Currently Browsing: World War II 8 articles
Painting Nuremberg
Gloria Tessler on the English impressionist who volunteered to paint the Nuremberg Trial. She was one of the best-known artists of the English Impressionist movement, celebrated for her figurative work, ballet dancers and circus performers. Then, as one of the few official women war artists during the Second World War, Dame Laura Knight painted women […]
How the Anne Frank Cold Case Team Betrayed the World
Ruben Vis explains how the recent revelations about Anne Frank’s alleged betrayer are wrong. Who betrayed Anne Frank and the others who were hiding with her? The question has been a source of speculation and research ever since Otto H. Frank, Anne’s father and sole survivor of the eight, returned from Auschwitz in the summer […]
The Real-Life Inglourious Basterds
Nathan Abrams reviews a new book about the true history of those Jewish commandos who fought against the Nazis and helped to win World War II. The idea that Jews went like sheep to the slaughter during the Holocaust is a common one. But a spate of recent books is challenging that idea. One of […]
The Nazis’ British Blacklist
In advance of Holocaust Memorial Day 2021, Nathan Abrams reviews a new book about the Nazis’ British hitlist and who wasn’t on it. Around 1939, the Gestapo drew up a list. In the case of the Nazi occupation of the United Kingdom, some 2,600 named individuals were to be targeted for removal. They would have […]
How Finland’s Jews Fought Alongside the Nazis
Mark Bernheim reviews a remarkable book about Finland’s Jews during World War II. In the complex history of the Holocaust, Finland was the only European combatant country in which none of its Jewish citizens were sent to concentration or extermination camps. In many other ways, too, the history of its tiny Jewish community is unique. How […]
A Jewish army doctor and the gift of a German war widow
Myra Woolfson reminisces about her late father and the interesting set of items he brought home from the war. My late father, Captain Vernon Smith, was a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps from November 1941 until March 1946. He joined up towards the end of his first hospital job following graduation. When he […]
Churchill and Alexander Korda
Peter Lawson finds flaws in the fascinating documentary Churchill and the Movie Mogul A fascinating documentary about Hungarian-Jewish émigré director, Alexander Korda (1893-1956), was screened on 25 September on BBC4. (It is still available to watch on BBC iPlayer. Titled Churchill and the Movie Mogul, it relates the relationship between Korda and Churchill from the […]
From Aliyah to ‘I’m A Celebrity’: Gwrych Castle’s Secret Jewish History
Nathan Abrams reveals the forgotten Jewish history of Gwrych Castle. One thing that has been missed in the excitement of the announcement that Gwrych Castle in Abergele, north Wales is hosting I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here is the location’s Jewish history. During the Second World War, Jewish refugee children were housed in […]