France

  • The Journey of No Return

    The above photograph is a rail track I pass over nearly every day. Yesterday, when I passed it, I had to think of all those who went on train journeys and never returned. The trains that travel over this rail track are comfortable, They have soft seats you can sit on, and some even have

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  • When we think of Nazi concentration camps, our minds often conjure images of mass extermination, terror, and starvation. The haunting images of piles of corpses at Bergen-Belsen and the crematoriums of Auschwitz are etched into our collective memory. However, in the final years of the Third Reich’s vast concentration-camp system, the Nazis introduced a disturbing

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  • Viewing images of the death and destruction wrought by the Holocaust can be deeply gut-wrenching. While it’s often said that a photograph speaks a thousand words, it’s equally valid that it can never tell the whole story. A photo captures only a single moment in time. This is one of the reasons I rarely share

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  • I know what you are thinking—another forgotten atrocity committed by the Nazi regime though you would be wrong. This massacre was carried out by the ‘good’ guys. It is an often-neglected fact that the majority of General De Gaulle’s Free French Forces were not white Frenchmen but were predominantly troops from its colonies in Africa

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  • And the guns fell silent.

    November 11, 1918. 10:59 am, one last volley of machine gun fire, one last soldier to die.Henry Nicholas John Gunther took one last charge with his bayonet. The enemy warned him , but he wanted to proof himself. He wanted to show his demotion from Sergeant to Private had been unjustified. One last hoorah, one

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  • Roger Godfrin is the only survivor of a massacre during which Nazi troops locked 643 citizens (including 500 women and children) inside a church and set fire to it on 10 June 1944 in Oradour sur Glane, France. About 20 people decided to make themselves scarce when the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich arrived.

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  • Claire Monis (1922–1967) lived a life that wove together art, defiance, and endurance. A French singer and actress from a Jewish family, she was both a member of the French Resistance and a survivor of Auschwitz, where she was forced to perform in the Women’s Orchestra. Her story illustrates how music could serve as both

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  • Alois Brunner was one of the most feared and ruthless Nazi war criminals during the Holocaust. As a senior SS officer and a close associate of Adolf Eichmann, Brunner played a pivotal role in the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews to concentration and extermination camps. Known for his cold-blooded efficiency and unrelenting cruelty,

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  • Just before Christmas 2011, I lost sight in my right eye. The retina had become detached, but after two operations, the sight could not be saved, in fact, my eye shrunk dramatically, and I now have a glass shell with an eye painted on it in front of the remainder of my eye. In November

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  • This day 225 years ago the last Queen of France was executed. Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755, Marie Antoinette married the future French king Louis XVI when she was just 15 years old. The young couple soon came to symbolize all of the excesses of the reviled French monarchy, and Marie Antoinette herself became

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