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…
Photo: Churchill with Roosevelt give a joint press conference in Washington, 23 December 1941, photo Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library 350 words / 1 ½ minute read Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Churchill, concerned that the…
Photo: Left to right, Rivka Liebeskind (Dolek’s wife), Dolek Liebeskind, Miriam Liebeskind (Dolek’s sister). Rivka survived. Photo from Ghetto Fighters’ House, Israel. 530 words / 2 ½ minute read “We are fighting for three lines in the history books.” Adolf (Dolek) Liebeskind, Cracow, 20 November 1942 On December 22, a month…
Photo: Route of Anglo-American aid to the Soviet Union to keep them in the Second World War, from Sir Martin’s Routledge Atlas of the Second World War 700 words / 3 ½ minute read The war was about to take a dramatic turn. On 22 June 1941 Hitler ordered the invasion…
Photo: The Western Front, November 11, photo by United States Signal Corps, from First World War 460 words / 2 minute read On the morning of 9 November 1918, the German armistice negotiators reached the Forest of Compiègne. The German military delegate, Major-General von Winterfeldt, was the son of the man…
Photo: The Queen and her Queue, 16 September 2022, Westminster Hall, Houses of Parliament 725 words / 3 ½ minute read “Are my Jewish subjects happy”? When the late Queen Elizabeth wanted to know about the history of Jews in Britain, she turned to the historian, Sir Martin Gilbert. At an…
Photo: Karl Huhle’s photo of Hitler descending the stairway at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden to meet the former Prime Minister Lloyd George in September 1936; the interpreter Paul-Otto Schmidt is in the centre, lifting his hat, and Joachim von Ribbentrop at the left. 800 words / 4 minute read “I am…
Photo: Barbara Winton with her father, Sir Nicholas Winton, and her book. 430 words / 2 minute read “Do you want to meet Nicholas Winton?” Not an offer people get every day, even an offer made to Martin Gilbert’s groupie and wife. It was 2005, Martin was writing his book on…
Photo: The cover of the first edition of Anne Frank’s diary, The Secret Annexe, published in Amsterdam in 1947. Many editions, translations, adaptations followed. 650 words / 3 minute read Anne Frank’s story has gone through many representations. My favourite is this one: The stage is set as a dwelling that has…