Liverpool’s iconic Cavern Club has cancelled a performance this weekend by rockabilly singer and pianist Dylan Kirk and his band after anti-fascist campaigners raised concerns over Kirk’s recent appearance in a photograph alongside Paul Golding, the leader of Britain First. Laughing together The picture was taken at the rally which concluded an anti-migrant march earlier […]
Culture
Artur Gold: the violinist of Treblinka
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 […]
Review: Celebrating Billie Holiday, jazz great and civil rights activist
A great night at the Jazz Café, Camden, on 7 April when we were transported back to the Jim Crow era and Billie Holiday’s concerts at Carnegie Hall in 1956, with Riketté Genesis really embodying Holiday and Alex Webb on piano with a fantastic band supporting. Holiday was born on 7 April 1915. Webb read […]
‘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 […]
Berlin and the red triangle
The red triangle was in the news recently when the city of Berlin senate banned its use on activities related to the Middle East after the image was appropriated by Hamas supporters. There is some confusion as to the origins of the use of the red triangle in this context with some saying it represents […]
Theatre Review: The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, by Dario Fo and Franca Rame
The Accidental Death of an Anarchist is a play that arose from events in December 1969, when Italian fascists bombed the Piazza Fontana in Milan, killing 17 people and injuring 88. It was the deadliest of several bombs planted that day by the group Ordine Nuovo (New Order) as part of the far right’s ‘Strategy […]