World War II
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"On 19 September 1941, the Germans occupied Kiev. The Jews of the surrounding area were subjected to abuse and persecution and ultimately they were gathered and marched to the Babi Yar ravine. In the course of two days, 29-30 September (Yom Kippur Eve), 33,771 Jewish men, women and children were murdered at Babi Yar by German Einsatzgruppe C soldiers with the assistance of local collaborators. We invite you to visit an online exhibit featuring 80 photographs of Jews murdered at Babi Yar. The photos were submitted to Yad Vashem together with Pages of Testimony memorializing their names; a mute testament to the persecution of an entire Jewish community – from its rabbis, teachers and pupils, to its traders and artisans, philosophers and scientists - men, women, children and babies. In many cases, no one remained to commemorate the names of the murdered. Click here to view.
We invite you to enroll in a free online course entitled " Teaching the Holocaust". Explore the history, delve into pedagogical challenges revealed by research, and find practical solutions for teaching one of the most devastating events in human history. During this course you will enrich your understanding of the history of the Holocaust, hearing from scholars at Yad Vashem, and experts from UCL who will share their research into teaching and learning about the Holocaust. The course is scheduled to begin on 26 October 2020. Click here to join.
Displayed in the Yad Vashem Synagogue is a metal sheet inscribed with the Ten Commandments and a small Torah scroll, two artifacts that the Jews deported to the area of Transnistria took with them. While there, the deportees fashioned a simple Torah mantle and crude wooden staves for the Torah scroll. When these Jews returned to Czernowitz, they brought the artifacts back with them. The Synagogue at Yad Vashem is designed to combine past and present. It serves as a memorial and, at the same time, as a functioning place of worship and assembly. Joyous occasions celebrated here, such as Bar Mitzvah ceremonies, symbolize renewal and the continuing chain of tradition. Some of the sacred ornaments exhibited are displayed as they were found, as fragments. They shine against the dark background, thus demonstrating that they are only remnants of a shattered world. Ahead of the Simchat Torah Holiday click here to learn more about this special Torah."
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"This summer, the government of Poland passed legislation curbing the rights of Holocaust survivors and their families. Shockingly, the law is set to take effect Thursday on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
For Polish survivors and their descendants, who have sought justice for decades over the wrongful seizure of their property, this is a massive blow.
For Jews, the High Holy Days are a time to remember the lessons of the past, recognize injustices and seek to correct them. Jewish tradition understands that this requires an honest study of the past and a commitment to seeking justice.
The new Polish law does just the opposite, foreclosing any current or potential claims that Jews and non-Jews have to property that was first expropriated during the Holocaust and then nationalized during the communist era that followed. For Polish survivors and their descendants, who have sought justice for decades over the wrongful seizure of their property, this is a massive blow.
Leaders of many countries recognize that this is a reprehensible action on the part of Poland and have offered strong criticism. Here in the United States, Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his deep “regret” at the law, urging changes and saying it “will harm all Polish citizens whose property was unjustly taken, including that of Polish Jews who were victims of the Holocaust.” On Capitol Hill, a bipartisan group of congressional leaders has called for scrapping the law.
In Israel, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the law was “a shameful decision and disgraceful contempt for the memory of the Holocaust,” while Foreign Minister Yair Lapid recalled Israel’s chargé d’affaires from Warsaw and delayed having the Israeli ambassador to Poland take up his post.
Poland’s European allies have also spoken up. Eric Pickles, the United Kingdom’s special envoy on post-Holocaust Issues, pressed the country to change course: “Restitution of confiscated Jewish property remains unfinished business. Poland's many friends urge it to agree [to] a fair and reasonable scheme.”
In response to these forceful statements, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki declared, “As long as I am the prime minister, Poland will surely not pay for German crimes. Not a zloty, not a euro, not a dollar.”
That retort seeks to distract from the issue at hand. While it is true that Poland suffered greatly under Nazi occupation, the property in question was taken by Poland’s former government after the war and remains in Poland today.
Holocaust victims suffered expropriation of their property twice — first by the Nazis in the Holocaust and then, after the post-war Polish government nullified Nazi takings, a second time by the communist authorities. To many Holocaust survivors, seeing their struggle culminate in this legislation under a democratic Poland is akin to their property being taken a third time.
Their seized homes, apartments, offices and factories are now owned either by the government or by private individuals. Although there is no reliable or centralized estimate on the total number of claims, a 2016 list from Warsaw alone included 2,613 street addresses with open claims. Making amends need not impact current occupants of the property. Other countries have provided claimants with substitute property or compensation, and a 2017 legislative proposal by the Polish government would have taken this approach.
Moreover, a 2020 State Department report found that Poland, which at 3.3 million had the largest European Jewish community prior to World War II, is the only European Union member state with significant Holocaust-era property issues that has not enacted comprehensive legislation on national property restitution or compensation covering Holocaust confiscations.
The truth is that this law is part of a broader trend of Polish government actions over the last few years to steer the narrative of the Holocaust away from Jewish suffering and erase any Polish part in — and responsibility for — what happened to Jews during World War II.
It comes on the heels of similar Polish measures, the most troubling being legislation that circumscribed speech blaming Poland for anything that happened during the Holocaust. That problematic bill was passed by the Parliament in 2018 on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day."
Claudio Durigon, a member of the right-wing League party and a deputy economy minister, had proposed to rename a park after Benito Mussolini’s brother.
"ROME — An Italian government official resigned on Thursday after coming under fierce criticism for his proposal to rename a park in his hometown after the fascist brother of Italy’s former dictator, Benito Mussolini.
The proposal to rename the park after Arnaldo Mussolini was made earlier this month by the official, Claudio Durigon, an under secretary in the economy ministry who is a member of the right-wing League party.
It reignited a debate over the memory of Benito Mussolini in a nation still struggling to reconcile its fascist past. Unlike other countries that agreed long ago on a blanket condemnation of their authoritarian rulers, debates still flare frequently in Italy over whether a distinction should be made between what Mussolini’s supporters view as the good he did during his 1922-1943 rule and the atrocities he ordered.
“The case is a clear example of how history can be revised in Italy these days,” said Andrea Mammone, an Italian historian at Royal Holloway University of London. “Fascist ideology and culture are present again not just in smaller, extremist movements, but also in major national parties.”
In recent years, Italy’s far-right parties have gained support. One of them, Brothers of Italy, once fielded Mussolini’s great-grandson as a candidate for the European Parliament and is now the most popular party in Italy, according to recent polls. It is followed close behind by Mr. Durigon’s anti-immigrant League party.
In an open letter of apology in which he announced his resignation, Mr. Durigon denied that he was ever a fascist. But he said he wanted to pay tribute to the “great work” done by the Mussolini regime to reclaim the area around Latina, the city near Rome where the park is located, and to eradicate malaria there. The name of Arnaldo Mussolini “is part of the memory of the city,” he wrote.
“I was attacked for proposing to save the historical memory,” he added.
The park was once named for Arnaldo Mussolini but in 2017, the City Council renamed it Falcone and Borsellino Park to honor two slain anti-mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were killed by the mafia in 1992.
Mr. Durigon, speaking at a rally in Latina this month, said he wanted to revert to the prior name of the park to honor Arnaldo Mussolini, who wrote for a fascist newspaper and was considered his brother’s mouthpiece.
Giuseppe Conte, the former prime minister who leads the populist Five Star Movement, dubbed the proposal “serious and disconcerting” and called for the resignation of Mr. Durigon. Left-leaning parties, anti-mafia associations and groups of antifascist fighters expressed outrage.
Gianfranco Pagliarulo, the president of the left-leaning National Association of Italian Partisans, wrote in the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano this month that the proposal was alarming and the latest in a series of instances in which politicians expressed fascist sympathies — including regional officials who sang fascist songs on the radio or sponsored festivals by neo-fascist fringe groups.
“The resignation of Under Secretary Claudio Durigon is excellent news for democracy and antifascism,” Mr. Pagliarulo said in a statement on Friday.
Right-wing newspapers criticized the accusations against Mr. Durigon, alluding to a “cancel culture of political correctness” in Italy.
Matteo Salvini, the head of the League party, dismissed the debate, saying that there was no nostalgia for fascism in his party or anywhere in Italy.
But the flatlands south of Rome, where Latina is located, are known as being a reservoir of fascist sentiment. In the late 1920s, the regime reclaimed the land from the malaria-rife Pontine swamps, both to gain fields for cultivation and to prove it could make the area habitable.
Workers drained swamps and built roads and infrastructure, while architects designed entire cities where the regime relocated families from northern Italy. When it was inaugurated in 1932, the city of Latina was called Littoria, a reference to the “lictors” or Roman troops who carried bundles of rods, or fasces, a symbol of authority and order that gave the Fascist party its name.
Mr. Mammone, the historian, said that Arnaldo Mussolini had no direct connection with Latina, but his name simply represented a tribute to fascism. Many people still equate the monumental work conducted in the area as a symbol of fascist achievement.
In his apology, Mr. Durigon wrote that his own grandparents were colonists from the north who participated in the draining of the Pontine swamps.
"The war waged by Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union was one of annihilation. If in the occupied Western countries the aggressors preserved a modicum of civility towards the local populace, there was no such decorum shown to the “untermenschen” of the East.
Seven and a half million citizens were systematically murdered in the occupied territories of the USSR, including Jews, Gypsies, communists and civilians suspected of helping the partisans. For every German soldier killed by the latter, an entire village along with all its inhabitants might be burned down in retribution.
War crimes were committed not only by the Einsatzgruppen – paramilitary death squads specially created for the extermination of Jews and Bolsheviks, but also by soldiers of the Waffen SS and the Wehrmacht. They were actively assisted by Baltic, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian collaborators.
They were followed by Kiev’s Jewish population, who were ordered to report to the Babi Yar ravine in the north-western part of the city at 8am on Sept. 29, ostensibly for a headcount and resettlement. Refusal to obey was punishable by death.
Thousands packed their possessions and went to their deaths without realizing it. Those who guessed their fate and tried to flee were dragged into the ravine by force. “Mom tried to shield us as best she could, so that the shots hit her not us,” recalled Genya Batasheva, who miraculously survived: “People were tearing at their hair, screaming hysterically, going crazy. I saw a baby crying on the ground. A fascist went up and smashed its head with a rifle butt. I probably lost consciousness, I don’t remember what happened next.”
At the place of execution, the condemned were lined up on the edge of the precipice in groups of 30-40 and executed with machine guns. The shots were drowned out by music and the noise of a plane flying over the ravine. Small children were pushed in while still alive.
On the morning of March 22, 1943, a unit of the 118th Schutzmannschaft Battalion in the Minsk region of Soviet Belarus was ambushed by the “Uncle Vasya” partisan brigade of Vasily Voronyansky. During the firefight, several soldiers, including a favorite of Adolf Hitler himself, 1936 Berlin Olympics shot-put champion Hans Welke, were killed.
The partisans were tracked back to the village of Khatyn by members of the battalion, mainly Ukrainian collaborators, as well as the infamous SS Dirlewanger Battalion. After a brief skirmish, the village had to be abandoned, and it was immediately encircled by the death squads.
Residents were driven out of their houses and into a barn, where they were locked inside. When the Ukrainians set fire to the thatched roof, panic ensued. People screamed, cried, begged for mercy and tried to break down the locked doors.
When they finally managed to force the doors off their hinges and run from the burning shed, they were met with machine-gun fire. “My 15-year-old son Adam and I were near the wall, slaughtered people fell on me, those still living rushed past like a wave, blood was pouring from the bodies of the wounded and the dead,” recalled Joseph Kaminsky. “The blazing roof collapsed, the wild, terrible howl of the people intensified. Those underneath were burning alive, screaming and convulsing, the roof was literally spinning round.”
Having suffered severe burns, Kaminsky miraculously survived, but lost his son in that hellhole.
One hundred and forty-nine people were burned alive in that locked barn in the village of Khatyn, 75 of them children, the youngest of whom, Tolik Yaskevich, was only seven weeks old. Following the murder of Khatyn’s population, the Germans and Ukrainians looted then burned down the village itself.
Grigory Vasyura, head of the 188th Battalion, who led the execution, managed to hide his wartime past and live peacefully in the Soviet Union for years afterwards, posing as a veteran frontline soldier. Only in 1986 was the 71-year-old war criminal unmasked and sentenced to death.
Khatyn was by no means the first or last Soviet village to be destroyed by the Germans along with its inhabitants during the Second World War. But it became one of the most potent symbols of Nazi cruelty in the occupied territories.
The annihilation of Khatyn formed the storyline of the one of the most horrific WW2 films ever made, 1985’s Come and See by director Elem Klimov. “I thought to myself: the world doesn't know about Khatyn! It knows about Katyn and the execution of Polish officers. But nothing about Belarus, although more than 600 villages there were burned down! So I decided to make a film about this tragedy," explained the director.
KoryukovkaOn the night of Feb. 27, 1943, a group led by legendary Soviet partisan Alexei Fedorov attacked the Hungarian garrison stationed in the settlement of Koryukovka in the Chernihiv region of Soviet Ukraine. The raid was successful: 78 enemy soldiers were killed and eight taken prisoner, and a timber mill, the commandant's office, the train station, a bridge and a fuel warehouse were blown up. In addition, over a hundred prisoners were released from jail.
In retaliation, the occupiers targeted not the partisans, but the inhabitants of Koryukovka. On March 1, SS detachments and units of the 105th Hungarian Division and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police encircled the settlement in a pincer movement.
"My little daughter was lying on my chest when they started shooting at us in the restaurant. People were driven in like cattle into a slaughterhouse... A fascist shot me in the eye... I don't remember anything else. Three of my children were killed. I couldn't even bury them... The wretched murderers burned them," recalled survivor Yevgeny Rymar.
For a period of two days, the death squads ravaged the settlement, burning down 1,390 houses and killing around 6,700 people (5,612 bodies could not be identified), making the Koryukovka massacre one of the worst war crimes of the Nazis in World War II.
Two weeks later the Red Army entered the settlement. But there was almost no one left to greet the liberators."
"Eighty years ago this May and June, northern France was overrun by a combined air and land assault the Germans called blitzkrieg. Two things are known with certainty by those who can remember, and those who have learned – even if imperfectly. As one earnest undergraduate put it: ‘The Germans took the bypass around France’s Marginal Line’ as part of their strategy of ‘Blintz Krieg.’ Well, the idea is there.
The first certainty is that the armed forces of the Third French Republic were defeated in six weeks. The second is that the defeat led to the immediate collapse of the Republic and the advent of Marshal Philippe Pétain’s Vichy government, a short lived (1940-44) but murderous regime that collaborated with the Nazis and deported thousands of Jews for slaughter. Neither the suddenness of defeat nor its consequences are in doubt.
But because the collapse was so sudden and unexpected, and the consequences so vile, a body of dubious ‘knowledge’ has arisen and endured. It is that which has so colored popular impressions of pre-war, wartime, even contemporary France. Simply recall the famous and worn jests: "How many Frenchmen does it take to guard Paris? Nobody knows, it’s never been tried." Or "Raise your right hand if you like the French. Raise both hands if you are French." Or "What do you call 100,000 Frenchmen with their hands up? The Army."
Many readers will be familiar with the post-1940 exploits of courageous partisan units defying the German Occupation and operating under the generic expression "French Resistance." But most will not recall reports such as those in Winnipeg Free Press articles of 10 May and 15 June 1940, articles which attributed to the fighting "a ferocity which defies imagination," and which described allied resistance as worthy of "inexpressible admiration." Few now know that there were some 100,000 French soldiers who did not surrender. Somewhere between 55,000 and 85,000 actually died in that six-week campaign, with another 120,000 wounded. Fewer still will know that anywhere between 27,000 and 45,000 German soldiers died during those six weeks, and that over 100,000 of them were wounded. To which one might wish to add their 6,600 dead airmen. Even minimally, therefore, over 300,000 French and German combatants were killed or wounded in May-June 1940. So much for the popular notion that the French army folded like a warm croissant.
Why, then, has ignorance bred faith? Partly because neither of the post‑1945 Republics, the Fourth and Fifth, could see any advantage in rehabilitating a predecessor linked directly to military defeat and indirectly to collaboration with the Nazis. Best leave their predecessor in ignominy. Partly because in their scramble to blame someone else for the disaster, former decision‑makers of the Third, both civilian and military, ensured that the stain would be widespread. Partly because it seemed obvious that a great defeat had to have great causes, ones that surpassed the battlefield and implicated the entire nation. It is this third that explains why so many observers were quick, if only after the fact, to pick up the scent of moral rot: a society which, allegedly since the 1920s, had surrendered to the pursuit of pleasure and self‑indulgence long before it would surrender to the Germans."
