Photo: Dieppe raid, The battle 19th August 1942 As the thousands of Warsaw’s Jews were being deported to their deaths in Treblinka in the summer of 1942, 1700 kilometers to the West, the Allies were desperate to establish a toe-hold in Europe and take pressure off German-occupied Russia on the…
Photo: Refuseniks meet with British historian and Soviet Jewry advocate Martin Gilbert in Moscow in 1985. From left: Oksana Kholmyansky, Yuli Kosharovsky, Alexander Ioffe, Martin Gilbert. Front row: Mikhail Kholmyansky. Collection of Mikhail Kholmyansky. This July sees the long-awaited publication of Yuli Kosharovsky’s book We Are Jews Again, Jewish Activism in…
Photo: Sir Martin taking notes of names and inscriptions on the wooden crosses of the German soldiers buried there; note Jewish gravestone among the crosses. Fricourt German Cemetery, the Somme In November 2004 Martin and I spent a few days on the Somme battlefield in France. He was doing the…
On 3 January 2012, Martin and I spent the day in Ramallah, a guest of the Portland Trust, of which Martin was a Trustee. The Portland Trust, with offices in London, Tel Aviv and Ramallah, works to promote peace and stability between Israelis and Palestinians, by economic development. Although we…
After Martin and I married, he took me to India to meet (and hopefully be approved by) his “adopted aunt” Fori Nehru, the wife of the Indian diplomat BK Nehru, cousin of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. As Martin describes in his book Letters to Auntie Fori, the Story…
Thank you to David Aaronovitch, who in his 13 April 2017 piece in The Times, “Don’t let the revisionists rewrite Nazi history”, describes “intellectual evisceration” as carried out by Sir Martin in 1987. That discussion, in 1987, was about the suggestion of collaboration between “Zionist leaders” and the Germans to…
See video below In February I was invited to Hillsdale College in Michigan where work on the Official Churchill Biography is continuing. Upon Randolph Churchill’s death in 1968, Sir Martin was asked to finish the biography of his father that Randolph had begun. Randolph, with his team of researchers –…
Thank You to Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, the Metropolitan Police and the National Security Services, the NHS National Health Service, Members of the Houses of Parliament, Leaders of Britain’s religious communities, and the thousands who gathered, for standing together to combat hatred and terror. Prayers and healing to those…
THE CHURCHILL DOCUMENTS: Volume 19 Fateful Questions, September 1943 to April 1944 Hillsdale College Press has published the latest instalment in the Official Biography of Sir Winston Churchill. Fateful Questions tells Churchill’s story during the final four months of 1943 and the first months of 1944 over a total 2728 pages of documents.…
In February, while visiting Hillsdale College in Michigan, I had the opportunity to visit the Detroit Holocaust Memorial Center – an informative and beautifully designed museum of Jewish life, Pre-war Antisemitism, and the history of the Holocaust, an exhibit which finishes with a display of Jewish soldiers from Michigan who…
The theme of Holocaust Memorial Day 2017 – How can life go on? – invites us to consider the challenges faced by survivors of the Holocaust in rebuilding their lives after the end of the Second World War. Perhaps the most powerful example of resilience and renewal is that told…
Among the stories told at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance and research centre in Israel, is that of the Righteous, those non-Jewish individuals and organizations who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Beginning in 1962, trees were planted in honour of these rescuers, a veritable forest of…
Holocaust eyewitness and survivor, scholar and historian, author and archaeologist, who has laid bare the bones of history with his pen and his spade. One of “The Boys” whose death coincided with the 75th anniversary of the mass murder of many of the Jews of his hometown Novogrudek, Belarus. May…
Pope Pius XII gives a radio broadcast from the Vatican in 1947 (AP) “For years Pius XII has been smeared. The BBC retraction shows the tide is turning; Major historians such as Sir Martin Gilbert have demolished the myths first perpetrated by the Soviet Union” by William Doino, Jr, posted…
It was 2004 and I was in New York for the launch of my Holocaust Memoir Digest, which the Hidden Child Foundation kindly offered to host at their headquarters at the Anti-Defamation League. Martin was to introduce me and he got up to address the seated throng. Out of the…
Having been in a profession that has enabled me to live and work in a number of countries around the world over the course of my career, it has taken me far too long to discover the brilliance of Sir Martin Gilbert. It was whilst reading an account of the…
Tribute to Sir Martin from Dennis Woodcock In 1983 I took a school party from N. Ireland to London . On 31st March we visited Windsor, where I found a book in a sale for £1! It was the first volume in the Churchill biography (by Randolph Churchill). Thus began my…
Interestingly, I recently viewed “Winston Churchill the Wilderness Years” made by Southern Pictures in 1980 – 81 and starring Robert Hardy and a stellar cast of famous actors, many of whom are sadly no longer with us. I had not realised that Sir Martin had been the historical adviser to…
Sadler’s Wells hosts an opera/ballet by Leo Geyer on 4th July 2016, inspired by his visit to Auschwitz with exhibition and reception. The blackbird’s song inspires music from loss By Claire Cantor, August 4, 2016, www.theJC.com Auschwitz is a disturbing, silent place, even now. When British composer Leo Geyer arrived…
Over 800 children from 25 schools took part in this year’s Etgar Challenge at Wembley Stadium. With a team of over 100 volunteers, it was an unforgettable afternoon filled with singing, puzzles, challenges and games. Etgar, whose name is Hebrew for “challenge” and whose mission is to inspire a love…