This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Deutsche Welle
Jan 8, 2008
Historians have typically characterized Palestinians collectively as Hitler-supporters during the Nazi regime. But a German researcher has said that they were more concerned with relations with another European country.Any historical conversation in Germany over Palestine and National Socialism usually turns to one name: Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al Husseini. The Muslim leader was an anti-Semite, a passionate follower of the Nazis and moved to Germany in 1941 to collaborate with
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 7, 2008
Conservationists and locals all agree that that the dilapidated Bonds Garage, and the fleet of second hand vans that surrounds it, are an eyesore that does no credit to the picturesque village of Avebury.
But the proposal to knock down the 1930s garage and house and to replace them with five new houses has set the Wiltshire village (population 486) on a collision course with the most influential conservation bodies in the land and even the world.
The reason is that Aveb
Source: http://www.vicksburgpost.com
Jan 7, 2008
PORT GIBSON -- From museums to meticulously preserved battlefields, Vicksburg abounds with reminders of Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 1862-63 effort to capture the city and take control of the Mississippi River.
To see the site of the campaign's first battle, though, one must penetrate the tree-studded ravines of Claiborne County to the yard of an inconspicuous building that, until recently, was in danger of falling down.
Restored by the Mississippi Department of Archiv
Source: AFP
Jan 7, 2008
A record 1.22 million people visited the former Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 2007, a spokesman for the museum in southern Poland said Monday.
"The majority of visitors are from abroad, mainly from Great Britain, the United States and Germany," museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt told AFP.
Last year, 755,000 foreigners visited the twin death camps, including 104,000 British citizens, 91,000 Americans and 60,000 Germans, he said.
&quo
Source: Deutsche Welle
Jan 7, 2008
Organizers of a rolling exhibit that highlights the role of the German transport system in the Holocaust have complained of a lack of support from Germany's largest national railway company.
The citizens' action group that created the Train of Commemoration, a vintage steam locomotive hauling two carriages containing pictures of child Holocaust victims, has begun touring German cities since early November. It is to reach the Auschwitz death camp in Poland on May 8.
But
Source: Deborah Lipstadt at her blog
Jan 7, 2008
Today the Supreme Court heard Baze v. Rees, a case arguing that the drug cocktail used in lethal injections constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
So what does that have to do with this blog?
Turns out that the "cocktail" was invented by one Fred Leuchter who, posing as an engineer, wrote the bogus report on the non-existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz and Maidanek.
This guy has an electric chair in his basement -- I assume it's non-operative
Source: IraqCrisis newsletter
Jan 7, 2008
Baghdad, founded in the 8th century as the capital of the Abbasid
caliphate, soon became a vibrant city crowded by people from different
races, colors, and creeds. Soon after its founding, it became a major
center of not only commercial activities but also scholarship, culture,
and civilization. The city produced countless scholars in many areas of
knowledge, thinkers of all sorts, poets, artists, and diverse models of
piety through many of its educational and pious institutions,
booksell
Source: Toronto Star
Jan 7, 2008
An unusual new course about genocide to be offered in Toronto high schools this fall has sparked anger among Turkish-Canadians for including the Turkish killing of Armenians in 1915.The Grade 11 history course, believed the only one of its kind at a high school in Ontario and possibly Canada, is designed to teach teenagers what happens when a government sets out to destroy people of a particular nationality, race or religion, through three examples: the Holocaust which exter
Source: Times of India
Jan 7, 2008
The historic village of Malana, which traces its origins to 326 BC when Alexander's Macedonian army invaded the northwestern outposts of India and produces the world's finest hashish (Malana cream), was gutted in a raging inferno that began late on Saturday night.
Firefighters had to break down houses in the village to make a fire line that managed to save about 40% of the houses in the 10,000-foot high Himalayan habitat, but the lower half of the village was completely burned. Th
Source: Reuters
Jan 7, 2008
A plan to exhume the remains of Italy's favorite saint to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his death has sparked a protest by followers who threaten to go to court to make sure he rests in peace.
The exhumation would give millions of Italians another chance to pay tribute to Padre Pio, a 20th century mystic monk said to have suffered from stigmata -- bleeding wounds in the hands and feet similar to those of Christ.
Archbishop Domenico D'Ambrosio announced at the wee
Source: Reuters
Jan 7, 2008
Thousands of people have been following the fate of a British soldier fighting in the trenches of World War One on a Web site publishing his letters home exactly 90 years after they were written.
Like William Henry Bonser ("Harry") Lamin's real family almost a century ago, the modern reader visiting www.wwar1.blogspot.com does not know when the next letter is coming, or whether the one they are reading is in fact his last.
Source: The Age
Jan 7, 2008
A MILLION fallen German soldiers are being reburied more than 60 years after the fall of the Third Reich. And, more controversially, the skeletal remains of thousands of Waffen SS Nazis recruited from other European countries are also being reburied.
The operation is taking place across Eastern Europe, where more than 15 million civilians were killed by the German war machine. Resentment against the reburial program is running high in many countries.
So far 520,000 skel
Source: BBC
Jan 7, 2008
The Welsh widow of a soldier, who rescued a woman and baby from Stalin's Russia, has been contacted by the child her husband helped nearly 65 years ago.
In 1945, Private Frank Jones escaped from a German prisoner of war camp and spent three weeks walking to Russia.
He met Sophia Guseinova and her baby Yashar and also helped them to safety.
After his death in 1992, his widow Chris from Denbighshire, discovered the pair had survived the escape and has been in
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 7, 2008
An amateur British military historian has unearthed a vast underground Nazi gun battery complex thought to have caused carnage during the D-Day landings.
Gary Sterne, 43, discovered the huge "Maisy Battery" after he found a crinkled map which fell out of an old pair of US serviceman's trousers at a military memorabilia fair in Stockport.
It turned out to be an invasion map for Omaha Beach, which included an area marked "area of high resistance". Mr S
Source: http://canadianpress
Jan 6, 2008
A rusty, diamond-shaped iron blade, its sharp point jutting from the dirt where it was discovered, could be a centuries-old clue that sheds new light on the obscure path taken by the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto.
For archeologist Dennis Blanton it has erased most doubts that the patch of ground in southeast Georgia was visited more than 460 years ago by some Spanish explorers - if not by de Soto himself.
"It's pretty much case-closed," says Blanton, stand
Source: AFP
Jan 6, 2008
One of the world's most famous cruise ships -- the Queen Elizabeth 2 -- set sail Sunday on its final global voyage before being turned into a floating hotel, British media reported.
The vessel left with a fireworks send-off from the southern English port city of Southampton for her last winter trip, the domestic Press Association news agency said.
Her sister ship, the recently-named Queen Victoria, set off on her first world cruise at the same time. Both ships will trav
Source: cnews
Jan 6, 2008
A recent U.S. court ruling is giving a serious boost to the efforts of those trying recapture lost Jewish-owned heirlooms that were forcibly sold during the Nazi era in Germany.
A U.S. District Court judge ordered a German baroness to hand over the painting as it rightfully belongs to the estate of a Jewish-Canadian art dealer who was forced to auction it off before he fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s.
Judge Mary Lisi ruled the painting in question rightfully belongs
Source: Beacon News
Jan 6, 2008
William Olin, who resides at Aurora Rehabilitation and Living Center, says he served in World War I. If so, he could be one of less than a dozen World War I veterans alive in the entire world. He says he lost all his records and a fire in St. Louis destroyed the enlistment records of hundreds of men. ...
News stories are supposed to answer your questions, give you the facts. Not this one. I'm going to introduce doubt and conflicting stories.
That's because Olin is an ol
Source: Guardian
Jan 6, 2008
It starts like any other young woman's diary - with a description of hobbies, a first boyfriend, schoolmates and trips to the country - but it ends like few others. The final words are 'the horror, the horror, the horror'.
This week The Journal of Helene Berr will arrive in French bookshops. The harrowing story of a young Jewish girl in occupied Paris, will be, according to the newspaper Liberation, 'the publishing sensation of 2008'. Two years ago, an account by another French Jewi
Source: NYT
Jan 6, 2008
Although members of the original movement serve as mentors, the young S.D.S. is eager to prove that its interest in social change extends beyond nostalgia.
“One of our strengths is having a clear understanding of what went wrong in the ’60s,” says Pat Korte, a 19-year-old sophomore at the New School, in Greenwich Village. Mr. Korte was a co-founder of the born-again organization in 2006, as a senior at Stonington High School, in Connecticut. S.D.S. now has around 120 active chapters
