Bruce KonviserApril 12, 2013 12:58

Czech memorial honors villagers for saving Jewish family from Nazis

The Holocaust memorial is the result of a five-year effort initiated by a high school teacher in New Jersey.

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Eva Vavreckova, whose mother Felicitas survived three years of World War II hiding in the woods and other makeshift shelters, with the aid of the villagers of Trsice, lays flowers at the memorial honoring them. Joan E. Silber of the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad and Czech Senator Martin Tesařík watch. (Bruce Konviser/GlobalPost)

TRSICE, Czech Republic — A memorial unveiling, paying homage to six villagers who risked their lives during World War II to save a Jewish family — and to the whole village for keeping the secret — is the culmination of a five-year effort initiated by an American high school teacher.

At the height of World War II, when Jews and other minorities were being rounded up and taken to human slaughter houses, residents of Trsice, about 150 miles east of Prague, helped the Wolf family sidestep the Nazis' chain of concentration camps.

Germany: Anne Frank waxwork unveiled at Berlin Madame Tussauds

Jessica PhelanMarch 9, 2012 14:38

"Anne Frank was such a hopeful person. It's that sense of optimism that we want to convey in this figure," a museum spokeswoman said.

Michael GoldfarbJanuary 20, 2012 07:22

The Holocaust: a somber anniversary

Seventy years ago today, the Nazis agreed on the "Final Solution."

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The Villa Marlier on the shores of the Wannsee just outside Berlin. 70 years ago today, the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was agreed at a conference of Nazi leaders here. (Sean Gallup/AFP/Getty Images)

It is a somber anniversary, one that is being remembered in Germany but not too many other places in Europe. German newspaper Die Welt's article on the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee conference begins:

"A terrible word."

The word is "Endloesung." Even if you don't know German you can guess part of its meaning from the first syllable: end-loesung. End = final. Loesung is answer or solution. The birth of a phrase, written in the minutes of the Wannsee conference:

"The Final Solution to the Jewish problem."

The fate of European Jewry was decided at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. It was a convening of bureaucrats forced to deal with a military necessity.

Italy to build its first Holocaust museum

News DeskFebruary 22, 2011 00:21

Italy will announce plans Tuesday to build its first Holocaust museum, reports the Jerusalem Post. The museum, which will be in Rome, will be part of Mayor Gianni Alemanno's 10-year plan for major city projects.