If we assume that autumn 1941 saw the beginning of the systematic murder of the Jews of Europe, then this year we mark 78 years since the onset of the Holocaust, 86 years since the start of the Nazi regime (1933) and 74 years since the liberation of Auschwitz (27 January 1945). The scale of… Continue reading “Asking Too Much of Holocaust Education”
Britain’s largest Holocaust memorial is to be built in Victoria Tower Gardens next to the Palace of Westminster. Scheduled to arrive in 2021, the winning design will consist of a learning centre as well as 23 bronze fin structures with spaces for people to move in between – reminiscent of Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered… Continue reading “The importance of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2019 for ‘Brexit Britain’”
In this Insight blog, the first in a CARR series commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day, Senior Fellow Chris Webb takes a powerful look at the events that led up to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – including the 1942 Gross-Aktion Warsaw. In particular, he focuses on the January Street Battles – the first time the Jewish… Continue reading “Warsaw Ghetto – The Jewish Resistance Spills German Blood”
In a recent interview, Heinz-Christian Strache, Vice-Chancellor of Austria and leader of the radical-right Freedom Party of Austria, noted, that ‘Environmental Protection is Homeland Protection!’. Concerns over the environment along these lines are in no way new to the radical right and have been articulated by both anti-liberal and outright anti-democratic members of this political… Continue reading “Climate change, Holocaust denial and the ‘lies of our times’”
Back in November 2018, restrictions on reporting on five people convicted of belonging to the banned National Action, a violent radical right movement, were lifted. Among them were Mikko Vehvilainen, a Finnish-born veteran of Afghanistan still serving in the British Army at the time of his arrest, and Alexander Deakin, the unemployed Midlands organiser of… Continue reading “On Cupboards”
Eighty years after the Kindertransport, politicization of the supposed threats to western ways of life represented by refugees have become commonplace. Eighty years ago, German Jewish parents sent their children to the UK on a scheme known as the Kindertransport. Some 10,000 children arrived in the framework of a programme of which the UK is… Continue reading “The Kindertransport was controversial too – it teaches us that hostility can be overcome”
Content Warning: The following blog contains depictions of violence within the eyewitness account which some readers may find distressing. Reader discretion is advised. In the second of a two-part series, Senior Fellow, Chris Webb, covers one of the most courageous events of the Second World War, where Jewish prisoners, against all the odds, rose… Continue reading “The Sobibor Death Camp Revolt – October 14, 1943 – Part 2”
Eighty years ago, on 9 November 1938, an order was given by Nazi German authorities to terrorize and arrest German Jewish citizens, resulting in tens of thousands of people being sent to concentration camps. Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, marked a violent escalation against Jewish people. This escalation of violence was a continuation… Continue reading “In remembrance of Kristallnacht”
My CARR Blog for October will cover one of the most courageous events of the Second World War, where Jewish prisoners, against all the odds, rose up against their captors in the Sobibor death camp, in South-Eastern Poland. This blog will be in two parts, part one will cover the initial phase of the revolt.… Continue reading “The Sobibor Death Camp Revolt – October 14, 1943 – Part 1”
The right-wing populist perpetuum mobile Like many others, appalled by what I find extremely dubious and divisive rhetoric in disarming the credibility of independent testimony from Holocaust survivors, I started a petition against Teodorescu’s editorials. Its main aim was to make the owners of GP (the media house Stampen AB, Stena Finans and other lesser… Continue reading “Holocaust survivors in Sweden– the ‘straw men’ for the radical right (Part 2)”