PN1501 Amon Göth was one of the most brutal and grotesque figures of the Holocaust. He served as commandant of the Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp and was later featured in the film Schindler's List for his sadistic running of the camp. He was a man who took great pleasure in killing innocent people. Göth joined the Nazi … Read more
La sala da ballo era esattamente come Olivia l’aveva sempre sognata. Lampadari di cristallo scintillavano sopra centinaia di invitati, un quartetto d’archi suonava piano vicino al palco e ogni tavolo era coperto di rose bianche. Avrei dovuto essere l’uomo più felice della stanza. Invece, non riuscivo a trovare i miei genitori. La wedding planner mi … Read more
In September 1938, Adolf Hitler threatened to unleash a European war unless the Sudetenland, a border area of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans, was ceded to Germany. Between September 29 and 30, 1938, the leaders of Britain, France, Italy, and Germany met in Munich and agreed to the German annexation of the Sudetenland in exchange … Read more
On the morning of March 23, 1945, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery received confirmation at 6 a.m. at his 21st Army Group headquarters in Venlo, Holland. American troops had crossed the Rhine at Oppenheim the previous night, using assault boats and suffering only light casualties. Patton's Third Army was already on the eastern bank of the … Read more
The life of Margot Frank is often remembered only through the diary of her younger sister, Anne. Yet Margot was a bright, modest, and determined young woman whose own story ended in the horrors of Bergen-Belsen. She was born on February 16, 1926, in Frankfurt, Germany, to Otto and Edith Frank. Her sister Anne was … Read more
Aplikacja bankowa pokazała 11 400 złotych. Sześć lat oszczędzania. Piętnaście tysięcy dolarów odłożonych na mój pierwszy dom, przepadłych w jednym przelewie na ślub mojej siostry. Siedziałam w szpitalnym garażu, wciąż w zielonych spodniach od pielęgniarskiego munduru, pod światłami parkingowymi, i śmiałam się tak mocno, że nie mogłam złapać oddechu. Potem zadzwoniłam do matki. „Wzięłaś to? … Read more
Mala Zimetbaum was born on January 26, 1918, in Pszczyna, today part of Poland and then part of Austria-Hungary. She was the youngest of five children of Pinhas and Chaya Zimetbaum, both Jewish. Her family had lived in Germany for several years before her birth, which is why German was the main language spoken in … Read more
On the afternoon of December 12, 1941, a telephone rang inside the headquarters of the Third Army in San Antonio, Texas. Five days earlier, Japanese bombs had turned Pearl Harbor into a graveyard of steel and fire. The man who answered was a brigadier general almost nobody outside the army had ever heard of. His … Read more
In March 1945, a message arrived at Third Army headquarters with an instruction its authors almost certainly considered reasonable. Bypass Trier. The city, according to planners at SHAEF, would require four divisions to capture. Do not commit forces to the assault. Continue the advance. The logic was sound in the abstract. Trier was a significant … Read more
Leni Riefenstahl spent more than sixty years telling a story about herself—that she was a politically naive artist who had been swept into the Nazi film world against her will and knew nothing of the regime’s crimes. It took seven hundred boxes of her own archive, opened after her death, to dismantle that narrative. In … Read more