In ‘If This Is a Woman,’ Sarah Helm goes inside Germany’s Ravensbrück, where up to 90,000 women perished during the Holocaust. LONDON — Lying 50 miles north of Berlin, Ravensbrück was the only concentration camp the Nazis built with the sole intention to house female political prisoners. Opening up its gates in May 1939, just…
Category: European History
Holocaust History: The Ghost of Babi-Yar
KYIV, Ukraine—Seventy-four years later, I reached up and broke off a small piece of a branch that was long and gray. It was bent in the strange, contorted ways it had blindly grown to look for light here at the cold bottom of the ravine, where the forest canopy above had turned the sunny spring…
Holocaust History: Newly Released Documents Reveal Rampant Cannibalism at Nazi Concentration Camps
Cannibalism, drowning, and crucifixion: just some of the horrors described in first-hand accounts of British people’s experiences at the hands of the Nazis during World War Two which were released on Thursday in the UK. The long-sealed testimonies — contained in applications that UK nationals made to a Anglo-German Nazi Persecution Compensation scheme between 1964…
World War II History: The Glass House Operation
New exhibit memorializes the Glass House operation, which saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews NIR GALIM, Israel (JTA) – On a recent afternoon in a museum in this moshav community near the port city of Ashdod, Hodaya Gadba held up a black-and-white photograph of a three-story building and pronounced, “This was the site of…
Cold War Files: How the CIA Covertly Used Modern Art as A Weapon
For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – as a weapon in the Cold War….
World War II History: Remembering Babi Yar
Since 2001, Jewish groups have tried but failed to win support to upgrade memorial site at Babi Yar, where Nazis and collaborators murdered 50,000 Jews KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) –- On a muddy path in Babi Yar Park, Vladimir Proch negotiates deep puddles as he shadows two rabbis and a group of Ukrainian officials. An 87-year-old…
Military History: Spain’s Siren Song
17th Century Spain and The Allure of Idealized History in Grand Strategy Many readers may be familiar with Paul Kennedy’s classic The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. It is often recommended to those who have an interest in grand strategy. However, readers might be less familiar with a collection of essays edited by Kennedy, Grand…