Survivors group had called on firm Felzmann to ‘show some basic decency’ and halt ‘cynical and shameless’ event
Poland’s foreign minister said on Sunday that an “offensive” auction of Holocaust artefacts in Germany has been cancelled, relaying information from his German counterpart, after complaints from Holocaust survivors.
Radosław Sikorski made the comments on X, saying he and German foreign minister Johann Wadephul “agreed that such a scandal must be prevented”.
Continue reading...Court fines publisher after Milo Rau falsely claimed that far-right former chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache sang a song ridiculing the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis
A Swiss theatre director known for re-enacting landmark trials has been told by a judge in Vienna that his publisher must withdraw a book in which he alleged that a far-right Austrian politician sang a song mocking the victims of the Holocaust.
On Thursday, Vienna’s regional court fined independent German publishing house Verbrecher Verlag €1,500 (£1,300) for publishing a book in which Milo Rau alleged that Heinz-Christian Strache, the former leader of the Freedom party (FPÖ), once sang a song with the line: “We’ll manage the seventh million”, a reference to the approximately 6 million European Jews murdered at the hands of the Nazi regime.
Continue reading...Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the past seven days
Continue reading...Court in Thuringia rejected woman’s request to enter concentration camp memorial while wearing the scarf
A German court has ruled that a Nazi concentration camp memorial has the right to refuse entry to those wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh scarf.
The higher administrative court in the eastern state of Thuringia on Wednesday rejected a request from a woman to be allowed entry to the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial while wearing a keffiyeh.
Continue reading...About 180 British Jews and deputy PM Angela Rayner among those in attendance at event in northern Germany
Survivors of the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen and their families have gathered at the site in northern Germany to officially commemorate the 80th anniversary of its liberation by British troops.
Representatives of victims’ associations and the military took part in the ceremony along with the British deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner.
Continue reading...Born in 1912 in Poland, Girone was one of about 245,000 survivors living across more than 90 countries
Rose Girone, believed to be the oldest living Holocaust survivor and a strong advocate for sharing survivors’ stories, has died. She was 113.
She died on Monday in New York, according to the Claims Conference, a New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Continue reading...Albrecht Weinberg ‘horrified’ that MPs relied on far-right party to pass anti-immigration motion
A 99-year-old Holocaust survivor has said he will return his federal order of merit to the German president in protest over MPs passing an anti-immigration motion in parliament with the support of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland.
Albrecht Weinberg, whose parents were murdered in Auschwitz, told the Guardian he was “horrified” on learning that a proposal submitted by the conservative parties had relied on the anti-immigrant, xenophobic AfD to get it over the line.
Continue reading...Lack of knowledge about Holocaust identified as well as level of denial and disinformation seen on social media
A third of young adults in the UK are unable to name Auschwitz or any of the other concentration camps and ghettoes where the crimes of the Holocaust were committed, according to a study.
Other growing gaps in knowledge – especially among those aged 18-29 – were also identified, as part of a major international survey in countries including the US and UK.
Continue reading...First full-scale replica of Frank’s attic annexe goes on show next week on International Holocaust Remembrance Day
The first-ever full-scale replica of Anne Frank’s attic annex goes on show in New York next week, part of an ongoing effort to maintain awareness of – and combat – antisemitism in the midst of conflict in the Middle East and political tensions in the US.
Eighty years on from Frank’s death, aged 15, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, the exhibition at the Center for Jewish History in downtown Manhattan aims to introduce new audiences to one of the most famous victims of Adolf Hitler’s “final solution”.
Continue reading...Some descendants are apprehensive but a historian says making 30m pages of records public is ‘important step’
For 80 years, details of their ancestors’ collaboration with the Nazis have been buried in spotless rows of filing cabinets in The Hague. But thousands of Dutch families face having their relatives’ history laid bare later this week when an archive opens on 425,000 people accused of siding with the occupier during the second world war.
On Thursday, the central archives of the special jurisdiction courts (CABR), established after the allies liberated the Netherlands to bring collaborators to justice, will open under national archive rules.
Continue reading...Gregor Formanek is charged with aiding and abetting 3,322 murders at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
German authorities are pressing for a 100-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard to face trial almost 80 years after the end of the second world war.
The higher regional court in Frankfurt said on Tuesday it had overturned a decision by a lower court under which the suspect had been deemed unfit to stand trial.
Continue reading...Michael Visontay discovered that a ‘crime against history’ in the book world set off a chain of events that led to his family’s delicatessen in 1950s Sydney
It was a brazen act of extreme literary vandalism that desecrated one of the world’s most valuable books. But it also allowed a family of Holocaust survivors to forge a new life in Australia.
The extraordinary tale was uncovered by the author and journalist Michael Visontay while researching his family history during Covid lockdown and has now been published as a book, Noble Fragments.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Manfred Goldberg, 94, urges authorities to preserve fragments of thousands of shoes left to rot at Stutthof concentration camp site
One of the last remaining survivors of the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp has appealed to authorities to salvage fragments of tens of thousands of shoes belonging to murdered Holocaust victims that were recently discovered in a forest at the site.
Manfred Goldberg, who was imprisoned as a teenager at Stutthof, 24 miles (38km) east of Gdańsk, said he was “shocked and dismayed” to hear of the existence of the remnants, eight decades after the shoes’ owners were forced to remove them before being gassed and cremated.
Continue reading...Reports say investigators looking into possibility that Russian security services ordered vandalism in Paris
France is investigating whether graffiti painted on the wall of Paris’s Holocaust memorial last week was a destabilisation operation coordinated from Russia, French media have reported.
On the morning of 14 May, about 20 spray-painted red hand symbols were discovered on one of the memorial’s exterior walls, which is dedicated to honouring individuals who saved Jews from persecution during the Nazi occupation of France.
Continue reading...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.
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