As the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, experts warned that a flood of “AI slop” is threatening efforts to preserve the memory of Nazi crimes and the millions of Jewish people killed during World War II.
Images seen by the AFP news agency include an emaciated and apparently blind man standing in the snow at the Nazi concentration camp Flossenbuerg, and a viral image of a little girl with curly hair on a tricycle falsely presented as a 13-year-old Berliner who died at the Auschwitz extermination camp.
Such content — whether produced as clickbait for commercial gain or for political motives — has proliferated over the past year, distorting the history of Nazi Germany’s murder of six million European Jews during World War II.
A person walks through the field of stelae at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe on the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, Jan. 27, 2026.
Christoph Soeder/picture alliance/Getty
Early examples emerged in the spring of 2025, but by the end of the year, “AI slop” on the subject “was being shown very frequently,” historian Iris Groschek told AFP.
On some sites, examples of such content were being posted once per minute, said Groschek, who works at Holocaust memorial sites in Hamburg, including the Neuengamme concentration camp.
With the exponential advances in AI, “the phenomenon is growing,” Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the foundation that manages the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorials, told AFP.
Several Holocaust memorials and commemorative associations this month issued an open letter warning about the rising quantity of this “entirely fabricated” content.
Some of them are churned out by content farms that exploit “the emotional impact of the Holocaust to achieve maximum reach with minimal effort,” it said.
The picture supposedly from Flossenbuerg camp falls into this category, as it was shown on a page claiming to share, “true, human stories from the darkest chapters of the past.”
But the memorials warned that fake content was also being created, “specifically to dilute historical facts, shift victim and perpetrator roles, or spread revisionist narratives.”
A man watches during a commemoration of the Official Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity in the Spanish Senate, Jan. 27, 2026, in Madrid.
Europa Press News
Wagner points, for example, to images of seemingly “well-fed prisoners, meant to suggest that conditions in concentration camps weren’t really that bad.”
The Frankfurt-based Anne Frank Educational Center has warned of a “flood” of AI-generated content and propaganda “in which the Holocaust is denied or trivialized, with its victims ridiculed.”
By distorting history, AI-generated images have “very concrete consequences for how people perceive the Nazi era,” said Groschek.
The results of trivializing or denying the Holocaust have been seen in the attitudes of some younger visitors to the camps, particularly from “rural parts of eastern Germany … in which far-right thinking has become dominant,” said Wagner.
In their open letter, the memorials called on social media platforms to “proactively combat AI content that distorts history” and to “exclude accounts that disseminate such content from all monetisation programs.”
“The challenge for society as a whole is to develop ethical and historically responsible standards for this technology,” they said, adding: “Platform operators have a particular responsibility in this regard.”
German Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer said in a statement to AFP: “I support the memorials’ call to clearly label AI-generated images and remove them when necessary.”
He said that making money from such imagery should be prevented.
“This is a matter of respect for the millions of people who were killed and persecuted under the Nazis’ reign of terror,” he said, reminding the platforms that they have obligations under the EU’s Digital Services Act.
Groschek said none of the American social media companies had responded to the memorials’ letter, including Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram.
TikTok responded by saying it wanted to exclude the accounts in question from monetization and implement, “automated verification,” according to Groschek.
The University of Denver is aiming to become a global hub for scholarship on the Holocaust, abuses of power, racism, hatred and antisemitism, with a goal of spurring other universities to do the same.
DU leaders said they’ll announce the school’s first endowed professorship in Holocaust and antisemitism studies at a gathering in the state Capitol with Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday, which is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The professorship represents “a permanent commitment not only to remembrance but to making Denver a global hub for thoughtful Holocaust education and applied scholarship that helps future generations foster social change,” DU Provost Elizabeth Loboa said in a statement.
Polis and survivors of the Holocaust — Colorado residents Osi Sladek and Barbara Steinmetz — will commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a Nazi death camp.
At the noon event, Sladek is expected to read from his memoir, which recounts his escape from persecution into the Tatra mountains along Slovakia’s border with Poland. He later served in the Israeli Army and became a folk singer in California before settling in Denver. The Denver Young Artists Orchestra and DeVotchKa’sTom Hagerman will perform music by Sladek’s father using his violin.
Steinmetz fled Europe on a boat that carried her to the Dominican Republic, where she found refuge. She’ll share a “Letter to the Future.”
DU officials over the past two years have been working on this project, said Adam Rovner, an English professor who directs DU’s Center for Judaic Studies, within the College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
“We just think it is simply important that we remain vigilant in our society to guard against abuses of power and racism, hatred, and antisemitism,” Rovner said. “We think this position is much-needed at DU and in higher education.”
One purpose of studying manifestations of antisemitism in the 20th century “is so that people can consider the contemporary manifestations of antisemitism, and decide based on scholarly rigor whether there are threats to Jewish people and other groups,” Rovner said.
Over the past three years, he faced students during the war by Israel, a Jewish nation, against people in Gaza amid pro-Palestinian demonstrations at universities around the nation, including encampments at DU and on the Auraria campus.
In DU’s classrooms, he saw “wonderful students” whose “open discussions” continued “through the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7 and even through Israel’s retaliation,” Rovner said. “Students come here because they want to learn and understand, not because they have already made up their minds based on a meme on TikTok,” he said.
A visiting professor will launch DU’s ramped-up studies, thanks to an initial donation of around $500,000. DU officials said they’ll be working with additional donors to fully fund the endowment and establish a permanent position.
JERUSALEM — In a video message recorded weeks before he was killed, Hollywood icon Rob Reiner urged Holocaust survivors participating in a Hanukkah ceremony on Thursday to “be resilient” during difficult times.
Reiner and his wife, Michele, were found stabbed to death Sunday at their home in Los Angeles, law enforcement officials said. Their 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and is being held without bail.
Reiner, who was Jewish, recorded the message for the Hanukkah event in the beginning of October. He noted that his wife’s extended family was killed at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, giving the ceremony special meaning for him.
“We’re living in a time where what’s happening in our country is scary and reminiscent of what we’ve seen happen in the past, and we just hope that we can all survive this and that we can hold on to our democracy,” Reiner, who was an outspoken advocate for liberal causes, said in his message.
The video was broadcast as part of a virtual candle lighting ceremony honoring Holocaust survivors internationally on the fifth night of Hanukkah. The event is an initiative of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, an organization that advocates for Holocaust survivors.
Around 100 Holocaust survivors gathered at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Thursday afternoon for a candle-lighting ceremony.
In Hebrew, Hanukkah means “dedication,” and the holiday marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in the second century B.C., after a small group of Jewish fighters liberated it from occupying foreign forces.
Jews celebrate the eight-day holiday, which this year began on Sunday, by lighting a nightly candle in honor of the tiny supply of ritually pure oil that they found in the Temple that lasted for eight nights, instead of just one.
Many Jewish communities are reeling from the attack on a Hanukkah event in Sydney, Australia, where 15 people were killed.
“Even in these difficult days, when antisemitism is rising and Jewish communities around the world are under attack – this very week on the first night of Hanukkah in Sydney, Australia – we draw strength and inspiration from you, the survivors, from your personal and collective resilience,” Greg Schneider, the executive vice president of the Claims Conference, told the group of survivors in Jerusalem.
In addition to Reiner, Barbra Streisand, Billy Crystal, Jason Alexander, Julianna Margulies, Debra Messing, Adam Arkin and Jamie Lee Curtis were among those who made prerecorded videos for the event. Journalists Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash also recorded messages.
“If ever we needed to be resilient, it’s now,” Reiner said in his message. “Let’s be resilient.”
Reiner was a vocal critic of U.S. President Donald Trump, calling him in a 2017 interview with Variety “mentally unfit” to be president and “the single-most unqualified human being to ever assume the presidency of the United States.” In a shocking post after Reiner’s death, Trump suggested that Rob Reiner’s outspoken opposition was partially responsible for his murder.
This week marks 80 years since the beginning of the Nuremberg trials. In 2017, Lesley Stahl first spoke to Ben Ferencz, who at the time was the last living Nuremberg prosecutor. Ferencz, who prosecuted Nazis for genocide and spent his life trying to deter war and war crimes, died in 2023 at the age of 103.
OF WHAT YOU’LL SEE. WE ORGANIZE EVERY YEAR. THE TRAVEL FOR THE MEMORY OR VIAGGIO DE LA MEMORIA IN ITALIAN, MEANS TO TRAVEL FOR THE MEMORY OF THEIR IMPRESSIVE DINNER AT EIGHT, READY IN THE LOBBY. AT SIX. BONJOUR, BONJOUR, MON POMERIGGIO. WE DO TWO KISSES HERE EVERY YEAR. MORE THAN ALMOST 20 YEARS THAT WE HAVE BEEN ORGANIZING THIS KIND OF TRAVELING IN ITALY. THEY’RE KIND OF ROCK STARS ARE. ALL THE PEOPLE KNOW TATIANA AND THE SISTER, ALL THE PEOPLE. THAT’S A LOT OF STUDENTS. YES. WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT TO DO THEM? THEY’RE NOT EASY TO SAPERE PERCHÉ GIUSTO SAPERE QUELLO CHE SUCCESSO? HOW DO CHILDREN SURVIVE? MAYBE I WAS MORE STRONG. WHETHER YOU WERE AT AUSCHWITZ OR ANOTHER CAMP, YOU BECAME. YOU BECAME A NUMBER. YOU BECAME A THING. IL MIO NUMERO IS SAID TO SAY QUATTRO TO YOUR MOTHER SEEMED TO KNOW WHY THEY WOULD PUT A TATTOO ON YOU. AND REFER TO YOU BY NUMBER. AND SHE TOLD YOU SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT ABOUT YOUR OWN NAME. WHAT IS IT SHE TOLD YOU? RECORD THE SEMPRE IL TUO NOME. ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR NAME. ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR NAME AIRS NEXT SUNDAY, THE 27TH, AT 9 P.M. THAT’S AFTER THE NFL ON NBC. AND YO
American millennials, Gen Z lack basic Holocaust knowledge, survey shows
But most believe it is important to teach the Holocaust so it doesn’t happen again.
As the world prepares for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the site of one of the world’s largest examples of mass murder, the number of survivors has diminished greatly. So has the knowledge of the world’s young people about what happened.The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a nonprofit organization with worldwide offices, secures compensation for Holocaust survivors around the world. It has done research on the knowledge people have of the Holocaust in all 50 states. The research focuses on millennials and those from Generation Z.Nationally, 36% of those surveyed thought that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed during the Holocaust. The actual number of Jews killed is more than 6 million. Millions of others were killed. The national survey also found that 48% couldn’t name a single concentration camp, killing camp or ghetto even though 40,000 of them existed across Europe during World War II.KCRA 3 spent five years following one of the world’s youngest Holocaust survivors as she traveled around the world to tell her story. Born in Italy, Andra Bucci now lives in the Sacramento area and recently became a U.S. citizen. To her, telling the story over and over again is important in order to make sure that something like the Holocaust doesn’t happen again. Her story is detailed in our documentary “Always Remember Your Name.”Watch “Always Remember Your Name” Oct. 27 on KCRA 3 at 9 p.m. Even with survivors like Bucci telling their stories, the lack of knowledge in California alone is striking. 53% of California’s Millennials and Gen-Zers did not know what Auschwitz was. The complex, which contained a large number of sub-camps, was home to Auschwitz and Birkenau. Birkenau was known as the “killing camp,” and more than 1.1 million people died there, gassed by the Nazis and then cremated in a complex built specifically to eradicate the Jewish prisoners.37% cannot name a concentration camp or ghetto.59% didn’t know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust32% actually believe that the number killed is 2 million or less13% believe that the Jews caused the Holocaust47% have seen Holocaust denial or distortion on social media or elsewhere60% have seen Nazi symbols in their community and/or on social media they have visited in the past 5 yearsThere is reason for hope. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed believe it is important to teach the Holocaust so it doesn’t happen again. In Italy, where Bucci is from, they teach the Holocaust beginning in 5th grade and through high school. Noemi Di Segni, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said her organization helps train teachers and all public schools are encouraged to produce a project, especially by using art. Hundreds of thousands of students have participated in an annual contest over the past 20 years, she said. Winners of the competition take trips to Auschwitz and the Jewish ghetto in Kraków.In the U.S., there is no policy requiring teaching the Holocaust in schools on the national level.California has required Holocaust and genocide education to be taught in public schools since 1985, but there has been no systematic teacher training or standard curriculum. A law newly signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Senate Bill 1277, aims to change that. It makes the Teachers Collaborative for Holocaust and Genocide Education an official state program. The group plans to train 8,500 teachers and serve more than 1 million students across grades 6-12 by 2027.In the meantime, some schools like Miwok Middle School in Sacramento, which KCRA 3 has visited as part of the documentary, have already been teaching about the Holocaust. There are states that had high scores of knowledge. Those include Wisconsin, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine, Kansas, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Iowa and Montana.Those with the worst scores: Alaska, Delaware, Maryland, New York, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas.See a full breakdown of the findings below. App users, CLICK HERE to see the visualization. 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SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
As the world prepares for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the site of one of the world’s largest examples of mass murder, the number of survivors has diminished greatly. So has the knowledge of the world’s young people about what happened.
Nationally, 36% of those surveyed thought that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed during the Holocaust. The actual number of Jews killed is more than 6 million. Millions of others were killed.
The national survey also found that 48% couldn’t name a single concentration camp, killing camp or ghetto even though 40,000 of them existed across Europe during World War II.
KCRA 3 spent five years following one of the world’s youngest Holocaust survivors as she traveled around the world to tell her story. Born in Italy, Andra Bucci now lives in the Sacramento area and recently became a U.S. citizen. To her, telling the story over and over again is important in order to make sure that something like the Holocaust doesn’t happen again. Her story is detailed in our documentary “Always Remember Your Name.”
Watch “Always Remember Your Name” Oct. 27 on KCRA 3 at 9 p.m.
Even with survivors like Bucci telling their stories, the lack of knowledge in California alone is striking.
53% of California’s Millennials and Gen-Zers did not know what Auschwitz was. The complex, which contained a large number of sub-camps, was home to Auschwitz and Birkenau. Birkenau was known as the “killing camp,” and more than 1.1 million people died there, gassed by the Nazis and then cremated in a complex built specifically to eradicate the Jewish prisoners.
37% cannot name a concentration camp or ghetto.
59% didn’t know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust
32% actually believe that the number killed is 2 million or less
13% believe that the Jews caused the Holocaust
47% have seen Holocaust denial or distortion on social media or elsewhere
60% have seen Nazi symbols in their community and/or on social media they have visited in the past 5 years
There is reason for hope. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed believe it is important to teach the Holocaust so it doesn’t happen again.
In Italy, where Bucci is from, they teach the Holocaust beginning in 5th grade and through high school.
Noemi Di Segni, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said her organization helps train teachers and all public schools are encouraged to produce a project, especially by using art. Hundreds of thousands of students have participated in an annual contest over the past 20 years, she said. Winners of the competition take trips to Auschwitz and the Jewish ghetto in Kraków.
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PHOTO: Union of Italian Jewish Communities
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In the U.S., there is no policy requiring teaching the Holocaust in schools on the national level.
California has required Holocaust and genocide education to be taught in public schools since 1985, but there has been no systematic teacher training or standard curriculum.
A law newly signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Senate Bill 1277, aims to change that. It makes the Teachers Collaborative for Holocaust and Genocide Education an official state program. The group plans to train 8,500 teachers and serve more than 1 million students across grades 6-12 by 2027.
In the meantime, some schools like Miwok Middle School in Sacramento, which KCRA 3 has visited as part of the documentary, have already been teaching about the Holocaust.
There are states that had high scores of knowledge. Those include Wisconsin, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine, Kansas, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Iowa and Montana.
Those with the worst scores: Alaska, Delaware, Maryland, New York, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
The Cap Arcona, a Nazi ship, was attacked by British Royal Air Force planes near the end of World War II. Thousands of prisoners died as the ship sank in the horrific and little-known disaster.
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Everyone knows the story of the Titanic, the opulent British ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank. But it’s likely you have never heard of the Cap Arcona, a German version of the Titanic. Before World War II, the vessel was a cruise ship for the well-to-do. By the end of the war, the Nazis had transformed it into a floating concentration camp. Packed with prisoners, the Cap Arcona was anchored in Lübeck Bay in the Baltic Sea when an aerial attack just hours before liberation killed nearly everyone on board. The ship’s improbable journey from luxury liner to death trap is one of the most horrific and little known war stories we have encountered.
On sunlit days, Germany’s Baltic coast looks idyllic. But this beauty masks an unthinkable horror, one that’s etched in the local memory and on this beachside marker bearing the name Cap Arcona and the German words for fear, panic, and grief.
Bill Niven: It’s so calm, so peaceful. And yet out there is a graveyard. You can come to a place like this and just feel the weight of the history.
British historian Bill Niven has spent much of his career studying the Holocaust. We met him at Lübeck Bay, where the memory of the Cap Arcona and a smaller cargo ship bombed on May 3rd, 1945 … still haunts this shore.
Bill Whitaker: What is this place?
Bill Niven: This is a memorial– an honorary memorial to the victims of the two ships that went down, with a loss of some 7,000 lives.
Bill Niven: It recalls all the nationalities that were victims of the sinking of the ships.
Bill Whitaker: There were Americans on the ships?
Bill Niven: Yes. There were Greeks, there were Italians, and the Jewish people of course, represented here by the Star of David.
Bill Whitaker and Bill Niven at a memorial honoring the lives lost on the Cap Arcona.
60 Minutes
Most of the victims were on the Cap Arcona. Every year on the anniversary of the attack, a somber ceremony is held at this site to remember those who perished … and those who suffered.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: My father was one of the survivors of the sinking of the Cap Arcona.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson came to honor his father, Willi, a political prisoner held on the Cap Arcona. Only about 400 prisoners survived the attack, including Bruno’s father.
Bill Whitaker: What’s it like for you to be in this place?
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: When we go to the place where the Cap Arcona sank, I try to imagine what happened. I really cannot imagine what happened on the ship.
No one could have imagined this end for the Cap Arcona. Launched with great fanfare in 1927, the ship became known as the “Queen of the Atlantic,” transporting well-heeled passengers from Europe to South America in two weeks.
Bill Whitaker: What was it like in its heyday?
Bill Niven: Well, it was one of the most beautiful ships the Germans had. It had its own tennis court. It had a heating swimming pool. It had the most wonderful restaurant where you could look out onto the sea. The most wonderful first-class cabins.
Bill Whitaker: It was a luxury– a luxury cruise ship?
Bill Niven: It was a luxury, luxury cruise liner. Absolutely was.
The Cap Arcona traversed the Atlantic dozens of times. But in 1933, Germany underwent a sea change.
Adolf Hitler came to power.
In 1939, as German troops invaded Poland, the Nazis commandeered the Cap Arcona to serve as a floating barracks in the Baltic. Ironically, on one of its last trips before the war, the ocean liner carried some German Jewish passengers who had bought tickets to safety in South America. But most Jews had no way to escape.
Manfred Goldberg: We were rounded up and sent to the concentration camp, just the three of us, my mother, I, and my younger brother.
94-year-old Manfred Goldberg was just 11 when the Nazis forcibly removed him and other Jews from his hometown of Kassel in central Germany. He would survive confinement in the Riga, Latvia ghetto and four different concentration camps.
Manfred Goldberg
60 Minutes
Manfred Goldberg: The cruel experiences during my young years between 11 and 15, they’re firmly lodged clearly in my mind to this day.
In Nazi-held Latvia, Goldberg, his mother Rosa and other prisoners were forced to repair bombed out railroad tracks during the day. When they returned to camp one night, they learned the SS had taken Manfred’s little brother Hermann, and three other children. They were never seen again.
Manfred Goldberg: They just disappeared off the face of the Earth. The next morning, both my mother and I had to line up and go to work as though nothing untoward had happened.
Bill Whitaker: What did that do to you and your mother?
Manfred Goldberg: I was nearly as heartbroken as my mother at the loss of her little baby, so to speak. He was seven when he went into the camps and nine the day he disappeared.
Goldberg and his mother ended up in the Stutthof camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Another young boy, George Schwab, was imprisoned there, too.
George Schwab: The crematorium burning, you know, bodies all the time, gassing them. Terrible.
Schwab is 92, but he was only 9 when German soldiers invaded his hometown of Liepāja, Latvia. Schwab’s father, a prominent physician, tried to protect other Jews in town.
George Schwab: He noticed SS trucks were approaching, and he waved for fellow Jews to disperse and they arrested him, knocked out one eye, threw him down the cellar, and then killed him.
Bruno’s father, Willi Neurath, was not Jewish, but he actively opposed the Nazi regime.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: My parents belonged to the small minority of German people who fighted against the Nazis. They didn’t fight with weapons, of course.
Bill Whitaker: Fight with their words?
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: Yes. Fighting with papers, with printed papers.
Willi was arrested for distributing anti-facist fliers.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: They brought him to Buchenwald. And– from Buchenwald, they brought him to the concentration camp Neuengamme by Hamburg.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson
60 Minutes
The Neuengamme work camp mostly held political prisoners. Inside this massive warehouse, historian Bill Niven told us prisoners like Willi Neurath made bricks.
Bill Whitaker: What does it feel like to walk in here?
Bill Niven: It feels like a factory of death. You can sense what went on in this place.
Bill Whitaker: But this was not a death camp, this was a work camp.
Bill Niven: It’s a very, very slim distinction. In the course of this work, they die. They die in droves.
Willi Neurath managed to survive but, as fate would have it, he, Schwab, the Goldbergs, and the Cap Arcona all would end up at Lübeck Bay, one of the last Nazi defensive positions.
In 1945, as the Allies were closing in, the Cap Arcona – now rusted and battered – was repositioned to Lübeck Bay. At the same time, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the evacuation of concentration camps.
Bill Whitaker: Why were they trying to clear these places out?
Bill Niven: There is an order by Himmler that no prisoner is to be delivered into the hands of the enemy alive. But I think the main concern was to get rid of evidence because prisoners are evidence. They can talk. They can tell. They can speak to those atrocities that were committed by the Nazis. So getting rid of the evidence meant getting rid of human beings.
Thousands of prisoners were sent to the Nazi holdout at Lübeck Bay. Willi Neurath was forced north from Neuengamme, about 50 miles. From Stutthof in the east, Manfred Goldberg, his mother, and George Schwab were sent to a nearby town, aptly named Hel, and put on barges.
Bill Whitaker: What were the conditions?
George Schwab: Oh, terrible. Just beyond description. No toilet facilities. Hardly any food. You could hardly sit, you can certainly not sleep.
Bill Whitaker: It sounds like hell.
George Schwab: Hell. Hell on Earth, absolutely.
The barges, each packed with about a thousand prisoners, were towed by tugboat for six days, about 400 miles across the Baltic to where the Cap Arcona was positioned.
The Cap Arcona arrived in Lübeck Bay on April 14, 1945, two weeks before Hitler killed himself and three weeks before the end of the war in Europe. It was anchored out there, about 2 miles offshore. With its engines barely running and little in the way of food and water, the former Queen of the Atlantic – a playground for the rich and famous – was about to become a floating concentration camp.
With nowhere to hold the amassed prisoners, SS guards jammed more than 4,000, including Willi Neurath, onto the Cap Arcona.
Bill Niven: And one must remember this is a ship that’s meant for 1,500 people. It’s not meant for 4-5,000 prisoners.
Bill Whitaker: Do we know what the Nazis intended to do with the prisoners on the ship?
Bill Niven: I think they intended them to die.
Prisoners already were dying on the barges fleeing Stutthof carrying Schwab and the Goldbergs. Once in the bay, the SS guards uncoupled the tugboats, leaving the prisoners adrift.
Bill Whitaker: They just abandoned you?
George Schwab: Abandoned. We were left alone, supposedly on minefields.
George Schwab
60 Minutes
Schwab and Goldberg told us, mixed in with the concentration camp victims, were a few prisoners of war. They had been better fed and better treated and they seized the opportunity.
Manfred Goldberg: They managed to pry loose some very long floorboards and began using these planks of wood as oars. And they rowed in that manner into the night. Shortly before dawn the barge run aground.
Norwegian prisoners on George Schwab’s barge took advantage of the wind blowing toward shore.
George Schwab: They came and collected the blankets that we had and made sails. And we managed to sail towards land.
Near death, but desperate to live, Schwab and the Goldbergs found the strength to climb out of their barges … only to be intercepted by the SS and German troops on the beach, who shot and killed many prisoners on the spot.
Manfred Goldberg: And we felt practically certain that we would be shot next. But instead they lined us up into a column.
George Schwab: We were told that we were going to be shipped to a liner by the name of Cap Arcona.
Manfred Goldberg: And while we stood there, we saw quite a large number of bombers, airplanes, moving overhead.
At the beginning of May 1945, the war in Europe was all but over. Adolf Hitler was dead, German forces were in retreat, and the Third Reich was crumbling. One of the last Nazi defensive positions was at Lübeck Bay in the Baltic Sea, where German ships fled seeking safe harbor – including the Cap Arcona, a luxury ocean liner commandeered by the Nazis for the war effort. As the Allies closed in, the SS evacuated concentration camps and packed thousands of prisoners onto the Cap Arcona.
Around noon on May 3rd 1945, 13-year-old George Schwab was ordered to line up to board the ship.
George Schwab: But the Cap Arcona could not come close to shore, because it was a large liner.
Bill Whitaker: It’s a big ship.
George Schwab: So we were going to be transported to the Cap Arcona by another ship. I was in the back of the line. I was in no hurry.
Bill Whitaker: You purposely got to the back of the line–
George Schwab: Back– back of the line.
He was at a dock near this German naval base, where Manfred Goldberg and his mother were lined up too.
Manfred Goldberg: And it is while we stood there that we witnessed bombers, and fighter planes coming along.
Bill Whitaker: Could you see any markings on the planes?
Manfred Goldberg: No. We had no idea what nationality they were.
Bill Whitaker: You could see the planes coming in.
Manfred Goldberg: Oh, you could see the planes clearly.
Bill Whitaker: And you could– you could– see the bombs be–
Manfred Goldberg: You could see the bombs dropping.
Bill Whitaker: Can you remember what it sounded like?
Manfred Goldberg: There were some pretty powerful explosions, and there were quite a few.
60 Minutes
The Cap Arcona was hit. With more than 4,000 prisoners on board, the floating concentration camp became a fiery tomb. In a hard-to-believe turn of events, the attackers were British Typhoon fighters like these, part of the Allied forces moving in to finish off the Nazis.
Bill Whitaker: The British came to liberate these prisoners–
Bill Niven: They did, yeah.
Bill Whitaker: And ended up killing–
Bill Niven: Yeah.
Bill Whitaker: –thousands of them. It’s like horror on top of horror.
Bill Niven: It is. And yet, some of them did survive to remember it.
Bill Niven is a British historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He told us the mistaken attack on the Cap Arcona and a smaller ship is one of the most wrenching tragedies of the war.
Bill Niven: The prisoners– knew that the war was nearing its end. I think a lot of them probably had hopes that they would survive, and that gave them the strength and the courage to hang on.
At the Cap Arcona museum in the town of Neustadt by Lübeck Bay, he described the attack. British Typhoons struck in waves. The Cap Arcona was hit around 3 p.m.
Bill Whitaker: Do you have any idea how many bombs were dropped on the ship?
Bill Niven: Some people say 60 or over 60. You can imagine the panic and the horror that broke out when the bombs hit the ship, especially for those concentration camp prisoners who were on the very lower decks of the ship. And they were unable to get up– to the top because of the flames.
Bill Whitaker: Is this the worst case of friendly fire in the Royal Air Force’s history?
Sebastian Cox: Quite probably, yeah.
Sebastian Cox is chief historian for Britain’s Royal Air Force … the RAF. He blames the incident on the fog of war.
Bill Whitaker: Why was the Cap Arcona– targeted?
Sebastian Cox
60 Minutes
Sebastian Cox: Because– the Allies believed that there was gonna be an attempt to flee– by certain Nazi elements across the Baltic to Norway and, and essentially continue the war.
Bill Whitaker: Did the British military have any idea that concentration camp survivors were on the Cap Arcona?
Sebastian Cox: If you mean, “Did the pilots have any idea,” absolutely not.
But other members of the British military did know.
Daniel Long: What we learned from the records that the British were handed two opportunities very close to the 3rd of May in regards to the placement of prisoners on board the ship.
Bill Whitaker: Concentration camp prisoners on those ships.
Daniel Long: Indeed.
Daniel Long wrote his PhD history thesis on the attack on the Cap Arcona. We met him at the British National Archives in London where he showed us these fragile war documents.
Daniel Long: This is the only official investigation that was carried out into the tragic sinking of the Cap Arcona.
Shortly after the bombing a British war crimes investigator interviewed the intelligence officer for the squadrons that attacked the Cap Arcona and other ships in the bay.
Daniel Long: The intelligence officer admitted on two occasions that a message was received on the second of May, 1945, that the ships had been loaded with concentration camp prisoners.
That intelligence came in the day before the attack.
Daniel Long: Which then leads to suggest there was ample time to warn the pilots on the planes.
Bill Whitaker: That information did not make it t– to the RAF pilots.
Daniel Long: That’s– that’s correct.
Daniel Long
60 Minutes
The report does not say why the intelligence officer failed to inform the pilots, but it did blame RAF personnel for the error and called for further inquiry.
Bill Whitaker: The report strongly urged that there be a follow-up investigation. That has never happened, has it?
Sebastian Cox: Not to my knowledge.
Bill Whitaker: Why not?
Sebastian Cox: Attempting to, you know, conduct a detailed investigation would, in many respects, be a little pointless. What are– what are you going to conclude? You’ve–
Bill Whitaker: To find out what went wrong, what mistakes were made?
Sebastian Cox: We know what happened. The RAF made a mistake. An individual made a very tragic mistake and we know the consequences.
About 7,000 prisoners perished when the ships were bombed in the bay. Of the more than 4,000 on the Cap Arcona, only about 400 survived. Bill Niven told us several survivors later wrote accounts of the hell they endured at sea.
Bill Niven: (Reading from German document)
Bill Niven: Thousands of prisoners were packed together like herrings.
Bill Niven: (Reading from German document)
Bill Niven: So they stretched their arms up then they cried out, “I want out. I want out.” This is really quite terrible, to have to read this. The fire suddenly got more and more intensive, and this was because the flesh of the prisoners was burning so strongly. It made this intensity happen. It’s distressing to read.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson’s father Willi, a political prisoner, was trapped on the ship when the bombs hit.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: My father– managed to go to the back– of the ship, where it was not burning. And there he survived be– because he couldn’t swim.
Bill Whitaker: He survived because he couldn’t swim?
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: He couldn’t swim be– he did not jump into the water. And prisoners who jumped into the water were shot by the SS.
When the British realized their mistake, they dispatched rescuers who plucked Willi Neurath and others from the listing deck of the Aap Arcona and took them to shore.
Bill Whitaker: This is the stretch of beach where your father came ashore.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: This front of the beach, yes.
Bruno told us, in an improbable twist of fate, his mother Eva, a naval staff assistant, had been transferred to the naval base at Lübeck Bay. When she saw the bombing, she was drawn to the beach.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: She had only one hope to know: Where is my husband? Is he still living? And maybe my husband is on the ship.
Bill Whitaker: How did they find each other?
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: She came from this direction and she saw a man coming towards her. She didn’t recognize the one person she wanted to see.
Bill Whitaker: He must have been thin and weak.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: And dirty from the burning. But he came over to her, and– called his nickname he had for her, Muppel.
Bill Whitaker: What does Muppel mean?
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: Muppel means something like, “I love your round face.” She recognized his voice by this one word, “Muppel.”
Bill Whitaker: That ship was a graveyard for so many people. But yet it brought your parents back together.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson: Yeah. I don’t know if there are hidden meanings in life. But one meaning can be that I am– I am alive now and can tell you about this story.
As for George Schwab, he pulled inspiration from the horror.
George Schwab: This is a prize for having helped Latvia get into NATO.
The native of Latvia moved to New York, earned a PhD in political science, and had an illustrious career as an academic and peace broker.
George Schwab: Here I’m with King Hussein.
Bill Whitaker: Bill Clinton.
George Schwab: –and Bill Clinton.
Bill Whitaker: Dr. Schwab, I think you knew everyone.
George Schwab: Somewhat (laugh)
Manfred Goldberg and his mother settled in London. She passed away in 1961. Goldberg married, started a business and a family. In 2017 he returned to the Stutthof Concentration Camp with the then duke and duchess of Cambridge. He has made it his life mission to share his story.
Manfred Goldberg: I consider that part of my revenge on the Nazis. They wanted to exterminate us. And here we are, not only having survived, we are now great-grandparents.
Bill Whitaker: That’s your revenge.
Manfred Goldberg: My revenge on the Nazis, yes.
The Cap Arcona lay half-sunken in Lübeck Bay for four years before being dismantled. But the story has lain beneath the surface – little known beyond this Baltic Coast. It’s now tradition, on the third of May, for families of victims and survivors to sail to the site where the ship was bombed. They want the world to remember.
Produced by Marc Lieberman. Associate producer, Cassidy McDonald. Field associate producer, Anna Noryskiewicz. Broadcast associate, Mariah Johnson and Mariah B. Campbell. Edited by Warren Lustig.
Bill Whitaker is an award-winning journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent who has covered major news stories, domestically and across the globe, for more than four decades with CBS News.
JERUSALEM — A year after Hamas’ fateful attack on southern Israel, the Middle East is embroiled in a war that shows no signs of ending and seems to be getting worse.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive was initially centered on the Gaza Strip. But the focus has shifted in recent weeks to Lebanon, where airstrikes have given way to a fast-expanding ground incursion against Hezbollah militants who have fired rockets into Israel since the Gaza war began.
Next in Israel’s crosshairs is archenemy Iran, which supports Hamas, Hezbollah and other anti-Israel militants in the region. After withstanding a massive barrage of missiles from Iran last week, Israel has promised to respond. The escalating conflict risks drawing deeper involvement by the U.S., as well as Iran-backed militants in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
When Hamas launched its attack on Oct. 7, 2023, it called on the Arab world to join it in a concerted campaign against Israel. While the fighting has indeed spread, Hamas and its allies have paid a heavy price.
The group’s army has been decimated, its Gaza stronghold has been reduced to a cauldron of death, destruction and misery and the top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah have been killed in audacious attacks.
Although Israel appears to be gaining the edge militarily, the war has been problematic for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too.
Dozens of Israeli hostages are languishing in Hamas captivity, and a year after Netanyahu pledged to crush the group in “total victory,” remnants of the militant group are still battling in pockets of Gaza. The offensive in Lebanon, initially described as “limited,” grows by the day. A full-on collision with Iran is a possibility.
At home, Netanyahu faces mass protests over his inability to bring home the hostages, and to many, he will be remembered as the man who led Israel into its darkest moment. Relations with the U.S. and other allies are strained. The economy is deteriorating.
Here are five takeaways from a yearlong war that has upended longstanding assumptions and turned conventional wisdom on its head.
A region is torn apart by unthinkable death and destruction
A long list of previously unthinkable events have occurred in mind-boggling fashion.
The Oct. 7 attack was the bloodiest in Israel’s history. Young partygoers were gunned down. Cowering families were killed in their homes. In all, about 1,200 people died and 250 were taken hostage. Some Israelis were raped or sexually assaulted.
The ensuing war in Gaza has been the longest, deadliest and most destructive in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gaza health authorities say nearly 42,000 people have been killed — roughly 2% of the territory’s entire population. Although they do not give a breakdown between civilians and combatants, more than half of the dead have been women and children. Numerous top Hamas officials have been killed.
The damage and displacement in Gaza have reached unseen levels. Hospitals, schools and mosques – once thought to be insulated from violence – have repeatedly been targeted by Israel or caught in the crossfire. Scores of journalists and health workers have been killed, many of them while working in the line of duty.
Months of simmering tensions along Israel’s northern border recently boiled over into war.
A growing list of Hezbollah officials – including the group’s longtime leader — have been killed by Israel. Hundreds of Hezbollah members were killed or maimed in explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies. Israel’s ground offensive is its first in Lebanon since a monthlong war in 2006.
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has displaced tens of thousands of Israelis and over 1 million Lebanese. Israel promises to keep pounding Hezbollah until its residents can return to homes near the Lebanese border; Hezbollah says it will keep firing rockets into Israel until there is a cease-fire in Gaza.
The leaders of Hamas and Israel appear in no rush for a cease-fire
When the war erupted, the days appeared to be numbered for both Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Netanyahu’s public standing plummeted as he faced calls to step aside. Sinwar fled into Gaza’s labyrinth of tunnels as Israel declared him a “dead man walking.”
Yet both men — facing war crimes charges in international courts — remain firmly in charge, and neither appears to be in a rush for a cease-fire.
The end of the war could mean the end of Netanyahu’s government, which is dominated by hard-line partners opposed to a cease-fire. That would mean early elections, potentially pushing him into the opposition while he stands trial on corruption charges. Also looming is the prospect of an unflattering official inquiry into his government’s failures before and during the Oct. 7 attack.
Fearing that, his coalition has hung together even through mass protests and repeated disagreements with top security officials pushing for a deal to bring home the hostages. After a brief period of post-Oct. 7 national unity, Israel has returned to its divided self — torn between Netanyahu’s religious, conservative, nationalist right-wing base and his more secular, middle-class opposition.
Sinwar, believed to be hiding in Gaza’s tunnels, continues to drive a hard bargain in hopes of declaring some sort of victory. His demands for a full Israeli withdrawal, a lasting cease-fire and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for scores of hostages have been rejected by Israel — even as much of the international community has embraced them.
With cease-fire efforts deadlocked and Netanyahu’s far-right coalition firmly intact, the war could go on for some time. An estimated 1.9 million Palestinians remain displaced in Gaza while an estimated 68 hostages remain captive in Gaza, in addition to the bodies of 33 others held by Hamas.
Bitter enemies experience the limits of force
Early in the war, Netanyahu promised to destroy Hamas’ military and governing abilities.
Those goals have been achieved in many ways. Israel says it has dismantled Hamas’ military structure, and its rocket barrages have been diminished to a trickle. With Israeli troops stationed indefinitely in Gaza, it is difficult to see how the group could return to governing the territory or pose a serious threat.
But in other ways, total victory is impossible. Despite Israel’s overwhelming force, Hamas units have repeatedly regrouped to stage guerrilla-style ambushes from areas where Israel has withdrawn.
Across the Middle East, bitter enemies are witnessing the limits of force and deterrence.
Israel’s deepening invasion of Lebanon and repeated strikes on Hezbollah have failed to halt the rockets and missiles. Missile and drone attacks by Iran and its allies have only deepened Israel’s resolve. Israel is vowing to strike Iran hard after its latest missile barrage, raising the likelihood of a broader, regionwide war.
Without diplomatic solutions, the fighting is likely to persist.
Israel and Gaza will never be the same
Israel is still deeply traumatized as people try to come to terms with the worst day in its history.
The Oct. 7 killings and kidnappings had an outsized impact on a tiny country founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Israelis’ sense of security was shattered, and their faith in the military was tested like never before.
Photos of Israeli hostages are everywhere, and mass demonstrations are held each week calling on the government to reach a deal to bring them home. The prospect of ongoing war looms over families and workplaces as reserve soldiers brace for repeated tours of duty.
The trauma is far more acute in Gaza – where an estimated 90% of the population remains displaced, many of them living in squalid tent camps.
The scenes have drawn comparisons to what the Palestinian call the Nakba, or catastrophe – the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. The Palestinians now find themselves looking at a tragedy of even greater scale.
It remains unclear when displaced Palestinians in Gaza will be able to return home and whether there will be anything to return to. The territory has suffered immense destruction and is littered with unexploded bombs. Children are missing a second consecutive school year, virtually every family has lost a relative in the fighting and basic needs like food and health care are lacking.
After a hellish year, the Palestinians of Gaza have no clear path forward, and it could take generations to recover.
Old formulas for pursuing Mideast peace no longer work
The international community’s response to this bloodiest of wars has been tepid and ineffective.
Repeated cease-fire calls have been ignored, and a U.S.-led plan to reinstate the Palestinian Authority in postwar Gaza has been rejected by Israel. It remains unclear who will run the territory in the future or who will pay for a cleanup and reconstruction effort that could take decades.
One thing that seems clear is that old formulas will no longer work. The international community’s preferred peace formula – the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel – seems hopelessly unrealistic.
Israel’s hard-line government opposes Palestinian statehood, says its troops will remain in Gaza for years to come and has further cemented its undeclared annexation of the West Bank. The internationally recognized Palestinian Authority has been pushed to the brink of irrelevance.
For decades, the United States has acted as the key mediator and power broker in the region – calling for a two-state solution but showing little political will to promote that vision. Instead, it has often turned to conflict management, preventing any side from doing anything too extreme to destabilize the region.
This approach went up in smoke on Oct. 7. Since then, the U.S. has responded with a muddled message of criticizing Israel’s wartime tactics as too harsh while arming the Israeli military and protecting Israel against diplomatic criticism. The result: The Biden administration has managed to antagonize both Israel and the Arab world while cease-fire efforts repeatedly sputter.
This approach has also alienated the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, complicating Kamala Harris’ presidential aspirations. The warring sides appear to have given up on the Biden administration and are waiting for the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election before deciding their next moves.
Whoever wins the race will almost certainly have to find a new formula and recalibrate decades of American policy if they want to end the war.
CALISTOGA – Northern California Holocaust survivor Nick Hope turned 100 years old on Sunday.
Hope, surrounded by friends and family, hosted a birthday party in his hometown of Calistoga to celebrate living one century.
“I don’t feel that I’m 100,” Hope said Sunday.
CBS13 first shared Hope’s full story in a three-part series that aired in May 2024, titled “What Hope can do.”
Though his birthday was filled with smiles, there were many days of Hope’s life that were darker. On some, he did not even know if he would make it to the next morning, let alone decades more.
“How did I get through this horrible, terrible hell to 100 years?” said Hope.
Just a child, Hope survived the Holodomor, a forced famine on the Ukrainian people that claimed millions of lives.
Then as a teenager, Hope was imprisoned at Dachau concentration camp in Germany for more than two years.
“No more man. Not a name. Zero. When you step in, you are a dead man,” said Hope.
Hope during every trial kept his grandfather’s words in his heart: “He always said, ‘patient. Patient,’” said Hope.
He survived the Holocaust after American forces liberated Dachau. Then, he truly lived after.
“For him to do what he did, it’s something beyond himself. Very difficult,” said George, Nick Hope’s son. “And for him, he doesn’t hang on. That’s the beautiful thing he wants to keep moving forward. I believe for him to be 100, his famous saying is, ‘Just keep going.’”
George is one of Hope’s three children.
After World War II ended, Hope found a new life in marrying his wife Nadia, also a Holocaust survivor.
They lived for some time in Germany after the war, then eventually settled in Calistoga.
Hope worked to the age of 97 and retired a renowned Napa Valley builder.
If there is anything that defines his life more than hope, it’s faith and forgiveness.
“It helps me to live whole life, to 100 years old. God says, ‘Forgive and be forgiven,’” said Hope.
The family is raising money in an online fundraiser with the goal of sending Hope back to Dachau for the 80th commemoration of the camp’s liberation in April 2025.
IT is the first far-right party to win German state elections since the Nazis – and the success of Alternative for Germany is down to younger supporters.
Paramedic Severin Kohler says that it is now trendy among Generation Z TikTokers to back the organisation known as AfD, which is led in the state of Thuringia by a man who has been labelled a “fascist”.
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AfD fans Severin Kohler and Carolin LichtenheldCredit: Paul Edwards
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AfD MP Torben Braga — who, curiously for a German anti-immigration party, was born in Brazil and is of Brazilian and Welsh ancestryCredit: Paul Edwards
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Professor Reinhard Schramm, who lost 20 close family to the Nazi extermination camps, has had death threats and bullets sent to him in the postCredit: Paul Edwards
Severin, 28, a leader of the party’s youth wing Junge Alternative, told me: “It’s a matter of a rebellion against their parents. Being from the right is punk now.”
Almost 40 per cent of 18 to 24-year-old voters backed the AfD in Thuringia, central Germany, last week. In neighbouring Saxony, 31 per cent did the same.
Yet the local branches of the party in the two states have been classified as “right-wing extremist” by the nation’s domestic intelligence agency.
On the Instagram page of Carolin Lichtenheld, who leads Thuringia’s Junge Alternative, the 21-year-old trainee pharmacist is shown brndishing a megaphone at a rally, with the caption: “Ready to fight for the preservation of our homeland and for our future. We are the youth who are ready to resist a woke society.”
The image is hashtagged with the word “reconquista” — a reference to the recapture by Christian kings of Spain and Portugal from the Muslim Moors.
Felix Steiner, from German far-right monitoring group Mobile Consulting, agrees that young voters are attracted to the AfD.
The activist told The Sun: “Almost no other party is so active on social media platforms, especially TikTok. The message is, ‘Young people, come to us. We are the next movement’.”
Youth campaigner Severin wears a T-shirt bearing the name Bjorn Hocke — the AfD’s leader in Thuringia who has twice been convicted this year of using Nazi slogans.
Former history teacher Hocke harnessed the power of TikTok to target the youth vote during the election.
Incredible story of Nazi hunter and holocaust refugee
In one post he leads a cavalcade of motorcyclists riding models made by Simson — a brand associated with national pride by the far right — in the old Communist East Germany.
Yet critics say that behind Hocke’s glossy social media campaigning is a man who is a political “danger”.
In 2019 a court in Thuringia ruled it was not libellous to call Hocke a “fascist” as the opinion had a “verifiable, factual basis”.
Thin-lipped and greying, Hocke once described Berlin’sHolocaust Memorial as a “monument of shame” and demanded a “180-degree turn” in Germany’s culture of remembrance.
The father-of-four once spoke of the Germans “longing for a historical figure” who would “heal the wounds of the people”.
Ulrike Grosse-Rothig, leader of Thuringia’s left-wing Die Linke party, told The Sun: “Hocke is a die-hard fascist. He’s a danger for German society, its voters and to democracy.”
Former AfD Thuringia MP Oskar Helmerich has called Hocke “a dangerous man”.
Little wonder Thuringia’s small Jewish community has been fearful.
Professor Reinhard Schramm, who lost 20 close family to the Nazi extermination camps, has had death threats and bullets sent to him in the post from unknown sources.
Speaking at a synagogue in Thuringia’s largest city Erfurt, the 80-year-old Holocaust survivor told me: “The Jewish community is insecure and some are afraid. They are quite allergically against the AfD. This is not a normal party.”
Of Hocke’s demand for a “180- degree turn” in Germany’s culture of remembrance, the grandfather-of-three says: “So does this mean that I am not supposed to speak about my grandmother who was gassed to death in a German gas chamber?”
‘Some are afraid’
Severin insists the AfD is “against political violence”, adding: “We don’t have anything in common with people sending bullets to synagogues.”
The AfD won Thuringia — a largely rural state in central Germany — with just under 33 per cent of the vote.
It’s the latest European convulsion of the far right which has seen rampaging thugs attempt to torch migrant hotels in Britain and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally topping parliamentary elections in France.
In Germany — as elsewhere — the touchstone issue has been immigration.
Days before the Thuringia vote, a Syrian asylum seeker went on a knife rampage, killing three in the west German city of Solingen.
It emerged that the man — linked to Islamic State — had previously had his claim for asylum turned down but he had not been deported because the authorities could not find him.
Germany’s lame duck premier Olaf Scholz promised to speed up deportations and other mainstream parties followed suit with tough talk on immigration, including the conservative Christian Democratic Union.
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Andreas Buhl, a Thuringian MP for Merkel’s CDU, concedes that the former Chancellor’s open border policy was wrongCredit: Paul Edwards
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A CDU poster calling to stop illegal migrationCredit: Paul Edwards
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An anti-multicultural bannerCredit: Paul Edwards
Yesterday, it was reported that Germany’s interior minister Nancy Faeser has told the EU that controls will be brought in on all the country’s land borders, to deal with the “continuing burden” of migration and “Islamist terrorism”.
Britain, where populists Reform won four million votes at the General Election, will be watching whether moves towards the AfD’s turf will win back voters.
As well as a hardline stance on immigration, the AfD is also against what it says are over-zealous green policies, and it wants to halt weapons supplies to Ukraine.
At the Thuringian parliament in Erfurt, I met key Hocke lieutenant Torben Braga — who, curiously for a German anti-immigration party, was born in Brazil and is of Brazilian and Welsh ancestry.
The 33-year-old Thuringia MP says: “Bjorn Hocke doesn’t have a single fascist vein in his body.”
‘Political firewall’
Of his boss’s infamous “shame” reference to the Berlin Holocaust memorial, Braga says he meant it was “a shameful part of our history”.
Braga believes the security services are monitoring him and suggests “provocateurs” from those agencies were behind the “two or three cases” of people doing the Hitler salute at a recent rally in Erfurt.
Picturesque Erfurt is, at first glance, perhaps an unlikely setting for a far-right upsurge. Half-timbered town houses crowd flower-bedecked medieval squares where tourists enjoy beers on its many restaurant terraces.
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A far-right mob gather at a demonstration in Solingen last monthCredit: EPA
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Far-right AfD supporters wave German flags, including one adorned with an Iron CrossCredit: Getty
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The AfD party’s slick TikTok videosCredit: tiktok/@afd
This summer the England squad had their Euro 2024 training base a short drive away and Three Lions star Jude Bellingham was spotted having coffee in the city of 215,000.
Yet Thuringia has seen too much history in the 20th century.
After the Americans liberated Thuringia, it fell under Soviet control.
From 1949 to 1990 it was part of the Communist state of East Germany.
Post-German reunification, Thuringia and other eastern states struggled economically, with many youngsters heading to western Germany.
Immigration became a key political battleground after conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to a million refugees in 2015 and 2016.
Last year around 334,000 people claimed asylum in Germany — more than France and Spain combined. In the UK the figure was just under 85,000 people.
The AfD — formed in 2013 as a Eurosceptic party — has seen its fortunes rise as it hammered home its anti-immigration stance.
No other party is so active on social media platforms, especially TikTok.The AfD post pictures of demonstrations. The message is: ‘Young people come to us. We are the next movement’
It called for a ban on burqas, minarets, and call to prayer using the slogan, “Islam is not a part of Germany” in 2016.
In Thuringia, Hocke led a radical AfD faction called The Wing, deemed beyond the pale even by many in his own party.
Andreas Buhl, a Thuringian MP for Merkel’s CDU, concedes that the former Chancellor’s open border policy was wrong.
He told me: “In hindsight, it should have been clearer that you can also push people back at the border who have already entered another European country.”
He pledged, as other mainstream parties have, not to work with the AfD, creating a political firewall likely to block it from taking power.
It raises the spectre that those who voted for it may come to believe that democracy is failing them.
But anti-far-right activist Felix Steiner says only around half of AfD supporters are wedded to their hardline doctrines, with the rest supporting them as a protest vote.
He added: “The AfD result could be halved if voters were satisfied with other parties’ policies.”
The fight for the political soul of Germany’s Generation Z goes on.
It’s a battle of ideas that may be won or lost on the feeds of TikTok and Instagram.
A piece of Holocaust history — a Nazi concentration camp built on Alderney, a British island — has been largely forgotten. Researchers have worked to count the island’s dead.
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First, Gina Raimondo: The 60 Minutes Interview. Then, a report on the forgotten Nazi camp built on British soil. And, a look at teens’ innovative Pythagorean Theorem work.
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Having sniper-trained police in our neighborhoods to protect us and our homes was not anything we thought we would see when we were elected to the University of Colorado Board of Regents – an unpaid elected position.
Yet, this was exactly what happened to both of us this month when a group of anti-Israel protesters came to both of our homes. We are extremely grateful to law enforcement for protecting us and our families, and we continue to be grateful to the many community members from all faiths and backgrounds who supported us during the protests at our home.
Involving our families and our neighbors in protests at our homes is unacceptable, and is a tactic that we hope every leader, Democratic, Republican, or unaffiliated, can join in denouncing, as our colleagues on the CU Board of Regents did in a 9-0 vote.
The agitators leading these protests say that the regents have not listened to or responded to them. They have been protesting on our campus since October, sharing their demands with multiple parties. They have come to CU Board of Regents meetings to speak in public sessions. They have emailed us.
We have listened to them just as we do with any other group or individual. There is a difference between not listening and not agreeing. On May 16, 2024, the regents put out a statement that read, in part, “No regent is offering any policy changes in response to the demands.”
As elected officials, we know all too well that you don’t demand things in a democracy. You make your arguments and hope people agree with you. We certainly hope we can all agree the amount of suffering happening in our world right now is unbearable. It is complex. It is unjust. Violence and pain inflicted upon babies, children, the elderly, and other innocent civilians is the worst of humanity.
Criticism of Israel and/or of Hamas is acceptable and protected speech, and as regents, we encourage deep and complex debates about difficult topics because that is the role of an American university.
A pro-Palestine demonstration continues on the Auraria Campus in Denver on April 29, 2024. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
The decades-old Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement these protesters are part of, however, aims to dismantle the Jewish state and end the right to Jewish self-determination. The movement does not encourage people-to-people exchanges, dialogue opportunities, or interactions between those with opposing viewpoints.
What we do not condone is purposely creating a dangerous environment for any student, staff, faculty – including Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims, Christians and Arabs and atheists– or any other member of our community.
At both Denver Pride last week and in front of our homes, people changed racist phrases like “From the River to the Sea,” which has been used to call for Jews to be exterminated from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. This is unacceptable.
They were chanting “Globalize the Intifada” and “Resistance by any means necessary” – both racist calls for the murder and displacement of Jews throughout the world – in front of our homes. This is especially deplorable in front of the Spiegels’ home, an American Jewish family who are descendants of Holocaust survivors.
Much of the commentary and sloganeering used by the protesters oversimplifies an ancient history of a land that is in no way comparable to the United States, South Africa, or any other nation. The binary story that is being told results in the spread of disinformation, incites hate, and perpetuates dangerous antisemitic tropes.
Finally, the fact that the protestors use overt displays of support for internationally recognized terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah in conjunction with anti-Israel protests is also unacceptable.
Colorado is no place for racism, hate speech, antisemitism, or the kind of aggressive tactics these protesters used in a failed attempt to intimidate us into bending the knee to their radical, racist political ideology. The protestors have shown a dangerous escalation in their behaviors, which could get someone hurt, or worse.
We hope the protesters make a different choice.
Know that in contrast, we encourage every single member of the University of Colorado no matter their ideology, ethnicity, or religion, to speak thoughtfully and carefully, in a way that fosters inclusivity, mutual respect, and understanding.
Ilana Dubin Spiegel has spent over three decades devoted to improving lives and communities through educational opportunities. She was elected to the University of Colorado Board of Regents from the 6th CD in 2020. Callie Rennison, PhD is Faculty Emerita at the University of Colorado Denver in the School of Public Affairs. She also serves as the CU Regent from CD-2 and is currently chair of the CU Board of Regents.
A Nazi’s photo album shows top officers at Auschwitz singing, socializing, and lighting a Christmas tree at a time when hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed in the concentration camp.
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First, Pope Francis: The 60 Minutes Interview. Then, a report on the Americans spying for Cuba in the United States. And, a look at a play based on Nazi’s photo album from Auschwitz
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By the time a new play opened last week off-Broadway by acclaimed writer and director Moises Kaufman, it had already been nominated for a Pulitzer prize. It’s based on the true story of a photo album from Auschwitz that was sent to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC in 2007. Museum historians weren’t sure what to make of it at first, but the album turned out to be the scrapbook of a Nazi – an SS officer – who helped run the day-to-day operations of Auschwitz, where about 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered between 1940 and 1945. The album doesn’t show any prisoners or gas chambers, what it does show are some of the most notorious killers in history seemingly enjoying themselves. That’s what museum officials found so chilling, and what Moises Kaufman spent 14 years creating a play about.
Moises Kaufman: When I first saw the photographs I got goosebumps, and I– I remember thinking– you know, s– many of the people in my family died in Auschwitz. And these are the people who were doing it. And they don’t seem to have any remorse. Seeing that in a photograph so clearly articulated is terrifying. This is terrifying because they all look so much like us.
The photographs may appear unremarkable at first – SS officers at dinner parties drinking, socializing, flirting with their young Nazi secretaries – but when these pictures were taken, the Germans were losing the war and exterminating more Jews in Auschwitz than at any other time in the Holocaust.
Several images show an SS officer giving his secretaries blueberries while a man plays an accordion. The inscription reads: “here there are blueberries.” Moises Kaufman picked that for the title of his play.
Moises Kaufman: I wanted the audience to have the experience that we had looking at the photographs.
Anderson Cooper: What was it about the series of the women eating blueberries that– that so struck you?
Moises Kaufman: That they were just, you know, teenage girls who were secretaries. Everyone is showing the photographer their empty plates, there’s one of the women who’s pretend crying. So she’s so sad because she’s run out of blueberries and outside of the frame, there’s 1.1 million people who are being killed. So how do you lead your daily life and at the same time participate in one of the largest killing machines in the history of mankind?
Moises Kaufman
60 Minutes
Kaufman’s play is centered on the museum historians who worked with survivors and even descendants of Nazis themselves to uncover what the album was.
No one had ever seen images like these before. There are few photos of Auschwitz because the Nazis worked hard to conceal their crimes.
Kaufman’s main character is Rebecca Erbelding, a historian at the Holocaust museum, played by actor Elizabeth Stahlmann.
The real Rebecca Erbelding received the album from a former U.S. counterintelligence officer. He said he found it in 1946 in an abandoned apartment in war-torn Frankfurt while hunting down Nazi war criminals. He donated it to the museum but wanted to remain anonymous.
Anderson Cooper: How did you go about finding out who made this?
Rebecca Erbelding: I didn’t see any trains. I didn’t see anything I recognized. It was maybe the third time flipping through it, and that’s when I saw Josef Mengele.
No pictures of Dr. Josef Mengele in Auschwitz had ever been found before. To see the album, we went to a high security, climate-controlled facility in Maryland where the original pages are stored.
Anderson Cooper: That’s Dr. Mengele.
Rebecca Erbelding: That’s Mengele. And these are still the only known photos of Mengele while he was stationed at the camp.
Mengele was known by prisoners at Auschwitz as the “angel of death.” He conducted gruesome medical experiments, mostly on children, and often stood on the platform when trains arrived, selecting who would be sent to work and who would die immediately in gas chambers.
Rebecca Erbelding: Not only is it Mengele, these are some of the most infamous officers at the camp. So you see there’s Baer.
Richard Baer is on the album’s first page, he was the last commandant of Auschwitz. That helped historians identify his deputy, Karl Höcker. And it turned out this was Höcker’s personal album – his cherished memories behind the scenes of a massacre.
Anderson Cooper: May 1944 is when Höcker got to Auschwitz.
Rebecca Erbelding: Yes. So this is the entirety of his time at Auschwitz.
Before the war Höcker had been a struggling bank teller. Becoming an SS officer at Auschwitz was considered a big step up.
Rebecca Erbelding and Anderson Cooper
60 Minutes
Rebecca Erbelding: He had been staffed at the Majdanek camp before this and so he had experience with prisoners arriving, with selections, with gas chambers. He signed receipts for Zyklon B, the lethal gas that was used for killing people. He is a crucial cog in the Nazi killing machine.
The 116 photos in the album show Auschwitz as Karl Höcker wanted to remember it.
Anderson Cooper: Wow.
Rebecca Erbelding: It’s a mix of, like, candid things and really official. This is his dog. His dog’s name is “Favorit.”
Anderson Cooper: I mean what’s so stunning about them is how–
Rebecca Erbelding: Normal.
Anderson Cooper: Yeah.
Rebecca Erbelding: Yea.
Anderson Cooper: I mean, who hasn’t taken a photo of them shaking their dog’s hand?
Rebecca Erbelding: Uh-huh. So this is “Yule Fire 1944,” which is–
Anderson Cooper: Wow.
Rebecca Erbelding: — Nazi Christmas.
Rebecca Erbelding: They know that the Soviets are coming. They are not far. They can probably hear the bombs and here– here they’re lighting–
Anderson Cooper: And they’re lighting a Christmas tree.
Rebecca Erbelding: Yeah.
The album revealed something else museum officials hadn’t seen before. The Nazis built a vacation resort at Auschwitz. It was called Solahütte. These pictures show a gathering of top SS officers there in July 1944. Rebecca Erbelding believes it was a party – they were congratulating themselves for successfully murdering more than 350,000 Hungarian Jews in just 55 days.
Anderson Cooper: This looks like they’re singing.
Rebecca Erbelding: They are. This front row is really what the director of the museum, Sara Bloomfield, calls the “chorus of criminals.” So you have Höcker. You have Otto Moll, the head of the gas chamber section. There’s Rudolf Höss.
Anderson Cooper: The former commandant of Auschwitz.
Rebecca Erbelding: The former commandant of Auschwitz. Mengele is here.
Anderson Cooper: They’re celebrating the– the successful–
Rebecca Erbelding: The successful mass–
Anderson Cooper: –slaughter–
Rebecca Erbelding: –murder. Yeah.
Irene Weiss: It was, somebody labeled it, a metropolis of death. And that’s what it was. It worked like an assembly line factory.
Irene Weiss
60 Minutes
Irene Weiss got to Auschwitz the day after Karl Höcker started working there. She arrived when she was 13, on a train packed with Jews from Hungary. Separated from her parents and four of her siblings, she says she found herself on the platform holding her younger sister Edith’s hand as they approached Dr. Mengele.
Irene Weiss: And everything was in a matter of seconds, you know, the stick came down between us. He held life and death with that stick. All of a sudden, I was alone.
She didn’t know it at the time, but that moment was captured by a Nazi photographer documenting the arrival and processing of Hungarian Jews. It appears in one of the only other albums of Auschwitz. This photo has been colorized.
Irene Weiss: This is the group already going to the gas chamber.
Anderson Cooper: Wa– where are you in this picture?
Irene Weiss: Well, I am right here
Anderson Cooper: This is you–
Irene Weiss: That’s me right here.
Anderson Cooper: So this is the moment after you’d been separated from your little sister, Edith.
Irene Weiss: The very moment, yes. That’s what I’m looking at. I can’t leave. I left her.
Irene Weiss never saw Edith, her parents, or her brothers alive again. What she has is this photo. That’s her mother Leah sitting on the ground just behind her brothers Gershon and Reuben at Auschwitz. After this picture was taken, they were led into a gas chamber.
Irene Weiss: They had to kill the children so there will not be a new generation. And they discovered that if they also killed the mothers, then they didn’t have to worry about the chaos that that would create, separating.
Anderson Cooper: The children wouldn’t be upset by being separated?
Irene Weiss: And the mothers wouldn’t be– wouldn’t be upset.
Weiss spent the next eight months working outside one of those gas chambers. She sorted shoes and other belongings of the dead.
Irene Weiss: We saw these columns of women, mothers and children, and going into the door there talking to us. And they’re told they’re walking into a bathhouse, you know? They’re asking questions, “Where are you from?” And a half hour later, the chimney’s belching fire. And that went on day after day and night after night.
Anderson Cooper: So you saw thousands of women, children walking into gas chambers?
Irene Weiss: Absolutely.
Anderson Cooper: And you talked to some of them. In the last seconds of their life, minutes of their life.
Irene Weiss: Yes, but we couldn’t cry. It was an amazing thing. This is beyond crying. Tears are for normal pain. That kind of brutality from fellow mankind is so deep that, you know, people say broken heart. The heart keeps working, but the soul never forgets.
Irene Weiss wasn’t surprised by the photos in Karl Höcker’s album, but when they were released publicly, they made headlines around the world. Tilman Taube read about them online in Germany while on his lunch break.
Tilman Taube
60 Minutes
Tilman Taube: And there was an article, “New photos from Auschwitz have appeared.” I thought, “This is interesting.”
When he looked at the photos, he was surprised to see his grandfather – Dr. Heinz Baumkotter.
Tilman Taube: On the first picture, it wasn’t 100% clear. But then I flipped two more pictures. It was absolutely 100% clear that– that was him.
Taube knew his grandfather was head physician at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and had done medical experiments on prisoners and sent thousands to be killed at other camps. But Taube wasn’t sure why his grandfather had gone to Auschwitz.
He connected with Rebecca Erbelding and soon discovered just how deeply involved his grandfather was in the Holocaust.
Anderson Cooper: When you see the picture of your grandfather, I mean, does that feel like your grandfather?
Tilman Taube: For me, strictly speaking, it’s two different persons. The grandfather that I knew was a rather normal grandfather. And the SS officer is– is a different person for me.
Anderson Cooper: It’s impossible to reconcile the two.
Tilman Taube: It’s difficult, difficult, really.
Taube now helps the museum search for more photos and documents by reaching out to other descendants of Nazis.
Tilman Taube: Of course, you want to be part of some kind of movement that helps preventing things like that from happening again.
Anderson Cooper: You know your grandfather and you know what he did. Does it make you think differently about human beings, what we are all capable of?
Tilman Taube: Absolutely. Absolutely.
The play about the Höcker album by Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, his co-writer and longtime collaborator, raises difficult questions… not just about our past, but about ourselves.
Anderson Cooper with Amanda Gronich and Moises Kaufman
60 Minutes
Amanda Gronich: When we look at these pictures, we’re looking through the lens of how they saw what they were doing.
Anderson Cooper: Why is it important to see Auschwitz through their eyes?
Amanda Gronich: Because they didn’t wake up each morning thinking, “I’m an evil monster. I’m going to do evil, monstrous things.” They woke up each day, and they went about their lives filled with justifications and beliefs in what they were doing.
Anderson Cooper: It makes all of us ask the question, “Well, what am I capable of doing?”
Moises Kaufman: I think that’s what’s happening. When the audience comes in, they sit here and they go, “Who would I have been in that picture?”
Irene Weiss: The most dangerous animal in the world is man because other animals will hurt you if they’re hungry or it’s their nature of hunting, but man can turn into an animal in no time. All he needs is permission. As soon as permission is given from higher-ups, from government, it accelerates. Even a hint of permission that it’s okay to attack this group or exclude this group or shame that group. It’s– it’s happening. I– it’s never stopped.
Produced by Nichole Marks. Associate producer, John Gallen. Broadcast associate, Grace Conley. Edited by April Wilson.
Anderson Cooper, anchor of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” has contributed to 60 Minutes since 2006. His exceptional reporting on big news events has earned Cooper a reputation as one of television’s preeminent newsmen.
HOPKINS, Minn. — The Allies defeated the Nazis, but Holocaust survivors and their descendants are the enduring victory.
Elly Fine Sternberg’s grandparents, Esther and Berek Latarus, were both transported to Auschwitz yet made it out alive.
“Hitler tried to destroy them but he didn’t. In fact, they had multiplied,” Sternberg said with a smile to WCCO. “There was no bigger gift to my grandparents than to come to America, raise a family, be members of their community and then see grandchildren and even great-grandchildren born.”
Despite those triumphs, survivors like the Lataruses could not overcome time; Berek died more than two decades ago, while Esther passed away in 2006.
“For me, it is so important to carry on their legacy and their message of survival and hope and faith,” Fine Sternberg said. “If I can reach just one person, then I’ve done my job.”
On Monday, more than 500 people heard Fine Sternberg speak at Hopkins High School for a special assembly commemorating Yom Hashoah, the Jewish day of remembrance for the Holocaust.
“Really after Oct. 7, I think we all have seen there are so many people who are not educated, and who haven’t had the opportunity to learn what antisemitism is, what the Holocaust is, and why it’s so wrong,” Badzin lamented to WCCO. “I really wanted people to understand the history of the Holocaust, and also have a personal connection to relate with.”
Judging by the reactions of some of Badzin’s friends, it was mission accomplished.
“This speaker today just made me think of how we have to spread more kindness to everyone,” student Sophia Cotila said.
“She brought the whole school in here and learn about the Holocaust and what Jewish people went through.” student Javion Scott added. “Everybody walked out more educated than when they came in.”
Jonah Kaplan is WCCO and CBS News Minnesota’s investigative reporter and has built a strong reputation for his balanced and in-depth coverage of high-impact issues including the economy, immigration, education, public safety, and the military, among others.
A piece of Holocaust history — a Nazi concentration camp built on Alderney, a British island — has been largely forgotten. Researchers are now counting the island’s dead.
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The names Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald are infamous as the scene of atrocities — concentration camps, run by Adolf Hitler’s notorious SS.
But what you may be surprised to learn, as we were, is that two Nazi concentration camps were established on British soil in the Channel Islands, around 80 miles from the British mainland. The islands lie just off the coast of France, became possessions of the English crown around a thousand years ago – and were occupied by Germany for nearly five years during World War II. Even in the United Kingdom many people don’t know about the camps — and as we discovered, exactly what happened there is hotly disputed.
Holly Williams: It’s pretty well hidden, isn’t it?
Marcus Roberts: Yeah, well, if you–
Holly Williams: It’s all overgrown.
Marcus Roberts: If you didn’t know how to get here, you wouldn’t easily stumble across it.
Marcus Roberts: This was a sort of back entrance…
There’s not much left of the Third Reich’s Lager Sylt concentration camp… on the windswept island of Alderney — about three miles long and one and a half wide – nature is gradually swallowing up its crumbling concrete walls.
Holly Williams: And the camp’s up here…–
Marcus Roberts: These take you straight into the– the camp.
Holly Williams: Wow.
Marcus Roberts is an Oxford-educated amateur historian who runs heritage tours. He’s spent years researching this forgotten chapter in British history.
Marcus Roberts: So undoubtedly if you wanted to put– a pin on the map, you could say, “This is where the Holocaust happened on British sovereign territory.”
Marcus Roberts and Holly Williams
60 Minutes
When Germany invaded France in 1940, the British government calculated that the Channel Islands had no strategic value – and gave them up without a fight. Nearly all of the residents of Alderney decided to evacuate before the German troops arrived. On the empty island, the Germans set up two concentration camps – as well as labor camps. They brought in prisoners of war and forced laborers to build giant fortifications that still survive today — part of Hitler’s Atlantic wall to protect against Allied attack. A minority of them were Jewish – others were from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Spain.
Holly Williams: I understand this was called the Tunnel of Death?
Marcus Roberts: Yes. It was notorious in the memory of prisoners. On two occasions, they were forced to cram in here in an apparent rehearsal for their own death.
After the war, in 1945, the British military investigated the camps, and put the death toll on Alderney in the low hundreds. Some of those who lost their lives were buried under this plot of land. But Marcus Roberts and others argue that more than 10,000 must have died on the island – based on controversial calculations about the size of the labor force needed to build the fortifications. Roberts told us it’s because he’s Jewish that he’s determined to count all of the dead.
Marcus Roberts: There is the– the Jewish instinct to, you know, leave no one behind
Holly Williams: You’re trying to make sure that all the Jewish dead are counted?
Marcus Roberts: Remembered. If you don’t remember a life, it’s as if they’ve never lived at all.
Most academics dispute Roberts’ estimate of the death toll, but partly as a result of those disagreements, last year the British government appointed a team of researchers to comb through archives across Europe, and more accurately count the number of prisoners who died on Alderney. Dr. Gilly Carr — an archaeologist at Cambridge University — is coordinating the review.
Holly Williams: Why is this just a document search, not a dig?
Gilly Carr: It is likely that some of the people in mass graves were Jewish. And according to Halakha or Jewish law, you cannot disturb the dead. But the second reason is that according to prisoner statements, some people were dumped at sea or thrown off cliffs. What are we going to do? Dig up the entire island? Well, we can’t do that.
The researchers are drawing on rich material. The Nazis were meticulous record keepers — and British archives contain first hand testimonies from survivors.
Holly Williams: Look at this. “We were beaten with everything they could lay their hands on: with sticks, spades, pickaxes.”
Gilly Carr: It sounds absolutely ghastly.
Dr. Gilly Carr
60 Minutes
Holly Williams: “On certain days, five to six, up to 10 men died.”
Dr. Carr told us there’s no evidence that gas chambers were used on Alderney — but there were summary executions, and the prisoners built the Nazi fortifications on starvation rations.
Holly Williams: Were they taken to Alderney to be worked to death?
Gilly Carr: They were certainly seen as expendable. The aim was to get every ounce of work out of them. And if they died, it didn’t matter, and that was kind of perhaps “expected.”
Holly Williams: They were disposable human beings.
Gilly Carr: Yes. Yes.
Holly Williams: How did your father end up in Alderney?
At a pub in the Channel Islands, we met Gary Font. His father – Francisco Font – fought on the losing side in the Spanish Civil War, was arrested in France, handed over to the Germans, and sent to a concentration camp on Alderney. Francisco survived, and later married a British woman — Gary’s mother.
Holly Williams and Gary Font
60 Minutes
Gary Font: He witnessed– the execution of a young Soviet boy who decided to leave the working detail and to change his footwear. So he started to pick up these paper bags, and wrap them ’round his feet, and then tie them with string. And a SS guard had seen him do this, and walked up to him and– and shot him– point-blank range.
Gary told us his father’s experiences left him scarred.
Gary Font: I saw the emotion on his face. Yeah, it’s a tough one.
Holly Williams: Do you think that emotion came from– that he had survived the War in Spain, and survived the camp here?
Gary Font: Yeah, exactly. That was the first time I realized, “Wow, you know, this man has a deep-rooted emotion inside of him that he could never get out.”
The British government’s effort to get the truth out – by recounting the dead – was commissioned by Lord Pickles – a former cabinet minister and now the U.K.’s envoy for post-Holocaust issues.
Lord Pickles: The figures vary, not by a few hundred, not by a few thousand, by– by tens of thousands.
Holly Williams: So it was the controversy that prompted you to commission the review?
Lord Pickles: Yes. It seemed to me that the sensible thing was, “Well, okay. Let’s do that– this in the open. Let’s do it fully transparent.
He’s also asked the researchers to put names to as many of those killed as they can.
Lord Pickles: If you remember them as individuals, then it’s another blow against Hitler. Hitler wanted to eradicate the memory of people.
60 Minutes
Holly Williams: So this is kind of an ongoing fight against Hitler and his ideas?
Lord Pickles: Hitler’s evil hand still continues to affect– to affect Europe and to affect the world.
But it’s taken nearly 80 years for the British government to re-examine what happened on Alderney — and to make its report public. The official British investigations in 1945 were classified for decades. And unlike the trials of Nazi officials in Nuremberg — the British authorities failed to prosecute a single German officer who worked on Alderney – even though many of them ended up in British prisoner of war camps.
Holly Williams: I mean just to be clear, these are possible war criminals. The British government has gathered evidence against– against them. And they are in British custody.
Gilly Carr: Yes, they are at this point, yes.
Holly Williams: A sort of slam-dunk case?
Gilly Carr: You’d have thought.
That’s led Marcus Roberts and others to claim that the British government tried to cover-up the extent of the atrocities on Alderney. Dr. Carr told us that could be true — but one key document from the British War Office investigation that may explain why there were no prosecutions is missing.
Gilly Carr: It could have been shredded– decades ago as part of, “What do we need these files for anymore?
Holly Williams: But could it also have been shredded for more nefarious purposes?
Gilly Carr: I have no idea. In order for me to say there was a cover-up, I want to see the decisions taken. I want to look through those steps and to make up my own mind.
Holly Williams: Why might the British government have tried to cover up or whitewash what happened on Alderney and– and maybe more broadly, on the Channel Islands?
Gilly Carr: There are some things that– that happened that might not– that the British government might not necessarily have wanted a wider audience to know about.
Those things – once feared too troubling for the broader public – happened on three of the other Channel Islands — where most residents did not evacuate before the occupation. When the Germans arrived, the locals mostly cooperated – often with little choice. Hitler’s portrait was hung outside this cinema on the island of Guernsey. Nazi propaganda showed the British police working for German troops. And British newspapers on the islands printed orders from Berlin.
Holly Williams: This is a British newspaper. And it’s got the swastika on top.
Linda Romeril: That’s right.
Linda Romeril and Holly Williams
60 Minutes
At the official archives on the island of Jersey, Linda Romeril showed us how British officials implemented Nazi policies — asking Jewish residents to identify themselves, and then confiscating their assets.
Linda Romeril: There was a huge amount of requisitioning of people’s houses, people’s property during the occupation period.
But some resisted — risking punishment to paint anti-nazi graffiti, and illegally listening to British news on the radio.
Jenny Lecoat: That’s my great aunt Louisa. I suspect that she was probably quite steely.
One member of the resistance was Louisa Gould — who hid an escaped Russian prisoner in her home for nearly two years. Jenny Lecoat told us when her great aunt Louisa was finally caught, she was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany.
Holly Williams: She was killed in a Nazi gas chamber?
Jenny Lecoat: She was gassed to death, yeah.
Holly Williams: After the occupation, did the British government get in touch with your family to talk about what Louisa had done during the occupation, and about her murder by the Nazis?
Jenny Lecoat: The British government, I think, were kind of ashamed. They were horrified it had happened, and they didn’t really want to get too involved in what had gone on there.
Holly Williams: Not wanting to talk about the resistance? Or not wanting to talk about the occupation at all?
Jenny Lecoat: Well, it was such a mixed picture. There were people who had resisted the Germans as much as resistance was possible within a tiny, nine-by-five-mile island. And there were also people who’d collaborated. Some people had betrayed their own country. The only possible legislation was treason, which was still a hanging offense. They didn’t wanna get into that. That was the confusing, messy, dirty mixed picture of– of the Channel Islands occupation.
Holly Williams and Jenny Jenny Lecoat
60 Minutes
We’ll learn more about that messy, dirty history when the British government’s review of the death toll at the camps on Alderney is published next month. But it’s unlikely to satisfy everyone.
Marcus Roberts: Some kind of– ap– apology and, you know, moral recompense would be helpful.
Holly Williams: You– you want the British government to apologize–
Marcus Roberts: Yeah. I’d like–
Holly Williams: –for not having prosecuted alleged war criminals?
Marcus Roberts: Yeah. So I think it would be appropriate for them to recognize what should have been done, didn’t happen.
The horrors carried out on this tiny, remote island are difficult to imagine… the victims were silenced and buried… but now, nearly eight decades later, they’re finally being counted.
Produced by Justine Redman and Erin Lyall. Associate producer, Matthew Riley. Broadcast associate, Eliza Costas. Edited by Peter M. Berman.
An oversight panel has recommended that former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva be deemed ineligible for rehire after officials found he discriminated against Inspector General Max Huntsman, according to records obtained by The Times.
In the initial complaint filed in March 2022, Huntsman accused Villanueva of “dog whistling to the extremists he caters to” when he repeatedly referred to the inspector general by his foreign-sounding birth name, Max-Gustaf. In an interview with The Times editorial board a few weeks later, Villanueva — without any evidence — accused Huntsman of being a Holocaust denier.
“You do realize that Max Huntsman, one, he’s a Holocaust denier,” Villanueva told the board. “I don’t know if you’re aware of that. I have it from two separate sources.”
At the time, Villanueva refused to identify the sources. On Wednesday, he did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.
Records show that after the department investigated the allegations, a County Equity Oversight Panel met in 2023 and found that Villanueva had violated several policies against discrimination and harassment. By that point, Villanueva was no longer sheriff, and the panel recommended that he “should receive a ‘Do Not Rehire’ notation” in his personnel file. Villanueva is currently running for county supervisor, and it’s not clear how the finding could affect his campaign.
On Wednesday, the Sheriff’s Department confirmed to The Times that it upheld the panel’s recommendation. Meanwhile, Huntsman said he was “happy” with the finding.
“I’m glad that Villanueva is no longer the sheriff and, now that he is gone, the facts have been treated in a more fair and objective way,” he told The Times. “But it doesn’t undo the damage that is done when an agency is allowed to operate above the law.”
Throughout his time in office, Villanueva repeatedly sparred with Huntsman, who was one of the department’s top critics as well as the chief watchdog tasked with its oversight.
Amid that tension, on March 9, 2022, Huntsman filed a complaint — which he told The Times this week he was required to do under county policy — accusing Villanueva of sending an email “throughout the Sheriff’s Department that was a racially biased attack.” In the email, Villanueva allegedly referred to Huntsman by his full name. Around the same time, during an interview on KFI-AM radio , the sheriff raised the issue again, adding, “He’s dropped the Gustaf for some reason, and there might be a story behind that.”
When Villanueva found out about Huntsman’s complaint, he in turn told The Times editorial board about it, adding in the new claim about Huntsman’s supposed denial of the Holocaust.
The editorial board functions independently of The Times newsroom, and the interview — during Villanueva’s reelection campaign — came as part of the board’s usual endorsement process in the 2022 election cycle.
At the time, Huntsman wrote a letter to the Board of Supervisors, alerting them to the sheriff’s allegations and offering a response. He wrote that Villanueva was “dog whistling to his more extreme supporters that I am German and/or Jewish and hence un-American.”
Huntsman explained his family’s history, saying his German grandfather had been conscripted into the Nazi army, but was not allowed to carry a rifle because he had previously employed Jews. Growing up during the Holocaust, he said, his father had developed a deep distrust of authority. Huntsman’s father left Europe for North America after the war ended but abandoned the family shortly after his son was born. “He gave me the name Max-Gustaf and so I do not use it,” Huntsman wrote. “I would never deny that the Holocaust happened.”
During his internal affairs interview about his complaint, records show, Huntsman added that his father was a “piece of work — as a result of the Holocaust.” He said that the “way the Nazis functioned” did great damage to his family.
“I don’t claim that’s as bad as the Holocaust, but it had a direct impact on me,” he said, according to a transcript of the summer 2022 interview. “So the idea that I would deny the Holocaust is crazy. I have no love for Nazi Germany; quite the opposite.”
When Villanueva began using the inspector general’s birth name, Huntsman said he believed it was an effort to say: “This guy’s a foreigner; he’s either German or Jewish or both.”
During his internal affairs interview — conducted by an independent investigator hired by the county — Huntsman also detailed the genesis of his tensions with the former sheriff, which he said dated back to at least 2019 when the Office of Inspector General began investigating Villanueva’s controversial decision to rehire a deputy who’d been fired for domestic violence and dishonesty.
When Huntsman’s office prepared to issue a report on the matter, he said, he gave a draft to the Sheriff’s Department.
“When I did that he shut off our computer access and I was asked by people in the county to try to convince him to change his mind,” Huntsman said, according to the internal affairs transcript. “In that context he said to me, ‘If you issue this report, there’ll be consequences.’”
Not long after that, Huntsman said, Villanueva announced that the inspector general was the target of a criminal investigation, and sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors asking them to relieve Huntsman of duty.
Huntsman stayed on the job, but his tensions with Villanueva continued.
Though heavily redacted Internal Affairs Bureau records show Huntsman was interviewed by an investigator in summer 2022, it wasn’t until October 2023 that the county oversight met to discuss the case and issue its recommendation.
