Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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Holocaust – what’s in a word?
Holocaust, shoah, genocide – none of the words chosen to describe the nazis’ extermination programme are free of ideology, writes DAVID ROSENBERG
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
AS we mark Holocaust Memorial Day this weekend it is worth noting that the term “Holocaust” was not widely used by writers and scholars until the 1960s and was only one of several words that have described the extermination of an estimated six million Jews, including 1.5 million children, and around one million Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) by nazi fascists between 1941-5.
One million of those Jews were slaughtered in mass shootings by Einsatzgruppen (SS and police units aided by local collaborators) who swept through areas of the USSR that the nazis invaded from June 1941.
Many others died from starvation and disease in walled ghettoes in which the nazis incarcerated them. The majority, however, were industrially murdered in a network of specially constructed death camps.
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