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Muslim religious leaders to visit Auschwitz

Agence France-PresseMay 17, 2013 15:31
Fourteen Muslim clerics from across the globe will visit the former Nazi German Auschwitz death camp in southern Poland next week as part of a Holocaust awareness and anti-genocide program, organisers said Friday. "This is an opportunity for imams who are influential in their communities to look at the Holocaust first hand and to go to Auschwitz, to see what that kind of hatred led to," Poland's Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich told AFP on Friday. "It's to make sure that civilisation doesn't fail again."

Germany arrests 'Auschwitz guard' on murder charges

Agence France-PresseMay 6, 2013 15:00
German authorities arrested Monday a 93-year-old alleged former guard at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz on charges of complicity in the mass murder of prisoners. Prosecutors in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said the man was believed to have worked at the camp between autumn 1941 and its closure in 1945. Authorities declined to release the suspect's name but media reports and the Simon Wiesenthal Center said it was Hans Lipschis, who figures among the Center's most-wanted Nazis and is said to have served in the SS "Death's Head" battalion.

Divers start raising German WWII bomber from English Channel

Agence France-PresseMay 4, 2013 13:45
Divers on Saturday began a delicate operation to raise the only German Dornier Do-17 bomber left after World War II from the depths of the English Channel. The aircraft was shot down during the Battle of Britain in 1940 and the operation to retrieve it is the biggest of its kind in British waters, the Royal Air Force (RAF) Museum said. The bomber was only discovered in 2008 when it was spotted by divers at Goodwin Sands, off the coast of Kent in southeast England. Sonar scans confirmed it was a Dornier Do-17, and experts say it is in a "remarkable condition".

Bells toll for Warsaw ghetto uprising 70 years on

Agence France-PresseApril 18, 2013 22:00
Sirens and church bells are set to ring across Warsaw Friday to mark 70 years to the day since hundreds of young, poorly armed Jews rose up against the Nazis in a doomed revolt. Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski will lead a ceremony at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, with thousands of people including Holocaust survivors due to attend. "The drama and the combat, this painful experience is part of both the Polish and Jewish traditions," the head of state said at a Holocaust-themed art opening ahead of the anniversary.

Warsaw marks 70 years since ghetto uprising 'to save dignity'

Agence France-PresseApril 18, 2013 13:31
The young Jews who rose up against Nazi Germany "wanted to save human dignity", a Polish underground activist said Thursday on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Around 100 people were gathered at the Nozyk synagogue to pay tribute to the hundreds of poorly-armed Jews who took a stand against their occupiers in Europe's first urban anti-Nazi revolt. "They didn't want to save themselves," said Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a resistance fighter, death camp survivor and ex-foreign minister.

Poland drops probe of artist's use of Holocaust ashes

April 10, 2013 14:45
Polish prosecutors have dismissed their probe into a Swedish artist's claims he used ashes of Holocaust victims, their spokeswoman said Wednesday. Carl Michael von Hausswolff claims he stole ashes from a crematorium at Nazi Germany's Majdanek concentration camp in Poland in 1989, diluted them in water and used them in a watercolour painting. Prosecutors decided not to charge him with stealing human remains or graves because the statute of limitations had expired, Beata Syk-Jankowska of the prosecutor's office in the eastern city of Lublin told AFP.

Tarlac honors survivors, victims of 'Bataan Death March'

April 10, 2013 13:18
Despite the searing heat, thousands of Tarlaqueños participated in the "Paggunita Sa Capas", an annual commemoration dedicated to the thousands of Filipino and American soldiers who were forced into a brutal march by their Japanese conquerors after the fall of Bataan in April 9, 1942. Filipino-American forces, numbering some 75,000, were ordered to lay down their arms by Major Gen. Edward P. King who realized that the dwindling amounts of ammunition, food and other supplies made their position untenable. King's decision is in direct violation of Gen.

An awe-inspiring World War II anecdote

April 9, 2013 02:21
Manoling, now 92 years old, can still do morning walks, only a little over five months after miraculously surviving a colon operation last October. The operation removed a big tumor -- and he stayed more than two months in between the intensive care unit and a private room of a Quezon City hospital. A war veteran who served his country during World War II, he has to date a sharp memory. He can still recount vivid details on how he was able to survive and tell his tale. This is Manoling's reminiscence.

Holocaust dead honoured in Auschwitz march

April 8, 2013 13:01
Thousands from across the globe marched solemnly Monday at the former Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp to honour the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust during World War II. The mournful wail of the "shofar" -- a traditional Jewish ram's horn symbolising freedom -- marked the beginning of the March of the Living, held this year for the 22nd time since 1988 in this southern Polish town where in 1940 Nazi Germany built Auschwitz, its most notorious death camp.

70 years on, Greek survivor recalls 'red sky over Birkenau'

March 17, 2013 15:00
Heinz Kounio was put aboard the first train to transfer Jews from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki to the Auschwitz death camp on March 15, 1943. As Greece held solemn ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of the forced deportations, the 85-year-old says he vividly recalls "the red sky" over the death camp, lit up by flames from the crematoria chimneys.
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