The Auschwitz Memorial criticised Amazon on Sunday, for fictitious depictions of the Holocaust in its TV series Hunters and for selling books of Nazi propaganda.
Related: Outcry after MSNBC host compares Sanders’ Nevada win to Nazi invasion
Continue reading...While joining in the congratulations to Costa prize winner Jack Fairweather, I wonder whether the coverage of his book The Volunteer in your pages (for example in G2 on 30 January) might perhaps have led to a couple of misunderstandings, namely that a) Witold Pilecki was an unknown quantity previously and b) his was the only resistance operation in Auschwitz.
In fact, we have known all about Pilecki’s organisational skills since the 1970s thanks to the work of the late writer and historian Józef Garliński. Like Pilecki he had been a Polish officer arrested for underground activities, and he was a prisoner in Auschwitz and other German concentration camps. His bestselling book Fighting Auschwitz (1975) describes other forms of resistance at the camp as well. Whereas Pilecki’s organisation was based entirely on military contacts, there were also political networks, notably the one run by Stanisław Dubois of the Polish Socialist party. Pilecki recognised these other strands and tried to coordinate them. A later communist resistance effort inside the camp was rather ineffectual, since, under orders from Moscow, it was denied support from the communist partisans outside.
Continue reading...World leaders have gathered to hear the stories of Holocaust survivors 75 years after the liberation of the death camp. Batsheva Dagan, Stanisław Zalewski and Marian Turski shared their experiences of life inside Auschwitz and warned that it could happen again if minority rights are not protected
Continue reading...Humanity will soon be without first-hand witnesses of the depths to which it can sink. Survivors at the memorial knew that
They came to bear witness one last time. Exactly 75 years after the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, those who had seen humanity’s descent into hell returned to speak of it while they still could – and with a new, double urgency. They testified like people running out of time, aware that their own mortality is pressing in on them – and alarmed that the world needs to hear their message now more than ever.
There were fewer than 200 of them at Monday’s international ceremony, confirmation that their ranks are becoming thinner and more frail with the passage of time. Feted as honoured guests in the place where once they were reviled inmates, even together they filled just a few rows. They were at the front of a vast marquee, large enough to house the iconic “gate of death” through which those men and women – almost all mere boys and girls at the time – had passed when it was not theatrically lit to make a spectacular backdrop for television, but when it had the power to terrify.
Continue reading...Those making trip to former Nazi death camp fear lessons of Holocaust are being forgotten
More than 200 survivors are to gather at the former Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz, many probably for the final time, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation.
As rows over the make-up of the international guest list at the memorial ceremony threatened to overshadow Monday’s event, survivors who drew on harrowing memories of their incarceration warned the lessons from the atrocities sanctioned by Adolf Hitler’s administration and carried out often by ordinary Germans were in danger of being forgotten.
Continue reading...My mother, Esther Brunstein, was a survivor of the Łódź ghetto, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. She spoke at the official opening of the Holocaust galleries in the Imperial War Museum, and at the first Holocaust Memorial Day in this country in Westminster Hall, London.
She died three years ago. She spoke and wrote extensively and beautifully about her experiences, but I wish to pay tribute to her with this anecdote.
Continue reading...MPs vote through legislation just as top court rules its provisions unlawful
A confrontation between the Polish government and senior judges has escalated dramatically after the country’s supreme court and parliament issued conflicting rulings on the legality of judicial reforms.
The rival rulings, which concern attempts by the ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) to assume direct control over the judiciary, have thrown the country’s legal order into chaos, with judges now liable for prosecution for complying with rulings issued by their own supreme court.
Continue reading...Mateusz Morawiecki attacks Russian president’s ‘lies’ blaming Poland for start of war
Poland’s prime minister has launched a furious response to claims by Vladimir Putin that Poland was partially responsible for the outbreak of the second world war.
It is the latest episode in a bitter conflict over historical memory that is likely to intensify as the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazism approaches next May.
Continue reading...Foreign correspondent with a knowledge and love of Africa who worked for the Guardian, the Independent and the BBC
The journalist Alex Duval Smith, who has died of cancer aged 55, was a free spirit with a remarkable gift for connecting with others across social, language or cultural barriers.
For more than two decades she worked as a reporter and correspondent in European and African countries, for the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, the BBC, Radio France International and France 24. She had a deep knowledge of and love for Africa and was a citizen of the world – with two nationalities and three languages; she had lived in almost a dozen countries.
Continue reading...Mayors of Prague, Warsaw, Bratislava and Budapest agree to protect common values
The mayors of four central European capitals signed a so-called “Pact of Free Cities” in Budapest on Monday, vowing to stand together against populist national governments in the region.
Budapest’s mayor Gergely Karácsony was joined by his counterparts from Warsaw, Prague and Bratislava to sign the document, which promised to promote the “common values of freedom, human dignity, democracy, equality, rule of law, social justice, tolerance and cultural diversity”.
Continue reading...Poland opts out of 2050 net-zero emissions after hours of wrangling over timetables and money
European Union leaders have vowed to press on with a major economic plan to confront the climate emergency, despite Poland’s opt-out from a net-zero emissions target by 2050.
The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, told journalists he had secured an exemption for Poland on the 2050 target, which is meant to become the legally binding centrepiece of the “European Green Deal” , a plan to transform Europe’s economy announced two days ago.
Continue reading...German chancellor pledges further €60m donation to Auschwitz Foundation
Angela Merkel has for the first time visited the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, site of one of the most notorious atrocities Adolf Hitler’s regime inflicted on Europe.
The German chancellor also pledged a donation of €60m (£51m) towards a fund to conserve the physical remnants of the site of the barracks, watchtowers and personal items of those who died, such as shoes and suitcases.
Continue reading...Move came after Auschwitz Memorial in Poland called on the e-commerce company to remove the ‘disrespectful’ products
A Polish museum has criticised US e-commerce giant Amazon for selling Christmas ornaments decorated with images of the Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The museum at the site of the former camp in southern Poland tweeted screenshots of the items showing train tracks and barracks and requested that Amazon remove them from their site.
Continue reading...Polish resistance fighter who escaped Stutthof will face Bruno Dey, accused of being accessory to murder of 5,230 people
It was when the guards began burning piles of bodies in the open because the crematorium could not keep up with the task that Marek Dunin-Wąsowicz realised he was being held in a camp whose purpose was not just to “concentrate”, but systematically to murder thousands of people.
In the autumn of 1944, the 17-year-old Pole saw trainloads of Jews, most of them from Hungary, being taken straight to the gas chambers at Stutthof. Others were gassed inside an adapted railway carriage, set on tracks to trick prisoners into believing that they were being transported to another destination.
Continue reading...Man, 93, accused as accessory to murder of 5,230 people in what could be one of last such cases
A former guard at Stutthof concentration camp will go on trial in the northern German city of Hamburg on Thursday, in what could be one of the last criminal cases of an individual charged over the Holocaust.
The 93-year-old man, named in the German media as Bruno D, in keeping with the country’s press code, was 17 when he joined the SS-Totenkopfsturmbann (Death’s Head Battalion), which manned the watchtowers at the concentration camp east of what is now the city of Gdańsk, in Poland.
Continue reading...Pew research reveals very different views on whether countries are better off today
Thirty years on, few people in Europe’s former eastern bloc regret the monumental political, social and economic change unleashed by the fall of communism – but at the same time few are satisfied with the way things are now, and many worry for the future.
A Pew Research Center survey of 17 countries, including 14 EU member states, found that while most people in central and eastern Europe generally embraced democracy and the market economy, support was far from uniformly strong.
Continue reading...Analysts say tactic of cooperation against nationalist parties appears to be working
A narrower-than-expected win for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) and a serious setback for Hungary’s governing Fidesz show eastern Europe’s illiberal nationalist parties are not entirely invincible, analysts and commentators have said.
“It looks like this may be a small step in the right direction – but it’s clear the opposition still has an awful lot of work to do,” said Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.
Continue reading...Almost complete election results show party has done even better than four years ago
Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party has scored a convincing victory in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, with almost complete results indicating a parliamentary majority and another four-year term in office.
According to results from 99.5% of constituencies published by the electoral committee on Monday, Law and Justice took 43.8% of the vote, ahead of the country’s biggest opposition grouping, the liberal centre-right Civic Coalition, on 27.2%. The Left alliance took 12.5%, the agrarian PSL and anti-establishment Kukiz’15 8.6% and the far-right Confederation 6.8%.
“We have reason to be happy”, the PiS leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, told supporters on Sunday night.
The results appeared to vindicate the party’s political strategy of combining a big increase in social spending in certain areas, most notably the introduction of an expensive child benefit programme, with nationalist and traditionalist rhetoric, and an uncompromising authoritarian political style that has exacerbated existing divisions in Polish society.
They also crown a dismal four years for the mainstream Polish opposition, which was energised by large-scale demonstrations in 2016 and 2017 against PiS’s attempts to assert direct control over the country’s democratic institutions, most notably the judiciary, but which has failed to formulate a convincing alternative programme. Pressure is mounting on Grzegorz Schetyna, a former foreign minister who leads the centre-right Civic Platform, the largest party in the Civic Coalition.
The government’s increases in welfare spending were made against the backdrop of a booming economy and record consumer confidence. A central issue in these elections was the flagship child benefit programme 500+, which gives families 500 zloty (£100) a month per child.
Civic Platform had opposed the policy before the 2015 parliamentary elections, arguing that it was unaffordable. But the party has since said it would retain the 500+ if elected. Observers argue that this U-turn and PiS’s ability to deliver the programme may have undermined the opposition’s credibility among voters.
Sunday’s PiS victory could also prove a headache for Brussels and several European capitals. In government, the party has been an uncompromising and at times exasperating EU member, as illustrated by a farcical episode in 2017 when it tried to torpedo the re-election of Donald Tusk, a former leader of Civic Platform, as president of the European council.
For years, Warsaw has sparred with the European commission over PiS’s attempts to assert direct control over the Polish judiciary, with several cases referred to the European court of justice. Under PiS, Poland has emerged as an active opponent of the liberal democratic values that underpin the EU, with European diplomats admitting in private that many in Brussels had hoped the problem would be taken out of their hands by Polish voters.
“There was a hope that PiS would lose, but that has not materialised,” said Piotr Buras, the director of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank. “This is not just an issue for Brussels, but for several European capitals – they will have to deal with an emboldened partner.
Conservative ruling party took 43.6% of vote according to Ipsos poll which also shows return of leftwing parties and seats for far-right
Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party is set to win a majority in the country’s parliament and secure another four-year term, according to an exit poll published at the close of voting on Sunday night.
The poll, conducted by Ipsos for private broadcaster TVN, gave Law and Justice 43.6% of the vote, which if correct would give the party 239 out of 460 seats in the Polish Sejm.
Continue reading...Government-run broadcaster that condemned pro-freedom protests to show anti-LGBT film days before election
When Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) published proposals in July 2017 to give the government direct control over the judiciary, hundreds of thousands of Poles took to the streets, holding vigils in front of courthouses and carrying banners with slogans such as “Free courts” and “Freedom, equality, democracy”.
But according to a programme on national broadcaster TVP’s news channel, the protesters had a secret agenda guided by a hostile foreign power. The scenes on the street, it said, were a “street revolt to bring Islamic immigrants to Poland” and backed by EU leaders as revenge for the refusal of PiS to accept migrants under a European relocation scheme.
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