Suggestions to make the 8th May a national German holiday on occasion of the 75th anniversary of the end of Second World War have given the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) the opportunity to challenge dominant German memory culture by urging to remember German victims and offering alternative lessons to be learned from German history. What… Continue reading “An “ambivalent day”: How the AfD attempts to re-frame the 8th May as day to commemorate German Victimhood “
Dawid Sierakowiak recorded in his diary that at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, on September 4, 1942, Chaim Rumkowski, the Chairman of the Jewish Council of Elders, and Warszawski, the head of many factories, spoke at 13 Lutomierska Street in the Łódź Ghetto, Poland. They said: ‘Sacrificing the children and the elderly is necessary, since… Continue reading “Chaim Rumkowski – Give Me Your Children Speech”
The far-right has always created “alt-histories” and used historical revisionism to protect their power. President Trump is no different. In 2017, Kellyanne Conway, counselor to US President Donald Trump, coined the phrase ‘alternative facts’ to describe why the Trump administration had differing figures about the size of the audience at the newly elected president’s inauguration… Continue reading “Amid COVID-19, Trump Attempts To Rewrite History”
In the latest of a series looking at eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust, CARR Senior Fellow, Mr Chris Webb presents David Sierakowiak’s account of the Lodz Ghetto, describing the horrific conditions under Nazi occupation and Chaim Rumkowski’s leadership. Dawid Sierakowiak was born in Lodz on July 25, 1924, and graduated from the Lodz Ghetto’s Gymnasium… Continue reading “David Sierakowiak’s Lodz Ghetto Diary”
In the latest of a series looking at eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust, CARR Senior Fellow, Mr Chris Webb presents the troubling account of Stanislaw Kozak, a local Pole who helped build the gas chambers at Belzec, along with other Polish craftsmen. ‘There arrived in Belzec in October 1941, three SS-men who demanded 20 workers… Continue reading “Eye Witness Testimony of Gas Chambers built at Belzec – Stanislaw Kozak – 14 October 1945”
Remembering the past is always complex. Remembering inevitably means we recall only selected sections of the past, and so in making any such selection we forget as much as we remember. This imperfect process of remembering is still far better than failing to remember, and the memory of the Holocaust is simply too important not… Continue reading “Remembering Auschwitz 75 through Sonderkommando Photography”
In this latest CARR Insights Blog, Senior Fellow, Mr Chris Webb, provides a descriptive account of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and what those events mean for the remembrance of the Holocaust. On Saturday at around 9:00 am, the first Russian soldier from a reconnaissance unit of the 100th Infantry Division of the 106th Corps appears… Continue reading “The Liberation of Auschwitz, January 27, 1945”
One. Every second article written about fascism starts by complaining that there is no consensus about what fascism is, then agrees with Roger Griffin’s definition of fascism as an ideology of national regeneration before going on to prove, once again, that fascism involved an ideology of national regeneration. Two. Scholars stubbornly refuse to separate… Continue reading “Ten Things I Hate About Fascism Studies”
In the latest in Senior Fellow, Chris Webb’s series on Jewish Resistance and Concentration Camps of the Holocaust, Webb looks into the biggest mass execution in one day, in the whole history of German atrocities during WW2, Aktion Erntefest, among others. On 3 November 1943, early in the morning, SS and Police units surrounded the… Continue reading “Aktion Erntefest – Lublin District – November 1943”
During the Second World War, the Sonderkommando [Special Working Group] was forced by Auschwitz-Birkenau’s SS commandantur to carry out the ghastly work at the gas chambers. This included leading the victims to their deaths, often unsuspectingly, and afterwards burning the bodies of those gassed on pyres, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. A crematoria was established… Continue reading “75th commemoration of the Sonderkommando Revolt at Auschwitz–Birkenau”