Category Archives: Nazism

Revealed: the secret trauma that inspired German literary giant

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WG Sebald’s writing on the Holocaust was driven by the anger and distress he felt over his father’s service in Hitler’s army

His books are saturated with despair. Over and over again, his emotionally traumatised characters are caught – inescapably – in plots that doom them to a life of anguish. Often, they kill themselves.

Now, the psychological wounds and suicidal thoughts that blighted WG Sebald’s own life and secretly inspired him to begin writing fiction are to be laid bare for the first time in a forthcoming biography.

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Top US general warned of ‘Reichstag moment’ in Trump’s turbulent last days

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Gen Mark Milley drew comparison to Nazi Germany as Trump tried to overturn election defeat, new book I Alone Can Fix This says

Shortly before the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, told aides the US was facing a “Reichstag moment” because Donald Trump was preaching “the gospel of the Führer”, according to an eagerly awaited book about Trump’s last year in office.

Related: Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book says

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Nazis, fear and violence: when reporting from Berlin was dangerous

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Our Germany correspondent salutes the man who did his job 100 years ago, when it was far more perilous and unpredictable

Frederick Augustus Voigt, who was the Manchester Guardian’s Berlin correspondent between 1920 and 1932, did not look like an intrepid reporter.

A 1935 portrait by the Bauhaus photographer Lucia Moholy makes it appear as though he wants to back away from the camera, distrustful eyes barricaded behind thick, round glasses. His physical appearance was described in his 1957 obituary as “fragile-looking and nervous in manner, shortsighted, with a trick of smiling from the mouth downwards.”

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EU founding father Robert Schuman moves a step closer to sainthood

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Pope Francis gives ‘venerable’ status to post-war French statesman and supporter of European unity

Robert Schuman, a French statesman who was an early advocate for the bloc that evolved into the European Union, has moved ahead on the Catholic church’s path toward possible sainthood.

The Vatican said Pope Francis on Saturday approved a decree declaring the “heroic virtues″ of Schuman, a former prime minister and finance minister after the second world war. In 1950, as foreign minister, he developed a plan to promote European economic unity in hopes of furthering peace.

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‘Hero of Auschwitz’ David Dushman, last surviving liberator of death camp, dies aged 98

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Red Army soldier David Dushman used his T-34 Soviet tank to mow down the electric fence of the Nazi death camp

David Dushman, the last surviving soldier who took part in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1945, has died at the age of 98.

He died in a Munich clinic on Friday night, the city’s Jewish IKG cultural community said on Sunday, describing him as a liberating “hero of Auschwitz”.

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First-hand stories shed new light on Nazi death marches

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Wiener Holocaust Library in London has gathered testimonies and photographs of forced evacuations at end of second world war

First-hand accounts from survivors of Nazi death marches, which formed a last ruthless chapter of the genocide, are to go on display with testimonies translated into English for the first time.

During the death marches, tens of thousands of people died on roadsides of exhaustion, shot for failing to keep up, or murdered in seemingly random massacres as the Nazis moved people from concentration camps before liberation by the allies, leaving a trail of blood across Europe.

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‘I seek a kind person’: the Guardian ad that saved my Jewish father from the Nazis

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In 1938, there was a surge of classified ads in this newspaper as parents – including my grandparents – scrambled to get their children out of the Reich. What became of the families?

On Wednesday 3 August 1938, a short advertisement appeared on the second page of the Manchester Guardian, under the title “Tuition”.

“I seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent Boy, aged 11, Viennese of good family,” the advert said, under the name Borger, giving the address of an apartment on Hintzerstrasse, in Vienna’s third district.

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Man, 100, charged in Germany over 3,518 Nazi concentration camp murders

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Man is alleged to have been Nazi SS guard at Sachsenhausen camp between 1942 and 1945

German prosecutors have charged a 100-year-old man with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he served during the second world war as a Nazi SS guard at a concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin.

The man is alleged to have worked at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1942 and 1945 as an enlisted member of the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing, said Cyrill Klement, who led the investigation of the centenarian for the Neuruppin prosecutors’ office.

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Fears for Polish Holocaust research as historians ordered to apologise

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Court tells professors to apologise to 81-year-old woman who claims they defamed her late uncle

A court has ordered two prominent historians to apologise to an elderly woman who claimed they had defamed her late uncle over his wartime actions, in a case seen as critical to independent Holocaust research in Poland.

Prof Jan Grabowski of the University of Ottawa and Prof Barbara Engelking of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research were accused of defaming Edward Malinowski by suggesting in a book that he gave up Jews to Nazi Germans.

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Fears rise that Polish libel trial could threaten future Holocaust research

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Case brought in wake of rightwing government criminalising blame of Polish nation for Nazi crimes could have implications for further research

Two Polish historians are facing a libel trial over a book examining Poles’ behaviour during the second world war, a case whose outcome is expected to determine the future of independent Holocaust research under Poland’s nationalist government.

A verdict is expected in Warsaw’s district court on 9 February in the case against Barbara Engelking, a historian with the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research in Warsaw, and Jan Grabowski, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa. While the case is a libel trial, it comes in the wake of a 2018 law that makes it a crime to falsely accuse the Polish nation of crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The law caused a major diplomatic spat with Israel.

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Nazi art dispute goes to US supreme court in landmark case

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Heirs of Jewish art dealers bring case over Guelph Treasure that defence lawyers say could open floodgates

A 12-year wrangle over a rare collection of medieval ecclesiastical art sold by Jewish art dealers to the Nazis in 1935 will arrive in front of the highest court in the US on Monday, in a landmark case defence lawyers say could open the floodgates for restitution battles from all over the world to be fought via the US.

The supreme court will hear oral arguments on whether the dealers’ heirs can sue in US courts to retrieve the church reliquaries, known as the Guelph Treasure or Welfenschatz, from Germany.

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The neo-Nazi symbol posted by Pete Evans has a strange and dark history | Jason Wilson

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The sonnenrad is associated with a grab bag of esoteric racist nonsense, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful as a symbol of hatred and murder

If you weren’t aware that the symbol posted by Pete Evans is functionally equivalent to a swastika, that’s because part of its attraction to contemporary neo-Nazis is its slight obfuscation of the true nature of their movement.

It’s also because it has been more widely adopted as a symbol for the racist politics of fascism as the focus of that movement has changed its emphasis from ultranationalism to a transnational focus on supposed dangers to the white race, wherever they may be.

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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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‘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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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 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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Holocaust survivor launches legal claim against German railway

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Salo Muller secured €50m from Dutch railway for transporting people to Nazi camps

A Holocaust survivor who successfully campaigned for the Dutch railway to pay compensation for transporting people to the Nazi concentration camps has tabled a legal claim against the German state over the wartime role of the Deutsche Reichsbahn.

Salo Muller, 84, whose parents were taken by rail from Amsterdam to the Dutch transit camp Westerbork, and on to their deaths at Auschwitz, is demanding an apology and financial recompense for about 500 Dutch survivors and about 5,500 next of kin.

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They were at the death camp at the same time. Now the survivor sees the SS guard meet his fate

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Pleased at the verdict, insulted by the penalty: Manfred Goldberg tells of his reaction to last week’s conviction of Bruno Dey for his role in 5,000 deaths at Stutthof

They were both German teenagers when they arrived at Stutthof concentration camp within a few weeks of each other in 1944. One was a 17-year-old recruit to the SS, the other a 14-year-old Jewish boy who had already spent three years incarcerated by the Nazis.

Manfred Goldberg, now 90, doesn’t know if Bruno Dey, now 93, was one of the guards that watched his every move from a tower, ready to shoot at any sign of transgression. But he is convinced of Dey’s part in the deaths of thousands of inmates. The SS guards committed “crimes beyond description”, he told the Observer. “Atrocities of that magnitude cannot be forgotten.”

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