Photo: Ivor Lunzer with Esther; photo by Edwin Shuker The Holocaust – what we need to know and what we can learn from it. From a talk delivered at Limmud UK, Part 1: What happened?* 2000 words/10 minute read Welcome! I am Esther Gilbert. I was married to the historian Martin…
Photo: August 2019 participants. 50 participants from Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Great Britain and Israel. The youngest was 9 years old, the oldest was 74. 200 words/1 minute read ICEJ, the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem lead their memorial walk, dedicated to Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, along the Vrba-Wetzler escape…
Photo: The Boys in Prague before their journey to the UK Filmmaker Herb Krosney on The Boys. Letter to the Editor, Jerusalem Post,10 November 2019 “Regarding ‘World War II pilot’s heroic Holocaust secret revealed’ (November 6) about the flight to England of 732 Holocaust orphans, your readers might be interested in…
Photo:“The shooter’s rampage” 555 words/2 ½ minute read Stephan Balliet has proven what most Jews already know: Anti-Semitism is not about Jews. Rather, it is about those who are filled with hate. And basically that means hate for anyone – Jews are just the “miner’s canaries”: when Jews are targetted,…
To watch the Memorial Lecture CLICK HERE (You need not be on Facebook to watch this) Welcome by Rabbi Nicky Liss Preface by Sir Harry Solomon, Chairman of the Board of Trustees Introduction by Esther, Lady Gilbert Thanked by James Libson Read the text of the talk: CLICK HERE Read the Press…
Photo: Esther presenting Churchill and America to David Miliband on behalf of the Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Centre 480 words/2 1/2 minute read During David Miliband’s time as Foreign Secretary under Gordon Brown, Martin had occasion to meet him, and held high regard for him. Since leaving the Foreign Ministry,…
Photo: A child from Ruthenian ghetto of Berehovo in Hungarian-occupied Czechoslovakia, being held in a birch grove with other deportees before being killed in a gas chamber in Birkenau; photo taken in early June or July 1944 by SS Sergeant Ernst Hoffman; in collection of Beate Klarsfeld Foundation. 775 words/4 minute…
475 words/2 ½ minute read Martin’s interest in maps began in his early years. He told me that he had wanted to study geography but his teachers had told him that wasn’t a “real” study so he went on to do history. But his love of geography continued throughout his…
Photo: Randolph Churchill addressing the dinner 1500 words/8 minute read Editor’s Note: On June 14, Hillsdale College, the publishers of the official multi-volume Churchill biography, announced, at a gala dinner in London, the completion of the final document volumes, bringing the biography to 8 volumes of Churchill’s life, and 23…
600 word/3 minute read A century ago from the time I grew up there, those living in the American West experienced years of animosity that often descended into bloodshed. Having taken the land from the native Indian population, Eastern settlers experienced a new freedom: that of the wide open range.…
Cracow, February 2010 1.30 minute read/295 words Martin’s talk at the Jagiellonian went well; it can be a surprise for an audience to learn a new aspect of their history. In thanking Martin, his host remarked also how refreshing it was that Martin, unlike many of their non-Polish lecturers, knew…
This July marks ten years since then Prime Minister Gordon Brown set up the Iraq Inquiry, headed by Sir John Chilcot and included Sir Lawrence Freedman, Sir Roderic Lyne, Baroness Prashar, and Sir Martin. The commission, “appointed to consider the UK’s policy on Iraq from 2001 to 2009”, was given…
This September marks the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War, a war that saw the deaths of tens of millions of both military and civilian populations, and a sea of refugees both before and after the conflict. In those pre-war years in Germany when the Nazi…
Photo: Sir Martin, describing the preparations for the Normandy Landings, May 2003. Photo © Bernie Pucker, with thanks to Liz Burgess. Patrick Kidd, in The Times on April 29, writes of the tragedy of the Slapton Sands rehearsal for the D-Day landings: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/slapton-sands-rehearsal-that-was-deadlier-than-d-day-flzh7g66x Sir Martin, in D-Day, gives the background to…
Photo: Martin and Max, consulting the map of their journey, June 2003 Max Arthur, OBE 25 February 1939 – 2 May 2019 It began at a cafe in Hampstead though by the time I got to know them, their friendship was already close. Two historians of the twentieth century, focussing…
Photo: Memorial to the Jews of Dzialoszyce murdered “by the German Genociders” Michael Brown, writing a piece in WND entitled “Why Russian Jews Dreaded Easter Weekend” has several inaccuracies that call out for clarification. His premise is that Jews in Russia were subjected to anti-Jewish violence that had been instigated…
Photo: Martin with Elizabeth Nel, 2006, in London The Elizabeth Nel Correspondence The latest edition of Finest Hour, “The Journal of Winston Churchill and his Times” (Number 183) contains an article by Cita Stelzer entitled “Working with Winston: The Unsung Women Behind Britain’s Greatest Statesman”. Cita Stelzer writes about Churchill’s…
Photo: Some of the hundreds of box files of Sir Martin’s archive In March, Hillsdale College in Michigan announced they had acquired Sir Martin’s library and archive. As the above excerpt shows, Martin spoke with anyone who had known Churchill, worked with him, worked for him, even those who worked…
On April 9, Israelis will go to the polls in what could be a momentous election. As this map shows,the numbers and needs of Arabs who are citizens of Israel, though a minority, must be taken into consideration in a democratic state. The Arab-Israeli Minority, as at 2010 Read: Arab-Israel…
Photo: Martin speaking at the launch of his book The Holocaust, 2003, Skopje, Macedonia. Lubcho Lapé is to his right. In memory of the 75th anniversary of the German occupation of Hungary, the Hungarian periodical Szombat is publishing the “Hungary” chapter in The Righteous, Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust, which…