In the summer of 2013 I interviewed Samuel Willenberg, at the time the last surviving participant of the Jewish revolt at Treblinka, the Nazi death camp in Eastern Poland. During the interview, he reminisced about Artur Gold, the famous Jewish violinist, and leader of the Treblinka orchestra. He told me: “As we stood during evening […]
Poland’s far right targets refugees
Just as in Britain, the US and Hungary, the far right in Poland is now mobilising around the question of immigration. Over the last month the country has witnessed a number of worrying developments. The first was in the run up to the presidential elections in May when a thousand-strong anti-immigration protest took place in […]
Victory for far right in Poland’s Presidential elections
Right-wing historian Karol Nawrocki defied the pollsters by winning the Polish presidential election on Sunday. Nawrocki polled 50.89% of the vote, narrowly beating Warsaw’s liberal mayor Rafal Trzaskowski who scored 49.11%. No gloss can be put on this result. In the first round of the elections, far-right parties came second, third and fourth. Support of […]
‘Lili Marlene’: the song that haunted the Nazis
One song and two singers came to represent opposition and resistance to Hitler in the Second World War. The most beautiful and certainly most popular song of the Second World War was Lili Marlene. A poem written in 1915, it was first recorded by German singer Lale Andersen in 1939 and was titled Das Mädchen unter […]