H.R. Knickerbocker: Sounding the Alarm

Towards the tumultuous end of Germany’s Weimar Republic, Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker, an American journalist, asked a member of the National Socialist Party what the party would do if it came to power. He expected the man to reply with a lengthy response about…

Varian Fry: The Man Who Saved the Artists of Europe

Varian Fry was the American version of Oskar Schindler, but in contrast to the German businessman who saved over 1,000 Jews, many of Fry’s rescuees were decidedly more A-list.
Among the nearly 2,000 people, many of whom Jewish, that Fry…

Ben Hecht: One man’s failed attempts to warn America about Nazi Germany

Ben Hecht, an Oscar-winning American screenwriter whose unflinching newspaper accounts of the horrors of Hitler made him one of best-known American bylines, describes himself as almost an accidental…

“You can no longer report the war or conditions in Germany as they are,” William Shirer wrote in his diary, “Berlin Days.”

Day #6: The Photography of Terror

By Renee Gross

Day #2: The new normal

We came to Europe in part to study the past, but it’s been hard to stay away from the present — especially for the…

Arno Herzberg: A high-stakes gatekeeper

Arno Herzberg walked a thin line. As manager of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Berlin bureau during the pre-war years, Herzberg constantly struggled with both the restraints of Nazi censorship and his desire to publish material that would maintain the morale…

Ivan Greenberg: Did the London Jewish Chronicle downplay the atrocities in Europe?

By Renee Gross

Day #1: Remembering isn’t inevitable.

For four decades, there was a gaping wound in the middle of Berlin.