By Philippe Sands
Alfred A. Knopf, 417 pages, $30
“It is more important to understand the butcher than the victim,” the Spanish novelist Javier Cercas told Philippe Sands, professor of international law at University College London. That seems a questionable assertion, not least because the butcher so often eludes understanding. Sands nevertheless was sufficiently struck by the remark to use it as an epigraph to his latest book, “The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive.”
The fugitive in question, Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter, is not one of the star names of Nazi criminality, not a Mengele or an Eichmann or even a Hans Frank, who headed the part of German-occupied Poland known as the General Government. An Austrian SS officer, Wächter became one of Frank’s deputies, presiding over the Jewish ghettos of Kraków and Lemberg (now Lviv, in Ukraine). A man admired for his organizational abilities, he followed orders, and gave them, and hundreds
Article content
A University of Ottawa history professor says he’s deeply concerned about the chilling effect a Polish court ruling could have on Holocaust scholarship like his that seeks to explore the role of individual Polish collaborators.
In a telephone interview from Poland on Wednesday, Prof. Jan Grabowski said the ruling, which demands an apology for “inaccurate information” published in a 2018 book he helped edit, has unleashed a frightening backlash.
We apologize, but this video has failed to load.
Try refreshing your browser, or uOttawa Holocaust scholar worries about chilling effect of Polish court case involving book he edited Back to video
A 95-year-old woman who worked as a secretary and typist at a German concentration camp during World War II has been charged in the killings of more than 10,000 people. The senior.
Public prosecutors in Germany on Friday indicted a 95-year-old woman for her role in supporting the Nazis as a secretary in a concentration camp during the Second World War, charging her with 10,000 counts of being an accessory to murder, and complicity i
95-year-old woman charged in Germany for being accessory to murder during Nazi rule ANI | Updated: Feb 06, 2021 05:20 IST
Berlin [Germany], February 6 (ANI): Public prosecutors in Germany on Friday indicted a 95-year-old woman for her role in supporting the Nazis as a secretary in a concentration camp during the Second World War, charging her with 10,000 counts of being an accessory to murder, and complicity in attempted murders.
According to the New York Times, the woman was identified as Irmgard F under German privacy laws. Her indictment followed a five-year-old investigation. As she was under 21 at the time of the accused offenses, prosecutors said that she would be tried in a juvenile court, where she is likely to receive a milder sentence.