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...The president of the World Jewish Congress has accused leaders of contributing to the “drip, drip method” of spreading antisemitism, comparing it to the defamation campaigns that culminated in the Holocaust.
Ahead of the 75th anniversary on Mondayof the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ronald Lauder said that governments spent too much time talking about the dangers of antisemitism and not enough time tackling it.
Continue reading...Michael Grade and Danny Cohen hit out at ‘unjustifiably offensive’ News at Ten piece
The former BBC chairman Michael Grade and Danny Cohen, its former director of television, have joined criticism of the broadcaster over an “unjustifiably offensive” News at Ten report that appeared to link Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Holocaust.
Orla Guerin, the BBC’s international correspondent, made the reference at the end of an interview with Holocaust survivor Rena Quint ahead of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Continue reading...Representatives from Europe, Russia and America warned against the resurgence of antisemitism at a memorial event at the World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem. Prince Charles, representing Britain, said the lessons of the Holocaust were ‘searingly relevant to this day’
As a child in Japan in the 1950s and 60s, Nobuki Sugihara never knew his father had saved thousands of lives. Few did. His father, Chiune Sugihara, was a trader who lived in a small coastal town about 34 miles south of Tokyo. When not on business trips to Moscow, he coached his young son in mathematics and English. He made breakfast, spreading butter on the toast so thinly “nobody could compete”.
His son had no idea his father saved 6,000 Jews during the second world war. Over six weeks in the summer of 1940, while serving as a diplomat in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara defied orders from his bosses in Tokyo, and issued several thousand visas for Jewish refugees to travel to Japan.
Continue reading...All cemeteries have stories to tell, and the one on Mucurapo Road in Port of Spain, Trinidad, is no exception. Among the names carved on headstones are Irene and Oscar Huth, Erna Marx, Karl Falkenstein, Willi Schwarz and Otto Gumprich. Hebrew inscriptions are adorned with a Star of David.
Five years ago, Hans Stecher joined his mother, father and aunt in the Jewish section of Mucurapo cemetery. Aged 90 when he died, he was the last of about 600 Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe who ended up in Trinidad as they sought sanctuary from persecution and violence.
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...German politicians accuse Roger Hallam of downplaying significance of genocide
A co-founder of Extinction Rebellion has sparked anger in Germany after referring to the Holocaust as “just another fuckery in human history”.
Roger Hallam has been accused of downplaying the Nazis’ genocide of 6 million Jews by arguing in an interview that the significance of the Holocaust has been overplayed.
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...Kindergarten to join other businesses operating inside Staro Sajmište, in Belgrade, Serbia, as long-planned Holocaust memorial remains unbuilt
The greying, box-like building that houses the Savsko Obdanište kindergarten has had many uses over the years.
At one point it was a restaurant; when you step through the front doors you find yourself surrounded by musty, brown 1970s-style dining furniture.
Continue reading...Hundreds of applicants turned down by the government are now looking for answers
A group of more than 100 descendants of Jewish refugees who fled the Nazi regime are challenging the German government’s rejection of their applications to restore their citizenship.
Anyone who was deprived of their German citizenship during the 12 years of Nazi dictatorship on political, racial or religious grounds – as well as their descendants – is potentially eligible for its restoration, according to a clause enshrined in the country’s constitution.
Continue reading...Forgiveness advocate who dedicated her life to Holocaust awareness testified in 2015 trial of SS officer Oskar Groening
Eva Mozes Kor, a survivor of Auschwitz and the death camp’s infamous doctor Josef Mengele, has passed away in Poland during a trip to the Holocaust site, sources said.
The Romanian-born Kor, who founded the Candles Museum in Indiana and devoted her life to Holocaust awareness, was 85.
Continue reading...The museum of the Warsaw ghetto is not due to open for several years, but is already shaping up to be one of the most contentious museums in Europe.
Backed by Poland’s populist government, which has been accused of rewriting history to fit its political agenda, the museum has caused a bitter spat between historians of the Holocaust about how best to tell the tragic story of Warsaw’s Jews.
Continue reading...Report shows 39% of Belgian Jews have been harassed, with some fearing to wear the kippa in public
The doors of the Jewish Museum of Belgium, in Brussels, never used to be locked during daytime visiting hours. That all changed after a day in May 2014 when a jihadi gunman shot dead four people during an attack on the museum in one of the country’s most shocking terrorist atrocities.
Nearly four years after the attack, antisemitism has again been making headlines in Belgium, a country that symbolises Europe’s diversity. Not only is the capital, Brussels, home to the EU institutions and Nato, Belgium is made up of three linguistic groups (French, Dutch and German), making it something of a laboratory for European compromise.
Continue reading...Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu hails Rafi Eitan as a hero of the intelligence services
Rafi Eitan, a renowned and controversial Israeli spymaster who masterminded the capture of Adolf Eichmann, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, has died aged 92.
The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him a “hero of the Israeli intelligence services”.
Continue reading...Israeli foreign minister accuses Poles of hatred towards Jews in remarks described as ‘racist’ by Polish PM
Poland has pulled out of a planned trip to Jerusalem and scuppered an international summit the same day officials were due to arrive, after Israel’s foreign minister accused Poles of hatred against Jews and complicity in the Holocaust.
Israel Katz, who was appointed acting foreign minister on Sunday, said Poles “suckle antisemitism with their mother’s milk”. Speaking on another radio show on Monday morning, he accused all Polish people of harbouring “innate” antisemitism.
Continue reading...Charity that maintains location says it will have ‘significant harmful impacts’
Proposals for a Holocaust memorial have been dealt a blow after the charity responsible for looking after the central London park in which it is supposed to be built said it was opposed the move.
The new landmark, which would also feature a learning centre, is planned for Victoria Tower Gardens on Millbank, alongside the River Thames close to the Houses of Parliament.
Continue reading...One in 20 British adults do not believe the Holocaust happened, and 8% say that the scale of the genocide has been exaggerated, according to a poll marking Holocaust Memorial Day.
Almost half of those questioned said they did not know how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and one in five grossly underestimated the number, saying that fewer than two million were killed. At least six million Jews died.
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