When Rudolf Hess climbed into a Messerschmitt Bf 110 and flew alone toward Scotland in May 1941, he left behind a wife and a three-year-old son. He never returned to them. For the next 46 years, one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich existed mainly as a name in a prison ledger, … Read more
Amsterdam. Margot Frank, die ältere Schwester von Anne Frank, starb unter Umständen, die weit grausamer waren als bislang angenommen. Neue Erkenntnisse aus Überlebendenberichten zeichnen ein erschütterndes Bild der letzten Monate der jungen Frau, die gemeinsam mit ihrer Schwester zu den bekanntesten Opfern des Holocaust zählt. Ihr Tod im Konzentrationslager Bergen-Belsen im Februar 1945 ereignete sich … Read more
The Library of Congress holds 465,000 documents connected to Claire Boothe Luce, a collection so vast that it took executors over two years to transfer her estate after her death. Yet within that archive there is a striking gap: no draft manuscript of “The Women,” the play that made her famous. Only one scene description, … Read more
On the night of October 14, 1952, a Chicago enforcer who had survived Al Capone's reign walked into Smalls Paradise in Harlem and made one fatal mistake. He disrespected Bumpy Johnson in front of 200 witnesses. The music died. Bumpy crossed the room and spoke three calm sentences. Before the last word left his mouth, … Read more
In the summer of 1946, a single act of racial violence in a small South Carolina town set off a chain of events that would echo across the South for generations. The story begins in Harlem, where one of the most powerful Black men in America learned that his grandmother had been lynched in broad … Read more
On the afternoon of July 20, 1944, a briefcase packed with plastic explosives sat beneath a heavy oak table inside a wooden hut in East Prussia. Minutes later, it detonated, tearing through Adolf Hitler's map conference and killing four men outright. The man who had planted it was already racing for an airfield, convinced he … Read more
Im besetzten Bila Zerkwa in der Zentralukraine haben deutsche Einheiten im August 1941 ein Verbrechen begangen, das selbst Frontsoldaten der Wehrmacht erschütterte: die systematische Erschießung von rund 90 jüdischen Kindern, deren Eltern zuvor von SS-Kommandos ermordet worden waren. Die Tat markiert einen der frühesten dokumentierten Höhepunkte des nationalsozialistischen Vernichtungskrieges gegen die jüdische Bevölkerung der Sowjetunion. … Read more
In the summer of 1964, Harlem was a neighborhood on the edge of change. The Civil Rights Act was on the horizon, Malcolm X walked the streets with fire in his eyes, and the old guard of the underworld watched the horizon with suspicion. At the center of that shifting world stood Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson. … Read more
Amsterdam – Sie verehrte Adolf Hitler, leugnete den Holocaust und pflegte bis zu ihrem Tod Kontakte zu verurteilten Kriegsverbrechern. Florentine Rost van Tonningen, geboren am 14. November 1914 in Amsterdam als Florentine Sophie Heubel, starb am 24. März 2007 im belgischen Wasmünster im Alter von 92 Jahren. Ihr Leben steht exemplarisch für die dunkelste Epoche … Read more
In a Harlem cafe on 116th Street, a 300-pound enforcer made the single most consequential mistake of his professional life without even knowing it. He grabbed the wrist of a woman in her 70s and left a red mark. That woman was Bumpy Johnson's mother. The cafe had kept time with the neighborhood's rhythm for … Read more