irmgard Furchner, who has been on trial in the northern German town of Itzehoe for more than a year, spoke to the court on one occasion earlier this month to say she was sorry for what had happened, but stopped short of admitting her guilt.
Continue reading...Austrian city also intends to rename three other thoroughfares bearing ‘tainted’ names after commission’s report
The Austrian city of Linz has announced plans to rename a street honouring the founder of the luxury carmaker Porsche after a commission investigating controversial names found his Nazi past “problematic”.
The renaming of streets and other public places is still a hotly debated issue in Austria – Adolf Hitler’s birthplace – which Nazi Germany annexed in 1938 and which long cast itself as a victim.
Continue reading...Elon Musk intervenes after rapper posted image hours after airing antisemitic views in Alex Jones interview
Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has been suspended from Twitter after he tweeted an image of a swastika blended with a star of David, less than two weeks after he returned to the platform.
The suspension took place hours after Ye praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in an interview on Infowars, a show hosted by the rightwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Continue reading...Images released by Israeli Holocaust memorial show Hitler’s regime clearly orchestrating 1938 atrocity
Harrowing, previously unseen images from 1938’s Kristallnacht pogrom against German and Austrian Jews have surfaced in a photograph collection donated to Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial, the organisation said on Wednesday.
One shows a crowd of smiling, well-dressed middle-aged German men and women standing casually as a Nazi officer smashes a storefront window. In another, brownshirts carry heaps of Jewish books, presumably for burning. Another image shows a Nazi officer splashing petrol on the pews of a synagogue before it is set alight.
Continue reading...Brothers of Italy politician Galeazzo Bignami says he feels ‘profound shame’ over wearing swastika in 2005
A Brothers of Italy politician who was once photographed wearing a Nazi swastika armband is among the junior ministers appointed in Giorgia Meloni’s government.
Galeazzo Bignami, named undersecretary at the infrastructure ministry, caused controversy after a photograph of him wearing the armband was published by an Italian newspaper in 2016. The photo dated back to his stag party in 2005, and after it initially emerged in the press he shrugged the gesture off as a bit of “lighthearted” fun.
Continue reading...Intentionally bearing swastikas can now land a person in jail for up to a year and a fine of over $100,000
Intentionally waving a Nazi flag in New South Wales or displaying memorabilia bearing swastikas could now land a person in jail for up to a year, along with a fine of over $100,000.
The Crimes Amendment (prohibition on display of Nazi symbols) Bill 2022 swiftly and unanimously passed the NSW upper house on Thursday.
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Continue reading...Crucifixion mosaic and fresco saved from destruction after two-year campaign
A stunning mural created in a Catholic church by a Jewish refugee from the Nazis has been saved from destruction, decay and vandalism after being granted Grade II-listed status by the UK government.
The Crucifixion, by the leading 20th-century artist George Mayer-Marton, is a rare combination of mosaic and fresco standing almost 8 metres (26ft) high, taking up an entire wall inside the Holy Rosary church in Oldham.
Continue reading...Josef Schütz given five-year jail sentence in Germany but is unlikely to be put behind bars
A German court has handed a five-year jail sentence to a 101-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard, the oldest person so far to go on trial for complicity in war crimes during the Holocaust.
Josef Schütz was found guilty on Tuesday of being an accessory to murder while working as a prison guard at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.
Continue reading...Museum on site where Nazis agreed to surrender in 1945 will be renamed Museum Berlin-Karlshorst
A Berlin museum dedicated to German-Russian relations on the site where the Nazis agreed to unconditionally surrender in 1945 is to drop the word “Russian” from its name before anniversary events to mark the end of the second world war in Europe.
With tensions already high in the lead-up to the 77th anniversary on 8 and 9 May of Nazi Germany signing the surrender agreement, the German-Russian museum’s director, Jörg Morré, said he would be renaming it Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.
Continue reading...Boris Romanchenko died after rocket hit building where he lived in Ukrainian city
A 96-year-old man who survived a string of Nazi concentration camps including Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen has been killed by an explosion during the Russian assault on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, a spokesperson for the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial foundation has confirmed.
“We are shocked to confirm the violent death of Boris Romanchenko, whose niece informed us on Monday morning that he died last Friday after a bomb or rocket hit the multistorey building where he lived in Kharkiv and his apartment was burned out,” a spokesperson told the Guardian.
Continue reading...‘Aunt Annie’ was killed in the Holocaust – but not before marrying her sweetheart in captivity. Now her great-niece has found 260 other couples who did the same
Saskia Aukema knew little about her great-aunt Annie, who was murdered during the Holocaust. All she knew was that Annie had declined to go into hiding like her siblings, and continued working as a hospital nurse, even after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands began in May 1940.
“That was the family story: this was the woman who didn’t hide and chose to be with her patients. That was all I knew… this line, this one sentence,” she told the Observer.
Continue reading...That night was unquestionably the worst I’ve experienced during my 100 years on this earth
I was born in Budapest in 1921 and was living there when war broke out. I received my army call-up in May 1943; at the time, Hungary was one of the Axis powers and had been fighting the Soviet Union on the eastern front for the past two years. I received basic military training but, because I was Jewish, I wasn’t given a regular uniform. Instead, I was conscripted into a labour corps and sent with 3,600 others to the mines in Bor, Serbia, which provided copper for the German army.
The labour camps were harsh environments, but I spoke good German and was able to secure a job as a stoker on a train that carried rocks from the mine, which meant I managed to stay warm. In September 1944, the approach of the Russian army led to the hurried closure of the mine and, to our delight, we learned we were to head back to Hungary, accompanied by the Hungarian guards from the camp.
Continue reading...Director wants visit to former Nazi concentration camp to spark reflection on ‘silence of bystanders’
Piotr Cywiński has spent a lot of time pondering a question that has exercised historians, philosophers and politicians ever since the end of the second world war. What lessons should we draw from one of the darkest pages in human history, the organised mass killing at Auschwitz?
A 49-year-old Polish historian, Cywiński has been director of the Auschwitz Museum since 2006. His office is housed in a former hospital and pharmacy built for the camp’s SS guards, and his windows look out over a crematorium and gas chamber.
Continue reading...Greta Ferušić Weinfeld survived both the Nazi death camp and the nearly four-year siege during the Bosnian war
A woman who survived both the Auschwitz death camp and the Sarajevo siege in the 1990s has died, according to representatives of Bosnia’s Jewish community.
Greta Ferušić Weinfeld died on Monday aged 97.
Continue reading...I sent Ewald Althans a message suggesting we meet in a coffee shop, not far from my East Berlin hotel. I thought it might be a more relaxed place in which to talk. He declined. “I do not feel too comfy any more sitting in a cosy place having an intense talk about National Socialism, Hitler, Auschwitz, etc,” he texted back. “I suggest we have a nice long walk.” I felt terribly naïve. After all, he had a point. Sitting in a Berlin coffee shop, chatting openly about the Nazis, really might not be the best way to go. I agreed to wait for him at the hotel. It required patience; he sent me repeated messages apologising for being late. “No worries,” I replied. “It’s been 29 years since we last met. I can wait another hour.”
Despite both the three decades that had passed and the Covid mask, I recognised him immediately. He wore drainpipe jeans ripped at the knee instead of an expensive sculpted suit, and his once straw-blond hair was now grey. Nevertheless, it was still recognisably him: the man once tipped to lead Germany to a new fascist glory. We turned out of the hotel and began to stroll down one of Berlin’s sun-dappled, tree-lined avenues. “So,” I said, “You’re no longer a neo-Nazi then?” He laughed, but did not answer. Perhaps he didn’t consider it a question deserving of a response.
Continue reading...New book claims intercepted cables sent in second world war by Allen Dulles, later head of CIA, enabled disinformation campaign
A US spymaster inadvertently helped the Nazis develop one of the most effective disinformation campaigns of the second world war by spreading rumours about Hitler’s plans for a Where Eagles Dare-style Alpine redoubt, a historian with access to classified US military records has found.
The myth that the Nazis were amassing weapons and crack units of 100,000 fanatical soldiers in the spring of 1945 for a last stand in the Austro-Bavarian Alps was without any basis in fact but had a powerful hold on the imagination of American and British military leaders, who feared it could prolong the war for years.
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