Latest news with #Czechoslovakia
ABC News
27-05-2025
- General
- ABC News
Australian Holocaust survivor saved by gas chamber malfunction dies aged 98
Australian Holocaust survivor Yvonne Engelman, who survived the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, has died aged 98. Yvonne died peacefully, after a short illness, surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Funeral service attendees overfilled the chapel, pouring out onto the street to celebrate her life on Monday night. The founding member of the Sydney Jewish Museum was remembered for her fight to stand up for what is right in the face of adversity. Every week for the past 32 years, Mrs Engelman volunteered at the Sydney Jewish Museum to share her story to thousands. Her mission: "So it will never happen again". Mrs Engelman was born in 1927, in Dovhe, a farming village in Czechoslovakia, where her family lived for many generations. In 1944, the teenager, an only child, and her parents were taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland, after being rounded up with other Jews in Czechoslovakia. She promised her father that she would survive, a story she shared with the world over the years. "My father said to me, 'I don't know where we are going, but I'm sure it's not a holiday,'" she said. "'You have to promise me one thing: that you will survive.' I said, 'Of course I will survive.' "They went to the left and I went to the right, and that was the last time I saw my parents." Yvonne was the only member of her family to survive. The 14-year-old had her head shaved and was stripped of her clothing before she was ushered into a room with showers, where she was locked up all day and night. But the gas was malfunctioning, forcing her capturers to put her to work, Mrs Engelman said. "We worked 10 hours daily with a great fear that maybe we would be the next [gas chamber] victims," she said. Auschwitz left its mark as one of the most infamous camps of the Holocaust, killing 1.1 million Jews of the six million who were murdered by Nazis in German-occupied Europe. She said she was sent to work in a factory in Germany as allies crept closer to victory. Once the war was over, Mrs Engelman made the decision to move to a country sponsoring orphans. "I had a look at the map, I wanted to get away as far as I possibly can from Europe, so I chose Australia." In 1949, in Sydney, Yvonne married another Holocaust survivor, John Engelman. Theirs was the first Holocaust survivors wedding to take place in Australia. Yvonne was described by friends as someone who "lived life as a celebration". She was grateful for everything, with a strong will and resolute spirit, her colleagues from the Sydney Jewish Museum said. "She treasured her family and they treasured her; she was their centre and their heart." Yvonne leaves a unique legacy, having inspired countless people of all ages and faiths with a message of tolerance and resilience.
New York Times
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
William H. Luers, Diplomat Who Backed Czech Dissident Leader, Dies at 95
In 1983, William H. Luers, a new American ambassador to Czechoslovakia, bet on a long shot for its future: Vaclav Havel, the often-imprisoned poet-playwright and enemy of the Communist state. But after leading a peaceful revolution to oust the regime, the long shot cultural leader became the democratically-elected last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of its successor, the Czech Republic. The ambassador's contribution to Mr. Havel's very survival in the last years of Communist rule, and his subsequent political successes were, in his own telling, results of maneuvers as gentle as the so-called Velvet Revolution that extricated Czechoslovakia from the Communists in 1989. To spare Mr. Havel from an assassin's bullet, a poison pill or a return to prison — where he might have been snuffed out quietly — Mr. Luers enlisted dozens of American cultural celebrities, mostly friends of his, to visit Prague, meet the playwright and then, at news conferences outside the reach of the government-controlled Czech news media, recast him in a protective armor of global publicity. 'I spent a lot of my career with artists and writers, promoting the arts,' Mr. Luers said in a 2022 interview for this obituary. 'I was worried that the Communists might poison him or put him back in prison. My strategy was to shine as much light on Havel as possible. So I brought in John Updike, Edward Albee and many other people to talk about how great an artist and cultural leader he was.' The recruited celebrities, Mr. Luers said, included the novelists E.L. Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron; Philippe de Montebello, the director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art; Joseph Papp, the producer-director who created Shakespeare in the Park; the California abstract painter Richard Diebenkorn; and Katharine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post. The secret police filmed and photographed the visitors, but they were hardly people who could be intimidated. Indeed, Mr. Luers said, it was ultimately the Communist authorities who were cowed by the worldwide attention accorded to Mr. Havel. The underlying message, he said, was that harming Mr. Havel might risk incalculable international consequences for the Czech government. Mr. Luers, who retired from the Foreign Service in 1986 and became president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for 13 years, died on Saturday at his home in Washington Depot, in western Connecticut. He was 95. His wife, Wendy Luers, said the cause was prostate cancer. In a 29-year Foreign Service career, Mr. Luers was a blend of diplomat and showman who cultivated friendships with artists and writers while seeking solutions to Cold War problems for five presidential administrations, from Dwight D. Eisenhower's in the 1950s to Ronald Reagan's in the '80s. It was an era of nuclear perils, regional conflicts and fast-moving economic and political changes. Specializing in Soviet and East European affairs, and fluent in Russian, Spanish and Italian, Mr. Luers worked at embassies in Moscow, Rome and other capitals of Europe and Latin America. At his career's end, he was ambassador to Venezuela (1978-82) as well as Czechoslovakia (1983-86). On his last and most important diplomatic assignment, Mr. Luers arrived in Prague months after Mr. Havel, the scion of a wealthy Czech family noted for its cultural accomplishments, was released from four years in prison, the longest of his several sentences for political activities in defiance of the government. Mr. Havel's absurdist plays ridiculing Moscow's satellite state had already raised him to international prominence, but had left him an official pariah and his works blacklisted at home for years after Soviet tanks crushed the brief Prague Spring uprisings of 1968. Mr. Luers set his leadership sights on Mr. Havel for his artistic talents and magnetic personality, and contacted him through dissident intellectuals in the Civic Forum, a notable opponent of the Communist Party. His American celebrity friends burnished Mr. Havel's name as a writer, but not as a statesman, which might have increased Mr. Havel's perils. Inside Czechoslovakia, only the underground samizdat press circulated the encomiums to him. Long after Mr. Luers left Prague and retired in 1986, the protective effects of his stratagem lingered, and Mr. Havel played a major role in the peaceful revolution that toppled the Czech puppet government in 1989. Weeks after that revolution, Mr. Havel was named president of Czechoslovakia by a unanimous vote of the Federal Assembly. In 1990, his presidency was affirmed by a landslide in the nation's first free elections since 1946. And when the Czech Republic and Slovakia were created as successor states in 1993, Mr. Havel became the republic's first president. Re-elected in 1998, he left office at the end of his second term in 2003. 'Bill Luers had a remarkable career — in fact many careers,' James L. Greenfield, a former State Department colleague who later was an assistant managing editor of The New York Times, said in a 2022 email for this obituary. (Mr. Greenfield died in 2024.) 'He was the ambassador to Venezuela, but more importantly to Czechoslovakia. While there he became the main supporter, defender and protector of Vaclav Havel.' William Henry Luers was born on May 15, 1929, in Springfield, Ill., the youngest of three children of Carl and Ann (Lynd) Luers. William and his sisters, Gloria and Mary, grew up in Springfield. Their father was president of a local bank and their mother was an avid bridge player. William attended Springfield High School, where he played basketball and golf and was the senior class president; he graduated in 1947. At Hamilton College in upstate New York, he majored in chemistry and math and earned a bachelor's degree in 1951. He studied philosophy at Northwestern University briefly, but joined the Navy in 1952, according to an oral history. He graduated from officers' candidate school, became a deck officer on aircraft carriers in the Atlantic and Pacific and was discharged as a lieutenant in 1957. He then joined the Foreign Service, and in 1958 earned a master's degree in Russian studies at Columbia University. In 1957, he married Jane Fuller, an artist. They had four children: Mark, David, William and Amy, and were divorced in 1979. That year he married Wendy (Woods) Turnbull, the founder and president of the Foundation for a Civil Society, who had two daughters, Ramsay and Connor Turnbull, from a previous marriage. His son Mark died of esophageal cancer in 2020. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his other children along with five grandchildren and five step-grandchildren. After 16 years in the Foreign Service at lower ranks, Mr. Luers became an aide to Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger in 1973 (and personally delivered to him President Richard M. Nixon's 1974 letter of resignation in the Watergate scandal.) He became deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs in 1975, and for European affairs in 1977. Retiring from the Foreign Service, he joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art as president in a leadership-sharing arrangement with Mr. de Montebello, who as director presided over artistic matters and was the Met's spokesman. Mr. Luers, as chief executive, handled finances, fund-raising and outreach to government agencies. The dual leadership, at times tense, lasted until 1999. His strong suit was fund-raising. 'He's indefatigable,' Carl Spielvogel, a trustee, said of Mr. Luers. 'I don't know many people willing to be out at breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week, but he was. And he's very good at it.' Mr. Luers doubled the museum's endowment, modernized its financial systems, enlarged its staff to 1,800 full-time employees, secured the $1 billion Walter Annenberg collection of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings for the museum, and oversaw the construction of new galleries, wings, exhibitions and public programs. When he stepped down, the museum had a $116 million budget, and crowds that often exceeded 50,000 visitors on weekends. In 1990, Mr. Luers arranged for Mr. Havel, who was conferring with President George W. Bush on a state visit to the White House, to make a side trip to New York to visit the museum. It was a touching reunion for Mr. Luers, who returned many times to the Czech Republic for meetings with old friends and Mr. Havel, who died in 2011. After the Met, Mr. Luers was chairman and president of the United Nations Association of the U.S.A., which provides research and other services for the U.N. For many years, he also directed the Iran Project, a nongovernmental organization that supported United States negotiations with Iran. Mr. Luers, who had homes in Manhattan and Washington Depot, wrote scores of articles for foreign policy journals and newspapers, including The Times. He lectured widely and taught at Princeton, George Washington, Columbia and Seton Hall Universities, and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Last fall, he released a memoir, 'Uncommon Company: Dissidents and Diplomats, Enemies and Artists.' 'My greatest satisfaction was the success of Vaclav Havel,' he said in the 2022 interview. 'Havel proved my point that culture makes a difference, especially in international relations. The Communist system was deeply flawed. It underestimated cultural leaders' influence on the people.'
Daily Mail
07-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Mystery of bloodied and bruised 'lost German girl' following Nazi surrender sparks host of wild theories
For years, ever since footage appeared in TV documentaries and online, the identity and fate of the so-called 'Lost German Girl' has proved captivating. Dressed in a nondescript dark uniform, she had a swollen face from a possible savage beating, the woman was seen walking on a road in liberated Czechoslovakia, which was split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. The date was May 7, 1945, the same day that Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies after the suicide of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker. As captured German troops fled in the opposite direction of Russian soldiers, the U.S. Army was at hand to witness the chaos. The footage featuring the woman was shot by U.S. Army captain Oren W Haglund on a road towards Pilsen, around 50 miles from Prague. Lost German Girl, also known as LGG, inspired works of art, poems, guitar compositions, and even an entire blog dedicated to tracking her down. But even almost 20 years on from the first attempt by Internet sleuths to find her, the identity and fate of the featured woman remained a mystery. Some claimed she was as described by Captain Haglund in the footage's original short cards an 'SS girl'. Others said she was an innocent victim of the wave of mass rape that advancing Russian troops inflicted on hundreds of thousands of women. However, no definitive proof of either her identity or what happened to her had ever emerged. Captain Haglund's clip, 25 minutes of which could be found on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's website, started by showing captured Germans, including fresh-faced teenagers, as they milled around while being guarded by American troops. Some ate, while others sat on the grass in the rural area. Later, the film showed locals cheering and waving white handkerchiefs before more German troops were seen, marching under guard. When the recording took a darker turn, there were scenes of dead and gravely wounded Germans strewn around. What exactly happened to them remained unclear, but the scenes of death and grave injury were not the reason Captain Haglund's clip took the Internet by storm. Just over 17 minutes into the clip, Haglund's camera settled on the 'Lost German Girl' as she swept her matted hair to the side to reveal more of her swollen black eye. Grouped: The woman's shown again sat with a group of male captives, holding what appears to be a cloth in her hands and she half-smiled as she spoke, despite her battered appearance It's known that 'Lost German Girl' had been with Germany's fleeing troops but her nondescript uniform did not give any hint of what role, if any, she had in the military. There's also no evidence to back up Captain Haglund's description of her as an 'SS girl'. She could have once been a medic, or even an aide. In the footage, she stared into he camera with one hand in her pocket and the other resting across her chest. In almost drunken fashion, she stepped forward, still staring intently, and clasps her hand to her swollen eye then tilts her head down, which caused her hair to flop over her face. The footage then cut again to focus just on her face. She was then seen holding what appeared to be a deck of cards, and appeared emotional like she was going to cry as the camera remained on her. As if embarrassed, she moved her head down towards her clasped hands. The camera then panned down to show the woman's pants and suspenders, which hung around her waist. Around 40 seconds later, after the footage cut to show a bloodied, half-naked man in a blanket laying on the ground, the woman appeared again. She was sat amongst a group of male captives, and she held what looked like a cloth. Despite her battered appearance, she offered a half-smile as she spoke to one of the men. That's the last we see of the 'Lost German Girl'. Captain Haglund remained in Germany until the end of the war in Europe. He was discharged in December 1945 and became a TV production manager. He died in 1972, aged 66, and he's not known to have commented on or even discussed the 'Lost German Girl' any further. Some people who saw the footage claimed the woman was named either Lara or Lore Bauer and born in 1921. She was said to have been a helper for the German air force, the Luftwaffe. Photos of a woman said to be Bauer looked similar to the woman in Captain Haglund's video, but there were no known documents to back up the theory that it was her. German man Carlos Xander spent almost two years documenting his attempts to find the identity of 'Lost German Girl' on his blog of the same name. He recounted how the first attempt to trace her in the Internet era was in 2006. Xander then expanded on the theory that Bauer was the Lost German Girl. Bauer was allegedly born in Austria in 1921 and was said to have survived the war and gone on to work for U.S. airline Pan Am, retiring in 1985 and passing away in 1994. The blogger pointed out that there were no records of the described Lore or Lara Bauer in German or Austrian archives. Xander also recounted a 2013 post from a man who claimed that the Lost German Girl was his grandmother and she was called Mathilde. Sleuths also traced the road that the woman was filmed walking down - between Pilsen and Rokycany - and they returned to the site to take photos and videos.
Daily Mail
07-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Inside the mystery of the 'lost German girl' and what REALLY happened: Haunting footage of a bloodied and bruised woman captured after the Nazi surrender 80 years ago today has sparked a myriad of theories
For years, ever since the footage appeared in TV documentaries and online, the identity and fate of the so-called 'Lost German Girl' has proved captivating. Dressed in a nondescript uniform and with a swollen face betraying that she had been savagely beaten, she was seen walking down a road in liberated Czechoslovakia. The date was May 7, 1945, the very day that Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies after the suicide of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin Bunker. As captured German troops fled in the opposition direction of Russian soldiers, the US Army were on hand to witness the chaos. The footage featuring the woman was shot by US Army captain Oren W. Haglund on a road towards Pilsen, around 50 miles from Prague. 'Lost German Girl' - or LGG has she has become known - has inspired works of art, poems, guitar compositions and an entire blog dedicated to tracking her down. But even now, nearly 20 years on from the first attempt by internet sleuths to find her, the identity and fate of this woman remains a mystery. Some claim she was as described by Captain Haglund in the footage's original short cards - an 'SS girl'. Others say she was an innocent victim of the wave of mass rape that advancing Russian troops inflicted on hundreds of thousands of women. But no definitive proof of what happened to 'Lost German Girl', or who she was, has ever emerged. Captain Haglund's clip - 25 minutes of which can be found on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - starts by showing captured Germans, including fresh-faced teenagers, milling around while being guarded by American troops. Some are eating, others are sitting on grass in the rural area. Later, the clip shows locals cheering and waving white handkerchiefs. More German troops are then seen, marching under guard. But the clip then takes a dark turn, with scenes of dead and gravely wounded Germans strewn around. What exactly happened to them remains unclear, but the scenes of death and grave injury are not the reason Captain Haglund's clip took the internet by storm. Just over 17 minutes into the clip, Hoglund's camera settles on the woman who the world now knows only as 'Lost German Girl'. She sweeps her matted hair to the side, revealing more of her swollen black eye. It is known that she had been with the fleeing German troops. But her nondescript uniform does not give any hint of what role, if any, she had in the military. There is no evidence to back up Captain Haglund's description of her as an 'SS girl'. She could have once been a medic, or an aide, or something else entirely. A few more seconds into the sequence, the mystery woman stares at the camera, with one hand in her pocket and the other resting around her chest area. In almost drunken fashion, she steps forward, still staring intently. She then clasps her hand to her swollen eye and tilts her head down. As a consequence, her hair flops over her face. The footage then cuts again to focus just on her face. The woman, who is holding what appears to be a pack of cards, looks as though she is going to cry as the camera continues focusing on her. As if embarrassed, she brings her head down towards her clasped hands. The camera then pans down to show her trousers and suspenders, which are hanging around her waist. Around 40 seconds later, after the footage has cut to show a bloodied, naked man in a blanket lying on the ground, the woman appears again. She is seen sitting with a group of male captives, holding what appears to be a cloth in her hands. Despite her battered appearance, she gives a half smile as she talks to one of the men. That is the last we see of the woman who has captivated online sleuths for years. Captain Haglund, who was born in 1905 and had been a filmmaker before joining the army, stayed in Germany until the end of the war in Europe. He was discharged in December 1945 and became a production manager of TV shows. He died in 1972 aged 66 and is not known to have commented on or discussed the 'Lost German Girl'. Some have claimed that the woman was called Lara or Lore Bauer. Born in 1921, she was said to have been a helper for the German air force, the Luftwaffe. Photos of a woman who is said to be Bauer do bear similarities to the woman in Captain Haglund's video, but there are no known documents to back up the theory that they were the same person. German man Carlos Xander spent nearly two years documenting his attempts to find the identity of 'Lost German Girl' on his blog of the same name. He recounts how the first attempt to trace her in the internet era was in 2006. Mr Xander then expands on the theory that Bauer was the Lost German Girl. Bauer was allegedly born in Austria in 1921. She was said to have survived the war and gone on to work for American airline Pan Am, retiring in 1985 and passing away in 1994. Mr Xander pointed out that there were no records of the described Lore or Lara Bauer in German or Austrian archives. The blogger also recounted a 2013 post from a man claiming that the Lost German Girl was his grandmother and that she was called Mathilde. He promised to send photos and documents but the vow allegedly did not amount to anything. Sleuths have also traced the road that the woman was walking down - between Pilsen and Rokycany - and have returned to the site to take their own photos and videos. A horrifying hint at what may have happened to the mystery woman is laid out in historian Philip Kaplan's book Fighter Pilots of the Lufwaffe in World War II. Having described how American troops felt forced to hand over captives in the area to Soviet soldiers, he writes: 'The first thing the Russian troops did was to separate the German women and girls from the men. 'What followed was a brutal and savage orgy of rape and debauchery by Red Army soldiers. 'When the greatly out-numbered American guards still present tried to intervene, the Russians charged towards them, firing into the air and threatening to kill them all if they intervened.' The brutality of the advancing Russian military at the end of the war has been well documented. In Berlin alone, as many as half a million women - out of a female population of 1.4million - could have been raped, according to some estimates. And there were between 70,000 and 100,000 more rapes in Vienna; up to 200,000 in Hungary and thousands more in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. One invader noted in a letter home: 'They do not speak a word of Russian, but that makes it easier. 'You don't have to persuade them. You just point a revolver and tell them to lie down. Then you do your stuff and go away.' German journalist Marta Hillers, who was among those who were raped, described her ordeal in her diary. She said: 'I need a wolf who will keep the wolves away from me. .An officer, as high as possible, Kommandant, General, whatever I can get.' Hillers was fortunate to find such a man. Hillers' story was turned into 2008 film A Woman in Berlin. Stalin dismissed the sexual crimes of his troops, saying that people should 'understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle'. When told that Red Army soldiers had sexually abused German refugees, he said: 'We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative.' Soviet police chief Lavrenti Beria was a known serial rapist. He defiled more 100 girls and young women after drugging them. In his 2008 book World War Two: Behind Closed Doors, historian Laurence Rees noted that this horrifying fact meant that, 'if reports of Red Army soldiers raping women in eastern Europe were sent to the NKVD in Moscow, they finally reached the desk of a rapist himself.' Russian troops justified their crimes in strange ways. One wrote: 'It's absolutely clear that if we don't really scare them now, there will be no way of avoiding another war in future.' Artist Leonid Rabichev recounted the sexual abuse of fleeing German refugees in Eastern Europe, writing: Women, mothers and their children, lie to the right and left along the route, and in front of each of them stands a raucous armada of men with their trousers down. 'The women who are bleeding or losing consciousness get shoved to one side, and our men shoot the ones who try to save their children. Cackling, snarling, laughing, screaming and moaning. 'And their commanders, their majors and colonels stood nearby, one of whom was directing— no, he was regulating it This was to make sure that every soldier without exception took part.'
