WWII
New York (AFP) - Martin Greenfield, a Holocaust survivor whose custom-suit empire counted US presidents and celebrities among its clientele, died on Wednesday aged 95, according to the New York Times. Widely considered one of the best tailors in the United States, Greenfield believed clothing had saved his life. Born Maximilian Grunfeld to a Jewish family from a part of Czechoslovakia that is now in Ukraine, he was imprisoned at Auschwitz as a teenager and tasked with washing the guards' clothes. After being beaten for accidentally ripping a Nazi's shirt, he mended it and wore it underneath ...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - The last living prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, who secured guilty verdicts from 22 Nazis and dedicated his life to fighting international injustice, has died at age 103, his son told AFP Saturday. Benjamin Ferencz, an American who at age 27 and with no prior trial experience served as one of the trials' chief prosecutors, would go on to later battle for compensation and the return of stolen goods to victims and survivors of the Holocaust. He died peacefully in his sleep of natural causes Friday evening at an assisted living facility in Boynton Beach, Florida, his son ...
AFP
The Hague (AFP) - Dutch police said on Friday they were investigating the projection of an anti-Semitic laser message onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam -- an incident the prime minister condemned as "reprehensible". The message referenced a far-right conspiracy theory that the teenage Holocaust victim was not the author of her famous diary, and images of the projection were shown on a private US Telegram channel. "It happened this week. We were notified and we are investigating it," an Amsterdam police spokesman told AFP, declining to give further details. The Anne Frank House Museum, whi...
AFP
Itzehoe (Germany) (AFP) - A court on Tuesday convicted a 97-year-old former Nazi camp secretary of complicity in the murder of more than 10,000 people in what could be Germany's last Holocaust trial. Presiding judge Dominik Gross handed a two-year suspended sentence to Irmgard Furchner for her role in what prosecutors called the "cruel and malicious murder" of prisoners at the Stutthof camp in occupied Poland. Furchner sat in a wheelchair in the courtroom, wearing a white cap and a medical mask as Gross found her guilty of thousands of counts of accessory to murder. She was the first woman in ...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - A US paratrooper who participated in the 1944 D-Day invasion, and lived to reenact the famed World War II landing 75 years later, has died aged 101, his unit -- the 101st Airborne Division -- announced Thursday. "Today we say farewell to a 101st Airborne Legend, Tom Rice," tweeted the US Army division. In the night of June 5, 1944, Rice strapped himself with 110 pounds (50 kilograms) of weapons and supplies and joined his 9,000 comrades on a nighttime flight across the English Channel into Nazi-occupied Normandy. His paratrooper division was tasked with securing the muddy ro...
AFP
Hiroshima (Japan) (AFP) - "Humanity is playing with a loaded gun" as crises with the potential for nuclear disaster proliferate worldwide, UN head Antonio Guterres said in Hiroshima on Saturday, the 77th anniversary of the first atomic bomb attack. At an annual memorial, Guterres warned of the risk posed by crises in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Korean peninsula as he described the horrors endured by the Japanese city. "Tens of thousands of people were killed in this city in the blink of an eye. Women, children and men were incinerated in a hellish fire," he said. Survivors were "cursed wi...
AFP
Manila (AFP) - A US navy destroyer sunk during World War II has been found nearly 7,000 metres (23,000 feet) below sea level off the Philippines, making it the world's deepest shipwreck ever located, an American exploration team said. The USS Samuel B Roberts went down during a battle off the central island of Samar on October 25, 1944 as US forces fought to liberate the Philippines -- then a US colony -- from Japanese occupation. A crewed submersible filmed, photographed and surveyed the battered hull of the "Sammy B" during a series of dives over eight days this month, Texas-based undersea t...
AFP
New York (AFP) - A Rolex watch worn by a British prisoner during the real-life "Great Escape" from the Nazi Stalag Luft III concentration camp is going on sale in New York. Christie's expects the timepiece to fetch between $200,000 and $400,000 at auction on June 9. The watch was worn by Gerald Imeson on the night of March 24, 1944 when a group of Allied soldiers undertook the daring escape that inspired the 1963 movie starring Steve McQueen. The steel watch with a black luminous dial and hands was "instrumental in the planning and execution" of their bid for freedom, Christie's said. The auct...
AFP
Hiroshima (Japan) (AFP) - Japan on Friday marked 76 years since the world's first atomic bomb attack, with low-key ceremonies and disappointment over a refusal by Olympics organisers to hold a minute's silence. Survivors, relatives and a handful of foreign dignitaries attended this year's main event in Hiroshima to pray for those killed or wounded in the bombing and call for world peace. Virus concerns meant the general public were once again kept away, with the ceremony instead broadcast online. Participants, many dressed in black and wearing face masks, offered a silent prayer at 8:15 am (23...
AFP
Vienna (AFP) - Even if they rarely speak German and some have never set foot on Austrian soil, nearly 76 years after the Holocaust, descendants of those forced out of Austria by the Nazis are reclaiming the nationality stolen from their ancestors. "It was very important for me," says 17-year-old American high school student Maya Hofstetter, who wants to piece together the fragments of her great-grandmother's painful history. AFP has gathered testimony from new Austrians like Hofstetter who have benefited from a 2019 change in the law which took effect in September, making it possible for Holo...
AFP
閲覧を続けるには、ノアドット株式会社が「プライバシーポリシー」に定める「アクセスデータ」を取得することを含む「nor.利用規約」に同意する必要があります。
「これは何?」という方はこちら