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”
A key under-studied area for analysis is how contemporary extreme right movements can also be seen as totalitarian. Indeed, it is not difficult to find examples of such. According to an old joke, while in a liberal democracy everything that is not forbidden is allowed, in a totalitarian system everything that has not been banned… Continue reading “Totalitarianism in the twentieth century and beyond”
This August 2019 CARR blogpost follows the account of Stanislaw-Shulem Kon who was born in 1909 in Praszka, near Lodz, a city in which he resided until 1939. As a Polish soldier he fought during the September 1939 Polish campaign. He returned to Lodz and from there in March 1940, together with his wife and… Continue reading “The Eyewitness Account of Stanislaw Kon and Treblinka Death Camp Uprising – 2 August 1943”
The creation of new symbols and rituals to evoke belief in a higher cause are central to the concept, ‘political religion’, prevalent in fascism studies for at least two decades. ‘I’m beginning to comprehend, I think, some of the reasons for Hitler’s astounding success. Borrowing a chapter from the Roman church, he is restoring pageantry… Continue reading “Political religions and fascism”
When UN Special Rapporteur on Poverty, Philip Alston, published a report late last year saying that 14 million people in the UK were living in poverty as a result of the gutting of local services – ‘not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one’ – he was for the… Continue reading “Holocaust Historian: AOC’s Point About Trump’s Migrant Detention Centers Was Missed”
Krakow 2016 – The Eagle Pharmacy © Chris Webb On June 4, 1942, it was the Jews of Krakow who faced the perils and uncertainties of a round-up. A Polish Catholic, Tadeusz Pankiewicz, witnessed the round-up from the window of his pharmacy – situated in Harmony Square at the very centre of the Krakow ghetto.… Continue reading “The Eyewitness Account of Tadeusz Pankiewicz and the Krakow Ghetto – June 1942”
On the eve of the Sabbath, April 18, 1942, the Nazis perpetrated a massacre in the Warsaw ghetto, and the date is forever associated with the so-called ‘Night of Blood’ or the ‘Bartholomew’s Night.’ For a day or two before the operation, a rumour made the rounds within the ghetto that a uniformed German had… Continue reading “The Night of Blood in the Warsaw Ghetto”
The Jewish Octopus trope has 19th century roots but was most fully exploited in Nazi Germany. This article is dedicated to the memory of Paul R. Weinstein. A January issue of The Times of Israel reproduced, as an example of “recent anti-Semitic memes around George Soros,” a caricature of Soros as a tentacled monster hovering over North… Continue reading “George Soros Targeted By Anti-Semitic Meme That Predates The Nazis”
For the last ten years, I have been regularly involved in either contributing to, or running, events for Holocaust Memorial Day. As well as more formal talks and activities, every year ‘Q & A’ discussion at such events have tended to relate the horrific events of the Nazi regime and its genocide to more contemporary… Continue reading “Holocaust Memorial Day in 2019 and Beyond”
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”