Latest news with #HitlerYouth
BBC News
11-07-2025
- General
- BBC News
We could see Hitler Youth from this window says Jersey internee
A Jersey internee said he felt "sadness and joy" when he returned to the spot where he saw the Hitler Youth train outside his internment Newton was two years old when he was deported to the German town of Bad Wurzach with his family during the Hitler Youth was a group which introduced children to Nazi ideology and than 600 islanders lived behind barbed wires between 1942 and 1945 not knowing if they would ever return home. Some of the people who experienced those times have returned to the town and the castle where they were held to mark the 80th anniversary of their liberation. Mr Newton is the oldest surviving internee on the visit and was shown around the castle where he slept in a dormitory with many said "there was barbed wire separating us from the Hitler Youth" and "we could look through and see them training".Mr Newton added: "It's a privilege to come back here for my parents because they're the ones who took the full brunt of it because they knew what was going on and we didn't, we were just children."The group has joined friends and family to return to the interment camp as part of the visit organised by the Bad Wurzach Partnerschaft Committee and the St Helier – Bad Wurzach Partnership. Lola Garvin was eight months old when she was deported with her family and is the chairwoman of the St Helier – Bad Wurzach placed flowers on some of the graves of Jersey internees who died in the camp in Bad Garvin said "it's so spiritual" and "the Bad Wurzach people keep the graves beautifully clean, which is so important"."It meant a lot to also see my grandchildren lay roses too because they came here not knowing what to expect and I think they've understood it so we need to pass on the spirit of peace to the next generation," she added. Angela Thom was born in the internment camp in 1943 and does not remember growing up her family would talk about what happened during their time behind barbed Thorn said: "My brother and one of my sisters remembers going down into a cellar and there were slave workers on their way to another camp and they said it was horrific because you can imagine the state they were in."She added "it's nice to meet the other internees and hear their stories" as "I don't think I will be coming again because of my age and there's not many of us left".
Irish Times
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Once the Deed is Done by Rachel Seiffert: Close to collapse on the Western Front
Once the Deed is Done Author : Rachel Seiffert ISBN-13 : 9780349014166 Publisher : Virago Press Guideline Price : £22 In the spring of 1945, Hanne has a dream. As she sleeps, she hears 'a confusion of works guards and munitions workers and voices on the radio. Of town boys and town woods, and English at the border. Of wide heath and winter trees, and runaways among the high trunks.' Almost immediately after waking, her dream is revealed to be a premonition: when a pair of unspeaking strangers appears in her yard, she inherits a strange burden. Once the Deed is Done begins in a small town in the hinterland of Hamburg, where parents huddle over radio dispatches from Berlin and Britain, eager for news of their relatives and friends. Their children alternate between exploring the heath and watching the transport vehicles en route to the munitions factory on the outskirts of town, carrying materials and foreign workers. Boys from the local Hitler Youth chapter, too young to fight, whisper about the Endsieg, the end of days. This novel is Rachel Seiffert's sixth book, a work of historical fiction told from the perspective of characters stationed near a collapsing Western Front. Central to its story are the insidious after-effects of war which separate neighbours and starve what remains of their conscience. I say their conscience because, like The Virgin Suicides or In Cold Blood, Seiffert's narrative approach – using multiple viewpoints and interconnecting storylines – examines how individual impulses are magnified and warped by community. With Once the Deed is Done, Seiffert, a Booker Prize finalist and EM Forster awardee, returns to her preoccupation with the second World War. Her previous works The Dark Room and A Boy in Winter explore similar territory, drawing from deep historical study and her family's own roots in Germany and Austria. READ MORE Seiffert's prose is straightforward and clear, if not a bit milquetoast. The novel's style is dramatic in the true sense of the word: it's threaded with conversation and packed with scenes. Thanks to an in-depth foreword and epilogue, the novel's historical context is omnipresent. As a result, the stakes are so high that Seiffert trusts they speak for themselves – occasionally, they do not. However, Seiffert resists the urge to turn any character into a motif or psychological study; the result is a powerful panorama of postwar Germany.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
German neo-Nazi deported from France over Hitler salute
A German neo-Nazi has been detained and deported after giving the Hitler salute at a far-right march in Paris. The German man was taken into police custody for "glorifying crimes against humanity" and for "rioting" on the fringes of a far-right march in Paris on May 10, French broadcaster BFMTV reported on Friday, citing the police. Two days later, the Paris police prefect ordered the deportation of the German with the aim of "removing him very quickly." Wearing clothing "reminiscent of the Hitler Youth" and with "neo-Nazi insignia," the German was observed "raising his hand and striking his heels together in a Nazi salute," BFMTV quoted a decision by the Paris Administrative Court as saying. The court rejected an appeal by the man against his expulsion from France. His behaviour was "a serious incident that endangers democracy and, due to the hate messages and discriminatory statements, poses a threat to the maintenance of public order," the court found. The German was taken into custody and deported. He is not allowed to return to France for a period of two years.
RTÉ News
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
New film at Cannes holds mirror to Germany's past
German-Turkish director Fatih Akin's new film Amrum, which follows a Hitler Youth member on a remote German island towards the end of World War Two, is meant to hold a mirror up to German society, he told Reuters at the Cannes Film Festival. Amrum, which premiered out of competition, marks Akin's return to the festival in southern France eight years after his last competition entry In the Fade, starring Diane Kruger - the Best Actress winner at Cannes in 2017 for her performance. Amrum takes place in 1945, said Akin, but the questions raised about how to handle Germany's past remain unresolved. "We (Germans) had to be bureaucratic with everything. Also with handling the past," said Akin. "We're so slow." The process of "denazification" imposed by the Allies at the end of the war made it seem like Germany had stripped its population of Nazi ideologies, which isn't true, said Akin. "To realise that, to look in the mirror - you know, there's a German angst to look in the mirror. My film is a mirror." Set on the North Sea island of the same name, Amrum is based on the experiences of Akin's 85-year-old mentor and co-writer Hark Bohm, himself a director who decided to hand the project off due to his age. The film follows 12-year-old Nanning, played by newcomer Jasper Ole Billerbeck, after his mother, a staunch Nazi supporter, falls into a depression upon learning about the death of Adolf Hitler the day she gives birth. The Hitler Youth member sets off to find the only thing his mother doesn't refuse to eat - white bread with butter and honey. Those ingredients are in short supply due to the war, which otherwise feels far removed from the isolated island. Kruger teamed up with Akin again for Amrum, in the role of Tessa, a potato farmer opposed to Hitler who is reported to the local Nazi authorities for traitorous talk for discussing the inevitability of the war's impending end. To cast Nanning, Akin decided to search outside of urban centres and found Billerbeck at a sailing school, he told Reuters. "Big city kids, they can't handle nature," he said.
Spectator
08-05-2025
- General
- Spectator
For most of the world, VE Day did not mean peace
While drinking, dancing and laughter were the order of the day in Britain on the VE Day, things were not so hunky dory in Germany. At the liberated Belsen concentration camp situated 65 miles to the south of Hamburg, nurse Joan Rudman cut a depressed and lonely figure. She recalled: 'One could hardly think of peace when there's so much human misery here.' Meanwhile for many Germans, there were mixed feelings. Relief that the war was ended combined with bitterness and a sense of humiliation. These were feelings that led to most Germans blotting out their memories of this period. In Germany is known as Tag der Befreiung (day of liberation), in other words liberation from Nazi rule. However, during the many years I spent in Germany I cannot recall anyone ever celebrating VE day, just as I never met a German who admitted to having been a Nazi or having a Nazi relative. Claus Gunther, a 14-year-old member of Hitler Youth, who had been evacuated to a Bavaria recalled: 'There was a weight off my heart because I would not have to do military service.'
