Measure helps close legal loopholes that led to many victims’ descendants having applications rejected
The German government has agreed a draft law to naturalise some descendants of Nazi victims who were previously denied citizenship.
Described by Berlin as a symbolic step, the measure helps close legal loopholes that had led to many victims’ descendants having their citizenship application rejected.
Continue reading...Germany’s greatest living painter donates 100 works, including his Birkenau series, to capital’s new museum
Fans of the German painter Gerhard Richter are expected to flock to Berlin to view 100 works that he has in effect donated in a long-term loan to a new museum of modern art. The works include a series of paintings addressing the Holocaust that he has vowed never to sell.
The donation by the 89-year-old, who is one of the world’s highest-priced living artists, is destined for the Museum der Moderne, which is under construction in the German capital.
Continue reading...The authors of a study on the fate of Polish Jews under Nazism have been told to apologise to a woman for defaming her uncle. The implications for future historical work are alarming
Poland’s nationalists have won their latest battle to defend the country’s wartime reputation. On Tuesday, the Warsaw district court ordered two leading historians to apologise to a woman for defaming a relative in their book about the Holocaust. The landmark ruling has serious implications for academic freedom and the future of Holocaust research, with historians around the world condemning the judgment.
“These are not matters to be adjudicated by courts, this is a point that can be discussed by scholars or interested readers in the exchange of opinions. In that sense, it’s really scandalous,” says Jan Tomasz Gross, whose seminal book Neighbours was a watershed in Poland’s public discussion of the Holocaust more than 20 years ago. “It’s part of a broad effort to stifle any inquiry and particularly the complicity of the local population in the persecution of Jews during that time.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...As the pandemic has forced the cancellation of most large gatherings, many institutions including the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial museum in Poland, Yad Vashem museum in Israel and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC are marking Holocaust Remembrance Day this year with online events
Continue reading... Red Cross returns nearly 160,000 records, many of which belonged to Dutch Jews sent to Nazi death camps
Nearly 160,000 registration cards belonging to Dutch Jews and people from other persecuted minorities, many of whom were destined for Nazi death camps, will be put on display for the first time in the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam after being handed over by the Red Cross.
The cards include name, address, date of birth, profession, marital status, family composition and, in three out of four cases, the date of their transport to a concentration camp written in red pencil. They ended up with the Red Cross after the war and were used to locate missing persons.
Continue reading...UK community speaks out in effort to pressure government to take stronger stance
Leading figures in the UK Jewish community are using Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January to focus on the persecution of Uighur Muslims, saying Jews have the “moral authority and moral duty” to speak out.
Rabbis, community leaders and Holocaust survivors have been at the forefront of efforts to put pressure on the UK government to take a stronger stance over China’s brutal treatment of the Uighurs.
Continue reading...The cellist believes that plans for a UK Holocaust memorial are ‘counter-productive’. What matters most, she argues, is education
Have you, I ask the cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, ever seen a memorial to the Holocaust – or to any atrocity – that was effective?
“It’s difficult to say how effective it is on the person who looks at it,” she says. “I mean I was in it, after all, I’m a survivor of it. Nothing really can come anywhere near what actually happened, you know.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...On the anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg trials, 90-year-old Colette Marin-Catherine confronts her past by visiting the Nazi concentration camp in Germany where her brother was killed. As a young girl, she had been a member of the French resistance and had always refused to set foot in Germany. That changes when a young history student named Lucie enters her life. Prepared to reopen old wounds and revisit the terrors of that time, Marin-Catherine offers important lessons
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...The Kazakh American Association has released a letter on social media accusing Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest Borat film of ‘justifying harassment’
A group of Kazakh-Americans has demanded that Amazon withdraw Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Sacha Baron Cohen’s new satirical comedy which – like its 2006 predecessor Borat – identifies Kazakhstan as the home country of its fictional journalist character Borat Sagdiyev.
In a letter published on social media shortly before the film’s official launch, addressed to three senior Amazon executives, the Kazakh American Association says that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm “may cause irreparable harm to to Kazakhstan’s national image and people as its comedic nature may justify ethnicity-based harassment”. It adds: “This film incites violence against a highly vulnerable and under-represented minority ethnic group.”
Continue reading...Soviet Union’s collapse may be responsible for exodus from eastern Europe
Europe has lost almost 60% of its Jewish population over the past 50 years, mainly as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union after which many Jews left eastern Europe as borders opened, a study shows.
Only about 9% of the global Jewish population now lives in Europe, compared with nearly 90% in the late 19th century – but similar to the proportion 1,000 years ago.
Continue reading...Dr Martin Kulldorff discussed ‘Great Barrington declaration’ letter on Richie Allen Show
One of the three co-authors of a letter that calls for lockdowns to be abandoned in favour of herd immunity has appeared on a radio broadcast that previously featured multiple Holocaust deniers and antisemites.
Dr Martin Kulldorff of Harvard medical school appeared on the Richie Allen Show on 6 October to discuss the letter, described as the Great Barrington declaration, after the Massachusetts town where it was drawn up.
Continue reading...Warwick University academic ‘broke German court ruling that protected dead woman’s reputation’
The daughter of a Holocaust survivor has begun a legal battle to protect her deceased mother’s reputation from allegations that she had a lesbian relationship with an SS guard.
Earlier this year, a German court ruled that Dr Anna Hájková, associate professor of modern continental European history at Warwick University, had violated the woman’s postmortem personality rights by publicly claiming that she had a sexual relationship with the Nazi guard while imprisoned in concentration camps.
Continue reading...According to survey of adults 18-39, 23% said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, had been exaggerated or they weren’t sure
Almost two-thirds of young American adults do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and more than one in 10 believe Jews caused the Holocaust, a new survey has found, revealing shocking levels of ignorance about the greatest crime of the 20th century.
According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48%) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Statement signed by Rowan Williams, bishops, imams and rabbis says Chinese Muslim minority faces ‘human tragedy’
Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, is among more than 70 faith leaders publicly declaring that the Uighurs are facing “one of the most egregious human tragedies since the Holocaust”, and that those responsible for the persecution of the Chinese Muslim minority must be held accountable.
The incarceration of at least a million Uighurs and other Muslims in prison camps, where they are reported to face starvation, torture, murder, sexual violence, slave labour and forced organ extraction, is a potential genocide, say the clerics.
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