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New York Times
2 days ago
- General
- New York Times
We Cannot Escape History
This personal reflection is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What is history? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page. When I was born, only 22 years had passed since the end of World War II. Throughout my childhood, as I grew up in the center of East Berlin, I played in the ruins. When the Berlin Wall fell, I was in my early 20s. Not long ago, a publisher prepared a biographical note to be printed with one of my stories claiming that my father was Russian and my mother was Polish. But this was not quite true. My father was born in Ufa, then the capital of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. His parents were Germans who had emigrated to the Soviet Union to escape fascism and returned to Germany after the war. My mother was born in a small town in what was then German East Prussia. When that area became part of Poland at the end of the war, my great-grandmother took my 3-year-old mother and her two siblings westward to what was still Germany. They traveled partly on foot, partly by train, partly by horse-drawn cart. My mother's father was still a prisoner of war in Norway then, while her mother had been transported by the Red Army to Siberia, where she was performing forced labor. Shortly before Christmas 1946, she returned to Germany and was reunited with her family. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
LeMonde
6 days ago
- LeMonde
Kazakhstan families search for clues about the 270,000 'missing soldiers' of the World War II Soviet Army
Nazym Arzimbetova struggled to hold back tears as she spoke about the tragic fate of the uncle she never knew. In May 1942, her mother's eldest brother, Rashit Temirjanovich Saguindykov, was conscripted into the Red Army, which had entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was 20 years old when he left his hometown of Balkhash, on the shores of the vast lake of the same name, in central Kazakhstan. He never returned, and his family still does not know the circumstances of his death, 80 years after the end of the war. His fate continues to haunt his 49-year-old niece, a therapist in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty: "My grandmother died of grief after her only son disappeared," Arzimbetova recalled. "All her life, she hoped at least to recover his body, so she could give him a proper burial." Arzimbetova paid 1 million tenges (€1,750) to a private investigator in Russia to comb through the Defense Ministry archives in Podolsk, 40 kilometers from Moscow. The research provided her with a valuable piece of information about her uncle, which she constantly checks on her phone: in August 1942, Rashit Saguindykov was training with the "6 th Reserve Communications Battalion, at the Alkino camp" in the Russian region of Bashkiria. His file revealed nothing more.
The Guardian
11-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The Soviet Union occupies the Baltic States – archive, June 1940
18 June 1940 Following the occupation of Lithuania, Soviet troops are now occupying Latvia and Estonia. The first Russian forces crossed the borders of both countries early yesterday, and the latest messages indicate that the two capitals, Riga and Tallinn, are now occupied. According to dispatches from the Latvian capital Soviet warships have entered the port of Riga and Soviet armoured cars and tanks have taken up positions in the city itself. The governments of both Latvia and Estonia have resigned at the instance of the Soviet authorities, who demanded the appointment of governments 'capable of ensuring and willing to ensure' the carrying out of the mutual assistance pacts concluded with the Soviet Union last year. The Tallinn correspondent of the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet says that Soviet troops have occupied Tallinn and various other places in Estonia. Another Swedish newspaper, Goteborgs-Tidningen, reports that the Russians are still pouring into Lithuania, and over 2,000 tanks have already arrived at the German frontier. The organisation is said to be perfect, there being big supplies of oil and other necessities. All strategically important points have been occupied. The Stockholms-Tidningen says that the occupation is an economic setback for Germany, because the big quantity of foodstuffs hitherto available for export will now be used by the Red Army. President Smetona of Lithuania is reported by the Moscow radio to have been interned by the Germans after fleeing across the frontier as the Russians entered his country. The Moscow radio said that Mr Smetona and members of his government crossed into East Prussia on Sunday night, and were then interned by the Germans, who, through the German embassy in Moscow, officially informed the Soviet Foreign Office of their action. A 'people's government' friendly to the Soviet Union has been formed in Lithuania. M Paleckis, a writer, is prime minister and Prof Krėvė-Mickievičius vice-premier and foreign minister. General Skučas, the former minister of the interior, and the chief of the political police have been arrested and are to be court martialled in accordance with Russian demands. General Musteikis, the war minister, has been dismissed. In Moscow the reason given for the latest demands on the Baltic States is the fact that the military alliance between Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania has not been rescinded since the conclusion of the recent mutual assistance pacts with Russia. This military alliance, it is stated, is 'directed against Russia', and is not only unbearable but dangerous for the security of the Russian frontiers.' President Ulmanis of Latvia is reported to be still in Riga, and he has appealed to his country over the radio to endorse the friendship with Russia. Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion 18 June 1940 Within a few hours, Estonia and Latvia have suffered the fate of Lithuania; the three pacts of last September and October are overthrown. The fall of the Baltic governments and the flight of ministers are proof enough that the 'independent state existence' and the policy of 'non-intervention in internal affairs,' then promised by Russia, have ended. The Soviet government has not been content with the naval bases, aerodromes, and military garrisons 'of strictly limited strength' which her treaties with the three States allowed her. From Estonia she had the use of two islands and Baltiski, guarding the approaches to the Gulf of Finland, and from Latvia the ports of Libau and Windau and mountings for artillery along the coast. The defensive significance of the present occupations is that they considerably reduce the land frontiers through which German armies might one day attack Russia; coastal batteries are wisely thought to be better obstacles than concrete forts inland. Russia's position in the Baltic has now only one weakness: the Aaland Islands are not in her hands. Here caution alone can restrain her, for they would be the first objective of any power which meant to attack Leningrad. Their neutrality is regarded as highly important by Sweden and they lie across Germany's iron-ore route. The reason given by Russia for occupying Estonia and Latvia is the same that sufficed for Lithuania. The three of them had entered, Russia says, into a secret military pact although all alliances had forbidden them in the treaties. Russia claims to have acted defensively, and we have no call yet to suppose that she intends to do anything against Germany. Why did Germany uproot her Baltic nationals unless she had seen something of this kind coming?
France 24
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
30 years on, Berlin light show recreates Christo's 'Wrapped Reichstag'
Every night for the next two weeks, 24 projectors will recreate the mega-event that enthralled the city and the world in 1995, about six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The late, France-based artistic duo specialised in enormous, ephemeral and eye-catching art projects that also saw them temporarily wrap up bridges and even entire islands. Since Monday evening and until June 20, the western facade of the glass-domed building housing Germany's lower house of parliament is being illuminated after sunset with a giant projection reproducing the installation. Back in 1995, when Germany was newly reunified, "art brought people together" as they marvelled at a building wrapped in 110,000 square meters of silver fabric, held together with kilometres of rope, said Peter Schwenkow, one of the organisers of this year's event. The celebration this year aims to "bring together all those who live in this city or visit it to commemorate what happened at the time," he added. The art installation runs nightly from 9:30 pm until 1:00 am. The artistic mega event of 1995 was the result of more than 20 years of planning that had sparked heated political debate but ultimately became a huge popular success, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors to Berlin. The event launched the rebirth of the building, which was burned down in an arson attack in 1933, accelerating the rise of the Nazi regime, and on which a Red Army soldier planted the Soviet flag in 1945 at the end of World War II. Once unpacked, it was renovated by British star architect Norman Foster, who added its now-famous glass dome. The Bundestag has sat in the building since 1999. The late Christo and Jeanne-Claude, both born on June 13, 1935, would have turned 90 this year.
IOL News
08-06-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
From Auschwitz to Gaza: The modern-day concentration camp
Roberto Amaral GAZA has been transformed into the largest open-air concentration camp ever known to humanity. An unimaginable 'death row' where the Palestinian people, more than half of whom are children, await their sentence without reprieve, dictated by the frighteningly belligerent and perverse Luciferian enemy. And, to the same extent, cowardly. For months, the Zionist government of Israel has been promoting, under the blind eyes of the cynical international community, an open ethnic cleansing. In this true 'concentration and extermination camp,' the wretches do not walk on their own two feet to the gas chambers to which the victims of Nazism were condemned: they are torn apart by the bombs of the ultra-modern army of the State of Israel, founded in 1947 under the auspices of the UN precisely to guarantee a home for the people who survived the Holocaust. Like the Jews of yesterday, today's Palestinians are incapable of defending themselves; but a powerful army – supersonic planes, drones, missiles, tanks and all sorts of artillery – is raining bombs down on them (as if hunger, vilification and theft of their lands were not enough). This is a genocide carried out in the open and in the shadow of the moral iniquity of an international community that watches everything impassively. Unlike the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp, today's victims cannot dream of liberation from the Red Army, which in January 1945 advanced on Poland on its way to Berlin. No one comes to their aid. They are left 'to their own devices,' which has turned out to be a cruel fate. Those who escape the siege of Gaza are already condemned to no future: without a homeland or land, they will have nowhere to go. They are poor, and do not have a chain of protection spread throughout the world; they are the new condemned of the earth. Without 'promised salvation', they have been condemned to exile, they will wander, their dreams shattered, and their most modest hopes lost. In 1947, Palestine, then occupied by 600,000 Jews and 1.3 million Arabs (of whom around 700,000 Palestinians were expelled), was to be divided up so that two states could be established, one Jewish (the future State of Israel) and the other Arab. The first was established, and we know what it is today. The other, 78 years later, is awaiting international recognition, which has been denied. The US and its cohort: the United Kingdom, Germany and most of the European Union are leading the refusal. Israel occupies and blockades the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, where it has been lying and rolling since the 1967 invasion, during the 'Six-Day War'. The Palestinians of Gaza are a captive people in an occupied country waiting to be destroyed, hermetically blockaded, deprived of fuel, electricity, water, food and medicine, with their civil infrastructure destroyed, schools demolished and hospitals at the mercy of bombings. Estimates speak of somewhere between 35 and 45 thousand civilian victims. More than 15 thousand children have already died, and the UN warns that more, more than 15 thousand babies, could still die if the Israeli government continues to block the entry of food and medicine. While the international community remains silent and Zionism applauds war crimes, Ehud Olmert, former Prime Minister of Israel (2006-2009), defines Zionist policy as 'perverse, malicious and irresponsible'. We must listen to him: 'Netanyahu typically tries to obscure the kind of orders he is giving to avoid legal and criminal responsibility in due course. But some of his lackeys say it openly: 'Yes, we are going to starve Gaza.'' He charges: 'Israel is committing war crimes.'
