Exclusive: MP apologised for saying on eve of Holocaust Memorial Day that Gaza should be remembered as a genocide
Kate Osamor has had the Labour whip restored after an internal investigation was conducted into her comments on Holocaust Memorial Day.
The MP for Edmonton apologised for sending her local party members a message saying Gaza should be remembered as a genocide on the eve of the memorial day.
Continue reading...French president marks 30th anniversary with video, airing Sunday, saying international community lacked will to stop the slaughter
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said France and its western and African allies “could have stopped” Rwanda’s 1994 genocide but did not have the will to halt the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis.
In a video message to be published on Sunday to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide, Macron will emphasise that “when the phase of total extermination against the Tutsis began, the international community had the means to know and act”, the presidency said on Thursday.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Images taken secretly some 80 years ago are being published for the first time to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day
A remarkable series of photographs of Jewish families being forced to leave their homes in Germany in the middle of the second world war has been published for the first time, following a chance discovery.
The images are a striking new testament to the sudden upheaval and terror of the Holocaust and were taken secretly by an amateur photographer. He is believed to have wanted to pass down the scenes he was witnessing, despite the risk to himself. They show groups of people gathering outside a restaurant near the railway station in the Silesian city of Breslau, now Wrocław in Poland. Jewish men, women and children of all ages were held here for a few days before deportation by train. Almost all are certain to have been killed just a few days later in a documented shooting in Lithuania. Others were killed at a later date in Poland.
Continue reading...A DNA test has helped Shalom Koray find relatives in the US after escaping the Holocaust in a rucksack at the age of two
In 1943, a two-year-old boy found wandering the streets of the Warsaw ghetto at the height of the Jewish uprising was smuggled out in a rucksack, probably by a police officer.
The identity of the child could not be known. There was no one to attest even to a first name. His early life would be spent hidden away in orphanages, still not safe from antisemitic persecution, and without any real understanding of what it was to have a parent.
Continue reading...Vincent Reynouard discovered living double life in Scottish village where he worked as a tutor, reports say
A Holocaust denier who was arrested in a Scottish fishing village will be extradited back to France after spending two years on the run from the authorities.
Vincent Reynouard lost his extradition battle after his arrest in November 2022. He had been discovered living a double life in Anstruther, Fife, where he worked as a private tutor, according to reports.
Continue reading...Remarks by rights chief come as civil society groups warn of a rise in antisemitism amid Israel-Hamas war
Antisemitism is a “deeply ingrained racism in European society” that poses an existential threat to the continent’s Jewish community and the fundamental aims of the European Union, an EU official has warned.
Michael O’Flaherty, the director of the bloc’s agency for fundamental rights, said it was worrying that only a third of the general population considered antisemitism a big problem, when there was no doubt “dramatic moments in our societies trigger antisemitic responses”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Palestinian Authority leader caused outrage after talking about Hitler and European Jews in a speech to his Fatah party
Dozens of leading Palestinian intellectuals, artists and other public figures have published an open letter condemning antisemitic comments made by the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.
In a letter published on Sunday, 96 people, including Rashid Khalidi, the historian, Dana el-Kurd, the political scientist, and Sam Bahour, the prominent businessman, said they “unequivocally condemn the morally and politically reprehensible comments” made by Abbas, which were publicly circulated last week.
Continue reading...Ulma family including unborn child all beatified for their actions to help Jews during second world war
The Vatican has beatified a Polish family of nine – a married couple and their small children – who were executed by the Nazis during the second world war for sheltering Jews.
During a ceremonious mass in the village of Markowa, in south-east Poland, the papal envoy Cardinal Marcello Semeraro read out the Latin formula of the beatification of the Ulma family signed last month by Pope Francis.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...An official investigation of claims that many more people than previously thought died during Nazi control of the Channel Island has pleased some, but dismayed others
Their foreboding entrance smothered in ivy, the tunnels gouged out of sheer rock beside Water Lane on the island of Alderney have long terrified generations of the island’s children.
For decades, though, it seemed that was as far as the notoriety of the dank tunnels on the outskirts of St Anne, the capital of the tiny Channel Island, would extend.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...Peace between Hemedti’s RSF and Sudan’s army will not end war crimes. As UN security council president, Britain must act
As conflict in Sudan escalates, it is becoming clear that the Rapid Support Forces has returned to Darfur to complete the genocide it began 20 years ago. The RSF is the Janjaweed rebranded, the “devils on horseback” used by the Sudanese government from 2003 to implement widespread and systematic crimes against non-Arab communities across Darfur. The RSF was, and still is, commanded by Gen Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.
In recent weeks, what we knew was coming has been confirmed. Yale University’s Conflict Observatory, which uses a combination of satellite imagery, Nasa thermal-detection data and open-source analysis, found evidence of the “targeted destruction of at least 26 communities” by the RSF between 15 April and 10 July. Mass graves have been discovered, and satellite imagery shows entire urban neighbourhoods and villages have been burned down.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Bloomfield Auctions rejects accusations it is acting immorally and insulting the memory of Nazis’ victims
A Northern Ireland auction house is going ahead with the sale of Adolf Hitler memorabilia despite an outcry from Jewish leaders.
The managing director of Bloomfield Auctions, Karl Bennett, rebuffed accusations on Wednesday that the sale was immoral and would insult the memory of those murdered by the Nazis.
Continue reading...Frank-Walter Steinmeier becomes his country’s first head of state to speak at Warsaw commemorations
Germany’s president has asked for forgiveness for the crimes his country committed in the second world war, on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the first German president to speak at the commemorations in Poland’s capital, joined his Polish and Israeli counterparts to mark 80 years since Jewish insurgents’ doomed uprising against Nazi occupiers.
Continue reading...Tweet, now deleted, was in response to Rachel Shabi’s comments on Holocaust education
The Board of Deputies of British Jews has apologised to the journalist Rachel Shabi after a message on its official Twitter account described her as an “asshole”.
The tweet from the organisation’s account on Saturday was in response to Shabi’s comments on Holocaust education.
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...Liliana Segre, 92, has been subjected to racist attacks, and fears the Holocaust will become a footnote in the history books
An Italian senator who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp and this year found herself witnessing a far-right government take power again in Rome has said her “personal nightmare” is that the Holocaust will all but vanish from history books.
Liliana Segre, 92, was the only one of her relatives to survive the Holocaust, which killed six million Jews as part of Nazi Germany’s second world war campaign to obliterate the Jewish population in Europe.
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