Latest news with #AdolfEichmann
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
On This Day, June 1: Lafayette Square protesters cleared for Trump church photo-op
On this date in history: In 1880, the first public pay telephone began operation in New Haven, Conn. In 1958, Charles de Gaulle became prime minister of France with emergency powers amid the collapse of the Fourth Republic. He was elected president of France at the end of the year amid the rise of the Fifth Republic. In 1962, Israel hanged Adolf Eichmann for his part in the killing of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany in World War II. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court banned prayers and Bible teaching in public schools on the constitutional grounds of separation of church and state. In 1968, Helen Keller, a world-renowned author and lecturer despite being blind and deaf from infancy, died in Westport, Conn., at the age of 87. In 1973, Prime Minister George Papadopoulos abolished the Greek monarchy and proclaimed Greece a republic with himself as president. Constantine II, the last king of Greece, died in January 2023. In 1980, the Cable News Network -- CNN -- TV's first all-news service, went on the air. In 1993, President Jorge Serrano Elias of Guatemala was ousted by the military. In 1997, Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow, sustained injuries when her 12-year-old grandson, Malcolm Shabazz, set fire to her apartment. She died nearly a month later. In 1997, teacher Jonathan Levin, the son of Time Warner's then-chairman, Gerald Levin, was tortured and killed by a former student who knew him to be wealthy and was seeking money. The student, Corey Arthur, was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. His alleged accomplice, Montoun Hart, was acquitted despite a signed, 11-page confession. In 2001, Nepalese Crown Prince Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev massacred nine members of his family, including his parents, King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya; his siblings, Prince Nirajan and Princess Shruti; and aunts and uncles Prince Dhirendra, Princess Shanti, Princess Sharada, Kumar Khadga and Princess Jayanti. Dipendra also shot himself in the head, but initially survived, and served as king for four days before dying. In 2008, a fire at Universal Studios Hollywood burned two city blocks and destroyed iconic movie sets, including those from When Harry Met Sally, The Sting and Back to the Future. In 2009, Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 people on board. In 2015, the Eastern Star, a passenger ship traveling along the Yangtze River from the eastern city of Nanjing, flipped during a violent storm, killing approximately 400 people. In 2020, law enforcement officers cleared protesters from Lafayette Square near the White House using tear gas and other tactics to allow President Donald Trump to walk to St. John's Episcopal Church to pose for a photo while holding a Bible. The photo op came amid protests against the police killing of George Floyd which caused damage to the church. In 2021, Adm. Linda Fagan took over for retiring Adm. Karl L. Schultz, becoming the first female commandant in the U.S. Coast Guard.
DW
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- DW
Romanian director keeps memory of the Holocaust alive – DW – 05/23/2025
Jewish director Erwin Simsensohn recently put on an opera about the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. He tells DW how vital it is to educate people about the Holocaust and the threat from right-wing extremism. Two terrified children huddle close to their mother, but Josef Mengele shows no pity whatsoever. "They stay here. You go over there," he sings, pointing to different sides of the train track. A soldier with a rifle then drags the children away from their mother. These are the memories of a Holocaust survivor and they are being acted out on stage at the Bucharest National Opera in the Romanian capital. The scene, which focuses on Mengele, the notorious camp doctor at Auschwitz, is part of the opera "Eichmann's Trial," the world's first opera about the Holocaust, the deliberate murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany. The opera is about one of the most famous trials to have taken place since World War II, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who was sentenced to death in Israel in 1961 for his complicity in the murder of six million Jews. Bringing survivors' memories to life The trial brought the extent and horror of this genocide to the attention of a wider public for the first time. 'Eichmann's Trial' was intended to be a one-off performance, but was such a success that it will be performed again in October Image: Andrei Grigore/Bucharest Opera House "Eichmann's Trial" is part of an education project run by the Romanian Laude-Reut Foundation and is based on an idea by Tova Ben Nun-Cherbis. The music was composed by the Israeli musician and composer Gil Shohat. The libretto is based on a play by Israeli playwright and screenwriter Motti Lerner. But the opera also goes beyond the trial itself: The witnesses in the courtroom on stage bring to life the memories of those who survived the death camps — families that were ripped apart, women who were tortured, children who were shot dead. An opera about the Holocaust? Is it ok to stage an opera about the Holocaust? Should such a thing be done? These were the kind of questions Erwin Simsensohn asked himself when he first received a phone call, asking him whether he would consider directing the opera. "It sounded ... strange ... a piece about the Holocaust, set to music?" he told DW just a few days after the opera's opening night at the Jewish Community Center in Bucharest. Simsensohn is a well-known figure in Romania's Jewish community and himself managed the Jewish Community Center a few years ago. Erwin Simsensohn is director general of the State Theater in Constanta and director of the opera 'Eichmann's Trial' Image: privat However, he says, his reservations dissipated after his first conversations with Daniel Jinga, director general of the Bucharest National Opera. When he then heard the music that had been composed specially for the opera, any last remaining doubts were swept aside. "Music doesn't necessarily have to mean entertainment. It is not necessarily profane to stage an important subject in this way," he says. A personal priority The 45-year-old director is certainly used to challenges. Simsensohn divides his time between Bucharest, where his wife and children live, and Constanta on the Black Sea coast, where he is director general of the state theatre. In the summer, he organizes a nine-week culture festival in the city. He also does voluntary work for Jewish organizations. This doesn't leave much time for projects that are close to his heart, such as the opera about the Holocaust, which, he says, is important to him personally. The reason for this is that although Romania played a particular role in the Holocaust, it would appear that for a long time, no one in his native country wanted to hear it. Romania and the Holocaust Under dictator Ion Antonescu, Romania was one of Nazi Germany's closest allies during World War II. The Romanian regime increasingly restricted the freedoms of Jews in the country and escalated violence against them. Jewish citizens were dispossessed and humiliated, deported to ghettos and labor camps in Transnistria, and tortured and killed in bloody pogroms. The Jewish Museum of Bucharest in the former Templul Unirea Sfanta synagogue Image: Tobias Zuttmann Erwin Simsensohn's grandfather was also deported to a labor camp. Thankfully, he survived, but the Holocaust has left an indelible mark on the family's DNA. "That affects me personally," says Simsensohn. While Simsensohn cannot forget, his native country long repressed, played down and in some cases even outrightly denied its own involvement. It was only in 2004 that Romania first officially acknowledged its historical complicity in the Holocaust. Back then, a report drawn up by an international commission showed that about 280,000 of the 380,000 Jewish people in Romania and territories controlled by it died at the hands of Romanian forces. Fostering a culture of remembrance Following publication of the report, Romania took its first cautious steps towards a culture of remembrance. October 9, the day on which the deportation of Jews to camps in Transnistria began in 1941, was declared National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust. Plans for a Holocaust Museum were drawn up (but not, as yet, implemented), the National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust (INSHR) was established in Bucharest, and a Holocaust Memorial was built. "For most people, it is not about remembering the Holocaust, but about hearing about it for the first time," says Simsensohn. Just two years ago, the subject of the Holocaust and the history of the Jews was introduced into the school curriculum. The Holocaust Memorial in Bucharest, Romania Image: Tobias Zuttmann A recent study by the INSHR shows that only one-third of Romanians know that their country was complicit in the annihilation of Jewish people in Europe. Dictator and war criminal Ion Antonescu, who was instrumental in the murder of Romania's Jews, is to this day seen by the majority of Romanians as a "great patriot." Devoted to the theater Simsensohn grew up in Piatra Neamt in northeastern Romania. His parents are engineers, but — like their son — love the theater. In high school, he founded a theater group, which quickly became a success. For his final project during his training to be a director, Simsensohn chose a theater adaptation of the book Born guilty, which was about children from Nazi families. When he presented the project to his class, a fellow student asked him whether he was not by now fed up of the subject of the Holocaust. "She said, 'It's as if someone in your family died and you keep the corpse on the table in the living room, show it to everyone who comes in and refuse to bury it.'" Although Simsensohn is a calm person, some of the rage he felt on that occasion is visible when he recounts the story. He inhales sharply before continuing: "I told her: 'I will put these people on the table in the living room.'" To emphasize his words, he brings the side of his hand down sharply on the table. Far-right candidate stokes fear among Romania's Jews To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "If we bury these people, we forget who killed them. We are talking about men, women, children. They didn't just die. These people were killed because they were Jewish," he says. The rise of the right To this day, says Simsensohn, he considers it his responsibility — and that of other artists, too — to keep talking about the subject of the Holocaust. "It is important, not only to educate people about what happened back then, but also to warn them about the dangers of right-wing extremism. Unfortunately, this is an extremely topical issue," he says. Far-right parties received a third of all votes in Romania's parliamentary election in 2024. The strongest among them is the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). The AUR's presidential candidate, George Simion, made it to the runoff of the presidential election, but came second behind Nicusor Dan. Something, says Simsensohn, has gone wrong. "Today, antisemitism is stronger than it was a few years ago. The threat for us is growing." "Eichmann's Trial" was intended to be a one-off performance. But following considerable positive feedback, it will be performed again in October. This is a success both for Simsensohn and the entire team behind the opera because, as Simsensohn knows, the fight against forgetting is perhaps more important now than ever before. This article was originally published in German.
Epoch Times
20-05-2025
- General
- Epoch Times
From Horror to Hope: Reflections from Dachau and Auschwitz
Commentary I've taken hundreds of international trips, visiting cultural and religious sites and observing natural wonders across the world. Yet None affected me like Dachau and Auschwitz-Birkenau. In Dachau I strode through wooden barracks where slave labor was housed without bedding and worked in the freezing cold without shoes or winter garments. The grisly gallows faced the crematoria where the last image presented to Jews before their necks were snapped was clouds of foul-smelling smoke generated by the burning bodies of their friends and fellow prisoners. Auschwitz featured bullet marks on a stone wall where countless innocents were shot. I stood in the actual gas chambers where 1.5 million of the 6 million Jews who perished were murdered. The fingernail scratches down the locked doors resemble a horror movie more than life. What happened at Nazi concentration camps is unfathomable. It's hard to grasp how the Germans could coldly and methodically load victims into cattle cars at gunpoint, starve, beat, enslave, and murder without qualms—the banality of evil symbolized by Adolf Eichmann in the words of Related Stories 3/3/2025 7/5/2024 Alongside me on this solemn pilgrimage were several weeping Jewish friends whose relatives were exterminated in the Holocaust. Evil is infinite. Saintliness is sharply rationed. It is frightening that notwithstanding 'never again' genocide endures. Think of the Uyghurs and Tibetans in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar, Darfur in Sudan, the Tutsi in Rwanda. Do we forget nothing and learn nothing? We need constant reminders from House 88 feels ordinary, big enough to accommodate the five Höss children who reportedly enjoyed carefree childhoods as Jewish children were mercilessly murdered just yards away. Rudolf's daughter, Brigitte Höss, But the house's garden wall was also the camp wall. The view through the second story windows: crematoria. Auschwitz shows you the scale of Nazi evil, while ARCHER proves its banality. Mass murderers can be loving fathers. Kids can remember a happy childhood under the shadow of a chimney reeking of burned flesh. Monsters can live anywhere, even next door. Auschwitz proves man's inhumanity to man. The appalling phenomenon is as old as the Bible. Auschwitz was not the evil handiwork only of Nazis. There were many eager collaborators in other countries, including Poland. Is seeing believing? It is shocking that Holocaust deniers endure despite the mountains of ocular evidence and more than 19,000 pages of Nuremberg trial transcripts and exhibits. More than 50 years later in 1997, the Polish Government began returning Jewish heritage sites like synagogues and cemeteries to the Jewish community. The president of Poland recently joined the president of Israel for the ' 'Never again hatred, never again chauvinism, never again antisemitism,' It is up to us to highly resolve that the 6 million victims of the Holocaust shall not have perished in vain by striving to make 'never again' a reality rather than an empty slogan. Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Newsweek
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Argentina Discovers Trove of Nazi Archives in Old Champagne Boxes
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Workers inside Argentina's Supreme Court uncovered a trove of Nazi propaganda hidden inside of old champagne boxes. The workers were moving archival material out of the courthouse basement when they opened up the old boxes. Instead of champagne, they found crates of books and other material with swastikas on them. Archivists ended up finding more than 80 boxes carrying Nazi material dating back to 1941. The crates were taken to the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum. Newsweek reached out to the museum via email for comment. Archivists opening champagne cases filled with Nazi propaganda in Argentina. Archivists opening champagne cases filled with Nazi propaganda in Argentina. Supreme Court of Argentina Why It Matters The court described the finding as a "discovery of global significance" due to the documents' ability to illuminate events leading up to the Holocaust. The documents may also help historians to uncover new information on the global spread of Nazism and Nazi trade routes. What To Know Following a review of the documents ordered by the Supreme Court president, Horacio Rosatti, historians determined that they had been held inside the courthouse since 1941. The documents arrived in Argentina on June 20, 1941, aboard a ship sent by the German embassy in Tokyo. Despite German diplomats in Argentina asking for the ship, the Nan-a-Maru, to skip customs because it contained "personal effects for its members," the ship was halted and inspected. Some of the 80 boxes containing Nazi propaganda in the courthouse basement. Some of the 80 boxes containing Nazi propaganda in the courthouse basement. Supreme Court of Argentina Once impounded, customs officials opened five boxes at random and found Nazi propaganda including postcards and photographs and "thousands of notebooks belonging to the National Socialist German Workers' Party Organization Abroad and the German Trade Union." Argentine officials then refused to return the boxes to Germany or Tokyo, saying they contained harmful anti-democratic material and that German officials had lied to them about the ship's contents. The materials passed through different agencies, eventually landing in the Supreme Court. The court was tasked with figuring out what to do with them, but it ended up storing the documents, forgotten, in the basement for over 80 years. Argentina remained neutral in World War II until 1944, when it declared war on Japan and Germany. Although the country took in 40,000 Jewish refugees between 1933 and the end of the war, Argentina is also known for housing high-ranking Nazi officials, including Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann and Auschwitz "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele, during the post-war leadership of Juan Perón. Researchers and historians inspecting the Nazi material found in the courthouse. Researchers and historians inspecting the Nazi material found in the courthouse. Supreme Court of Argentina What People Are Saying Supreme Court of Argentina: "A discovery of global significance has taken place in the archives of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation: within the framework of the works for the creation of the Museum of the highest court and the transfer of documentation from its archive, judicial officials detected a series of boxes containing material linked to Nazism, which had entered the country in 1941." What Happens Next The boxes are all being moved to the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum. There, they will be further studied in the hopes of uncovering more information on the Holocaust and the still relatively unknown aspects of the regime's global money trail.
Indian Express
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Crates filled with Nazi-era documents found in Argentina Supreme Court basement
Wooden crates filled with documents linked to Nazi Germany have been found in the basement of Argentina's Supreme Court, the court said last week. The discovery happened while workers were clearing out the building's storage area to prepare for a museum archive. According to the BBC, the documents were sent by the German embassy in Tokyo and arrived in Argentina on 20 June 1941. They came inside 83 diplomatic pouches on board a Japanese steamship. Court officials said in a statement, 'Upon opening one of the boxes, we identified material intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler's ideology in Argentina during World War II.' The crates were originally taken by Argentine customs officials in 1941. Officials had opened five of the diplomatic pouches at random and found Nazi propaganda, photographs, and postcards inside. The items were then sent to the Supreme Court, where they remained in storage. The BBC reports that the German embassy in Buenos Aires had requested the return of the pouches to its embassy in Tokyo. But an Argentine judge ordered that all the pouches be seized instead. Officials from the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum have joined the court in cataloguing the contents. Images published by the court show black-and-white photographs, membership booklets with swastikas on their covers, and handwritten notes. Historians say the documents may help researchers understand the financial and international connections of the Nazi regime. Court records show that the crates were declared as 'personal effects' at the time of arrival. However, because of the shipment's size, customs officials informed the Argentine foreign minister. Argentina had remained neutral in World War Two until 1944. After that year, relations with the Axis powers ended. The BBC reports that it is unclear whether the court ever decided what to do with the boxes, which may explain why they stayed in the basement for so long. Following the war, Argentina became a safe place for some former Nazi officials. Among those who fled there were Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. In 2000, Argentine President Fernando de la Rúa gave an official apology for the country's role in sheltering Nazi war criminals.
