Photo: The Iron Dome intercepting rockets from Gaza 600 words / 3 minute read As I write this I am in Jerusalem. The day this text came in from my daughter, I had just begun the intensive work of indexing the new edition of Martin’s Atlas of Jewish History. I am…
Photo: The Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al-Husaini and Hitler, the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 28 November 1941 560 words / 3 minute read … the British forces allowed the defeated Iraqi troops to return to their barracks without surrendering their weapons. Stung by their humiliating defeat, and already fuelled with…
Photo: Martin’s map of the landing beaches 725 words / 4 minute read On the morning of June 5, Eisenhower wrote a message, in his own hand, to be published in the event of failure. It read: “Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and…
Photo: Former Prime Ministers along with members of the Privy Council at the Accession Council ceremony, 10 September 2022. Photo AP: Kirsty O’Connor/Pool 725 words / 3 ½ minute read When Martin was asked to become a member of the Iraq Inquiry in 2009, in order to have the security level…
Photo: The Palestine Post, later to become the Jerusalem Post, front page on the declaration of statehood. (Note article on Egyptian attack.) 1075 words / 5 minute read At five o’clock in the afternoon of 14 May 1948, in the main hall of the Tel Aviv Museum, a ceremony took place…
Photo: Martin’s map “Children under four deported to Auschwitz, 17 August 1942”, Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust 585 words / 2 ½ minute read Updated editions of three of Martin’s atlases will be making their appearances in the months ahead. (Watch this space.) I am at the moment indexing his Holocaust…
Photo: Published in Never Again. Left to right, Ruth Adamecz, Inge Adamecz (now Hamilton), Hanna Singer at Liverpool Street Station, 7 July 1939. 750 words / 3 ½ minute read Martin’s name on the cover of one of his books does not indicate that he only had his hand in the text. …
Photo: Chaim Topol as Tevye the Dairyman, in Fiddler on the Roof, 1971 500 words / 2 ½ minute read As he used to explain, after his wife Myra died, the warm and generous Greville Janner (Lord Janner of Braunstone) would entertain his guests in the House of Lords dining room. …
Photo: Jews removed from one of the bunkers, May 1943, from Jurgen Stroop’s photo collection, photo copy at Yad Vashem 700 words / 3 ½ minute read The Germans had chosen yet another date in the “Goebbels calendar”, Passover 1943, for the destruction of what was left of the Warsaw ghetto. …
Photo: Feng Shan Ho, Consul General in Vienna, 1938, Manli Ho Collection 650 words / 3 ½ minute read Martin loved watching old war films and would get together with his friend the military historian Max Arthur, the two of them offering a running commentary with and over the characters in…
Photo: Churchill with Tel Aviv’s mayor Meir Dizengoff, 30 March 1921 800 words / 4 minute read At midnight on 23 March 1921, Churchill left Egypt for Palestine by overnight train. Sir Herbert Samuel and T. E. Lawrence accompanied him. At that time 83,000 Jews and 600,000 Arabs lived between the…
Photo: Sir Martin reading to his students in front of the ruins of Crematorium III in Birkenau, June 1996 (from Holocaust Journey) 350 words / 1 ½ minute read The above titled article was published in The Jerusalem Post on February 12. Unsurprisingly it piqued my interest. The author Eli Kavon…
Photo: In Ishmael’s House makes a cameo appearance in Small Apartments, directed by Jonas Äkerlund, 2012, near James Marsden, playing Bernard 390 words / 2 minute read Literally one of those if-you-blink-you-missed-it moments, Martin made a cameo appearance. Well, not really Martin, but rather one of his productions. Spotted in a…
Photo: Martin in Yalta, February 1990, while filming the BBC Churchill series 700 words / 3 ½ minute read On February 4, near Brandschied, American forces breached the outer defences of the Siegfried Line. That day, in the Crimean resort town of Yalta, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met to discuss the…
Photo: Krzysztof Hejmanowski, left, the building inspector for the construction company, with Bartlomiej Gwozdz, left, the archaeologist, and some of the artefacts unearthed in Lodz. Photo by AP photographer Rafal Niedzielski 560 words / 3 minute read In January came the news that in December, during a building renovation in the…
Photo: Esther with Debra Brunner, Founder and CEO of The Together Plan, and Paul Demby, former Chair of the Trustees, 28 February 2019, photo ©Debra Brunner 450 words / 2 minute read After years of being “Patron” of The Together Plan I will be adding “real content” in the form of…
Photo: The rebuilt synagogue and community centre in the Ukrainian city of Zhitomir. 520 words / 2 ½ minute read Within five weeks of the German invasion of Russia on June 22, the number of Jews killed exceeded the total number killed in the previous eight years of Nazi rule. The…
Photo: Winston Churchill addressing Congress, 26 December 1941; Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressing Congress, 21 December 2022 475 words / 2 ½ minute read Joint Session of Congress I feel greatly honoured that you should have invited me to enter the United States Senate Chamber and address the representatives of both branches of…
Photo: Ayatollah Khomeini on the Iran 2000 Rial banknote (in November 2022, worth £.04 or $.047) 635 words / 3 minute read 1953: Not only Communism, but Islam, was offering an alternative political system to parliamentary democracy. On November 2 the Constituent Assembly in Pakistan declared the country a republic and…
Photo: Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis with museum founder Sheikh Ahmed Al Mansoori at the Crossroads of Civilisation Museum’s Holocaust exhibit in Dubai, November 2022. 360 words / 2 minute read You might have missed it. But tucked away between the struggle of the brave women of Iran to be allowed to choose…