Connecticut Online Poker Legalized as Governor Signs Gambling Expansion Bill – CardsChat.com

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Connecticut has become the seventh US state to legalize online poker after Governor Ned Lamont signed a broad gambling expansion bill on Thursday. Lamont approved House Bill 6451 just one day after it passed the states Senate on a lopsided 28-6 vote.

In addition to online poker, the bill legalizes a long list of gambling as found in the states two major tribal casinos, the Mashantucket Pequots Foxwoods and the Mohegans Mohegan Sun. The signed measure also legalizes sports betting, to be offered jointly by the two casinos and the Connecticut Lottery at various locations across the state.

Though the bill technically allows online gambling to occur as soon as July 1, it will likely be several months before real-money online poker is available for the states residents. The signed measure must also be approved by the US Department of the Interior, which through multiple sub-agencies, administers all issues connected to tribal gaming within the US.

Lamont was a prominent advocate of the gambling expansion bill, which also involved a renegotiation of the states gambling compact with the two federally recognized tribes. He had promised to sign the bill into law, and quickly announced doing so on Twitter.

I just put my signature on legislation establishing a system to legalize sports wagering and online gaming in CT.

Were on the cusp of providing a modernized gaming experience that positions us for success into the future. Thanks to our tribal partners for their collaboration. pic.twitter.com/wstvZD5YJW

Governor Ned Lamont (@GovNedLamont) May 27, 2021

Lamonts office also released a longer statement on the bills quick approval. By signing this bill into law, Connecticut is now on the cusp of providing a modern, technologically advanced gaming experience that will be competitive with our neighboring states and positions us for success into the future, Lamont said.

Most of Connecticuts close neighbor states have approved or are considering sports betting, online gambling, or both, and three of the five US states already offering regulated online poker New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania are within a couple hours drive of the Connecticut border.

The Mohegan Tribe is thankful to Governor Ned Lamont and our partners in the General Assembly for their cooperative efforts to legalize online gaming and sports wagering, efforts that will keep Connecticut competitive with surrounding states when it comes to gaming entertainment, Mohegan Tribal Council Chairman James Gessner Jr. said. Gessner also noted the bipartisan support for the bill, which passed the Connecticut House by an overwhelming 122-21 margin.

Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Chairman Rodney Butler added, The agreement not only ushers in a new modern era of gaming, but it solidifies our tribal/state partnership for years to come.

Lamonts presser noted that the bill must still be ratified by the federal Department of the Interior. Now that the bill has been signed into law, his statement declared, the Lamont administration and the tribes will seek approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of Interior to amend the states compact with the tribes. The federal agency must approve the changes to the compact before online gaming and sports wagering can begin in the state.

The DOIs Bureau of Indian Affairs and National Indian Gaming Commission dont have a fixed timetable for approving changes to tribal compacts, but the process is expected to take several weeks, at a minimum. Officials at the two Connecticut tribal casinos have expressed their hopes that the approval will come before the start of this years NFL season in about three months.

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Haley Hintze

Contributing writer Haley Hintze is a 20-year veteran of the poker world, a Women in Poker Hall of Fame finalist, and two-time Global Poker Awards finalist.

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Will The Pandemic Kill Our Love Of Live Poker? – Casino.Org News

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2020 was easily the worst period for livepoker. The coronavirus pandemic has shut down card rooms and casinos worldwide,and all major competitions were either canceled or moved online.

This was a huge blow for the poker industry,which, to its credit, has managed to pick up the pieces and find cleverworkarounds to keep the ball rolling. For the most part, that meant movingthings to the virtual realm.

Were now almost six months months into 2021,and things are slowly starting to get back on track. That said, althoughcasinos are bringing back live tournaments and cash games, its not really thesame as before.

In most places, youre still supposed to wear amask while playing. There are Plexiglas dividers between players, mandatorytemperature checks, and all sorts of other measures in place.

If this trend continues, the natural questionthat comes to mind is: will the pandemic kill our love for live poker?

Are people willing to jump through all theloops and hoops just to play some live hands, or will they give up on tryingand transfer to online games or move on altogether?

Never in poker history have we witnessed anything remotely similar to what came to pass in 2020. At one point, Las Vegas came to a complete halt, with casinos and poker rooms shutting down entirely, waiting for some better times.

It was shocking and unprecedented.

The futures of many people working in thegambling industry were hanging in the balance, not just in Vegas but all overthe world.

At the same time, many poker players took a bigblow as well. Whether semi-professionally or full-time, there are many peoplewho make a living playing live poker.

You might think that moving online was theeasiest option for them, but thats not necessarily the case.

First of all, live and online poker arent the same.

You could go as far as to say theyre two completely different games. They require different skill sets, and going from live to online without any proper transition period and expecting to be profitable is optimistic, to say the least.

Secondly, not everyone has access to online poker.

In the US, for example, there are only a fewregulated states, and you can only play online if youre inside one of thesestates. Moving across the US in the middle of the pandemic to play poker wasalso not a real option for most.

So, there was a big outcry from all sides ofthe industry for the first few months. People wanted live games back, but thisjust wasnt possible at the time.

So, they waited patiently to see what transpired,hoping for the best.

After some months of complete shutdown, thelive poker scene slowly started to get back on track.

Everybody was excited, from dealers and casinostaff to players. The worst was now behind them, and things would slowly startto fall into place.

But many players werent ready for what theyfound in their favorite poker room.

Government-mandated rules havent made it easy for the operators. Theyve had to put all sorts of preventive measures in place, from temperature checks at the doors and face masks for the players and the staff, to plastic barriers between seats and limiting the number of players at the table.

Im not going to go into the validity of anysuch measures or try to argue for or against them. Its far beyond the scope ofthis article and, frankly, a rather moot discussion at this point in time.

The bottom line is, the live poker experience haschanged quite drastically.

For those who have been in the game for awhile, this was quite a shock. As much as they were looking forward to gettingback to the felt, this new environment just didnt sit right with many.

Unsurprisingly, social media was flooded by thecomments coming from both sides of the fence.

Some were over the moon that they were able toplay live again, regardless of the restrictions. Others, though, felt like allof it was killing the experience and took the life out of it.

No matter what side you take, its quite clearthat the pandemic and all it brought with it had a big impact on live poker andhas put a big strain on it.

Eventually, these measures will (hopefully)become a thing of the past, but will some people lose the passion for livegames in the process?

Quite likely.

It seems that the world is finally on its wayto leave the pandemic behind. Vaccinations are happening as we speak, andcountries worldwide are lifting restrictions.

Slowly, things are coming back to where theyused to be prior to 2020.

But it could still be a while before peoplefeel comfortable sitting in a room with hundreds of strangers breathing behindtheir necks.

There is still a lot of uncertainty in the air,and so many questions are left unanswered.

While things are certainly looking up, it seemswere still a far cry away from going back to the old normal.

After more than a year of fear, threats, andwarnings, many people wont be in a rush to go back to the old,carefree lifestyle.

Some will, for sure, but not everyone has thesame view of how to handle the situation.

Some in the poker community believe that thingsshouldnt be rushed. Even if there are vaccines and a much better understandingof the coronavirus, they prefer a slow and cautious approach.

You can be certain that people who share thisopinion will be in no rush to come back to crowded live tables.

These feelings will likely have a significantimpact on the general love for live poker. Will it kill it completely?

Absolutely not, but Im sure that there will bea lot of hesitation in the coming months, especially with regards to bigevents.

Its quite clear that even with all thepositive changes as of late, the live poker industry will have some challengesto overcome to get back where it used to be.

On one side, some players may avoid live eventsand games for one reason or another. On the other, there is also the issue ofprofitability.

Casinos and poker rooms have to meet certainexpectations to keep their business profitable.

In most places, poker isnt exactly the primary activity. Its often used more as a way to attract people to the venue, in hopes theyll also spend some time playing slots or pay a visit to the pit.

With the new challenges and restrictions, manyplaces may be put off the idea of hosting live poker altogether. Its a lot ofhassle for very little gain, and if their capacity is reduced as it is, theremay be very little reason to organize live poker.

Luckily, this doesnt apply to some of thebiggest casinos, especially those in Las Vegas, where poker has been a part oftheir overall offering for decades.

So, on their part, casinos will try to getthings back on track.

For example, the WSOP has already announcedthere will be a live event this year (albeit a few months later than usual),and the response from the community has been largely positive.

How big of a crowd will they be able toattract?

This remains to be seen, but many people areitching to play live poker and jump at the opportunity after such a long forcedbreak.

Several other Las Vegas casinos have alsoannounced major live events, and these things will certainly help restore thelove for live poker and get people back in the right mindset.

Moving forward, the poker industry will play ahuge role in what happens next with live poker.

Theyve been fighting an uphill battle for along time now, but thats the only way forward.

If major venues and organizations decide theyvehad enough and throw in the towel, people will have no other option than toaccept it and move on.

When you read and watch the media, there isoften the feeling that the whole world has come to a stop in so many of itssegments.

Well, its no secret the media love drama, sothey show things in a certain light to achieve a more dramatic effect.

But people havent stopped living just becausethings have changed, and they most certainly havent stopped playing poker.

While casinos and poker rooms may have shutdown, it was virtually impossible to stop people from gathering in privategames.

And gathered they did.

Again, I wont go into a discussion about themerits of such decisions. Everyone has their own opinion, and lets leave it atthat.

But what this has clearly shown is that thereis no lack of love for live poker, even in the most difficult and uncertain oftimes.

In many places, private games were the onlyoption for anyone wanting to play a live session, and this side of the industrystarted to boom.

Just looking at the example of my city, we wentfrom having one semi-private, fairly high-stakes game to like four or five gamesthat are much more approachable to regular players. And poker isnt even thatbig here at all.

So, its safe to assume that these kinds ofgames have flourished in environments where people are much more into poker. Ifnothing else, they helped keep the fire burning while waiting for the realthing to come back.

Some will disagree, but thats fine.

This article is only about whether the pandemicwill kill the love for live poker, and, luckily, this doesnt seem to be thecase.

The past period wasnt easy on anyone, and theworld has seen many changes. We had to adapt to new circumstances, and everyonehandled it the best they could.

As for live poker, things were quite rough fora while, but there is finally a brighter future on the horizon.

For the time being, live venues still have todeal with some restrictions and limitations, which might put some people offthe idea of playing. But, hopefully, these will go away as well, and live pokerwill go back to its old self.

There might be a short-term fall in numbers aspeople bounce back and readjust to the old style of life without worrying aboutthe pandemic. But I dont think thats anything the poker industry canthandle.

Its not the first crisis it had to deal with,and it probably wont be the last.

So, has the pandemic killed our love for livepoker?

I really dont think so, and Im convinced thatthere is absolutely nothing to worry about if you prefer the actual felt overthe virtual one!

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Will The Pandemic Kill Our Love Of Live Poker? - Casino.Org News

WSOP and 888 Banks Biggest Share of New Jersey Online Poker Revenue in April – Pokerfuse

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Caesars Entertainment, which operates WSOP.com on 888poker software in the New Jersey market, saw a substantial increase in April poker revenue over the March numbers, banking more than $1 million in revenue from the poker tables. They were the only operator to see growth over March in a market that shrunk month-over-month by about about $300,000 in total.

Over the all licensed operators in the market, April was substantially down on April of 2020, but that is hardly a surprise: Last year at this time, the world was in the height of the initial COVID-19 lockdown, and people were flocking to online gaming options to pass the time.

Over all three poker operators, revenue was down more than 50% over April 2020, but that is comparing to the biggest month in New Jersey poker history. The total market in April 2021 was just over $2.4 million, compared with more than $5 million in 2020, but in the pre-COVID era, $2.4 million would have been a watershedindeed, it would be been the biggest month between June of 2016 and February of 2020.

The combined number was down from almost $2.7 million in March, but not far off the $2.48 million posted in February of this year.

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The one operator that managed to increase their revenue from March was Caesars with $1,017,832 in poker revenue in April, up from $988,525 in March.

While Caesars has posted million dollar months consistently through the pandemic period, prior to March 2020, the last million dollar month for Caesars was way back in 2014. Still, the April revenue numbers marked a 45% decline from the pandemic-inflated numbers of April 2020.

All operators saw a year-on-year decline in the New Jersey poker space, but Borgata, which operates with BetMGM and partypoker, showed the smallest loss at 38% down from 2020. They made almost $750,000 in April, which was also a decline from March when they were over $950,000.

Still, that was enough to maintain their second place position, as PokerStars saw a year-on-year revenue drop of more than 68%. They only made a little more than $640,000 at the poker tables, good for just 27% of the total market.

As summer approaches, it is likely that online gaming revenues will see further declines. It is not uncommon in a normal year to see dips in online traffic during the summer months, but this year, the effect could be even more pronounced as more and more people around the globe get vaccinated and are able to venture out for socializing again.

After being locked in for most of last summer, and much of the rest of the year, people will no doubt be eager to get out again, and that will surely have an impact on online revenues. The big upcoming bright spot is shining squarely on Caesars with the US portion of the WSOP Online running from July 1. The chance to win an online bracelet may be the one thing that keeps people at the online tables this coming summer.

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WSOP and 888 Banks Biggest Share of New Jersey Online Poker Revenue in April - Pokerfuse

Spurs legend Tony Parker is ‘very excited’ to be the first qualified player for WSOP Main Event – mySA

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May 25, 2021Updated: May 25, 2021 10:45a.m.

According to Gregorgy Chochon, director of the World Series of Poker for Caesars Entertainment, Tony Parker is the first qualified player for the World Series of Poker Main Event.

Former Spurs player Tony Parker is going all in and will be part of the 2021 schedule for the World Series of Poker's Main Event in Las Vegas.

According to Gregorgy Chochon, director of the World Series of Poker for Caesars Entertainment, the French basketball legend is the first qualified player for the World Series of Poker Main Event.

RELATED: Tim Duncan's kickboxing trainer, friend calls him 'freakishly humble'

The competition, which dates back to 1970, is returning to an in-person event this year at the Rio Hotel and Casino Nov. 4-17.

In January, Parker won The PM Group's Texas Hold Em Charity Poker. The local group said the win "catapulted Tony to worldwide poker fame" and earned him an invitation to the big time, $10,000 buy-in no-limit Texas Hold 'Em event.

READ MORE FROM MADALYN: REPORT: Spurs play-in game brought in impressive ESPN audience engagement

"He is very excited to play the Main Event for the first time," Chochon said."Because of his career, he never had the time to participate but he is ready for the challenge. We always promote poker as a sport, so Tony's qualification is great news!"

Madalyn Mendoza is a proud Alamo City native. Keep up with her work and puro San Antonio happenings on Twitter, @MaddySkye.

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Spurs legend Tony Parker is 'very excited' to be the first qualified player for WSOP Main Event - mySA

Connecticut on the Verge of Legalizing Online Poker, Casino Games and Sports Betting – Pokerfuse

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The state of Connecticut is in position to become the seventh state to legalize online poker in the US and the sixth to authorize online casino games after the state House of Representatives passed a bill to allow the games last week by a 122-21 margin.

House Bill 6451 was subsequently referred to the State Senate, and on Friday it was officially added as a Senate agenda item.

In addition to online poker and online casino games, the bill would also authorize:

Should the proposed legislation pass through the Senate, Governor Ned Lamont has indicated that he would sign the bill into law. However, because the bill proposes changes to the compact between the state and the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes, approval by the US Department of Interior (DOI) secretary in accordance with the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) is also required.

However, the tribes would not be the only ones to benefit from the proposed expansion in gambling. HB 6451 would also authorize the Connecticut Lottery Corporation (CLC) to offer select online games.

If passed, the bill would take effect on July 1, 2021.

In its current form, HB 6451 would only allow online casino gaming (which includes online poker) to be offered by the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes and not the CLC.

The bill would also restrict the tribes from offering of online casino games and online poker outside of their tribal lands to one skin per tribe, meaning there would only be the potential for two online poker sites in the state.

Currently, there are three premier online poker operators in the US: PokerStars USA, operating in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan; BetMGM USA, which offers online poker in the same states as PokerStars under a mixture of brands that include BetMGM Poker, Borgata Poker; and partypoker US; and 888poker/WSOP USA, which currently offers the only inter-state online poker in the US with brands such as WSOP.com in Nevada and New Jersey, 888poker in New Jersey and three racino brands offered in Delaware.

The inability to offer online poker to the 3.6 million residents of the Constitution State would not pose a significant threat to the success of any of the big three, but it is also possible that only one or even none of the exiting US online poker operators may be able to launch in Connecticut.

The Mashantucket Pequot tribe already has a deal in place in Connecticut with DraftKings, who is rumored to be interested in introducing a new online poker network to the US. Its current market access and the looming conclusion to the Wire Act case next month, which is expected to spur additional interstate online poker interest, could be enough to bring the online sports betting and Daily Fantasy Sports giant off the online poker sidelines.

The Mohegan tribe already has an agreement in place with global online gaming provider Kindred in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and though there have been no rumblings, Kindred operates online poker under the Unibet brand in other parts of the world. Though it is a long shot, the Unibet Poker software is one of the most modern and user-friendly platforms globally, and its high-quality mobile offering could be competitive in US markets once the Wire Act appeal period expires in June.

Currently, there is also no provision in the Connecticut bill that explicitly allows for interstate online poker networks (also known as shared liquidity), but there is no language that would prohibit online poker operators from allowing players in Connecticut from competing at the same tables as players in other states where online poker is legal and regulated.

Presumably, state lawmakers would pass another law explicitly allowing Connecticut to enter agreements with other states such as the exiting Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA), or provisions could be included to allowed shared liquidity in the revisions to the tribal compacts with the state.

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Connecticut on the Verge of Legalizing Online Poker, Casino Games and Sports Betting - Pokerfuse

Secret network of tunnels found at former Nazi German army HQ raise speculation they could contain legendary Amber Room – The First News

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The previously undiscovered system of underground corridors is now fuelling speculation that they may contain the lost Amber Room or other wartime treasures. Mamerki museum

Five entrances to a secret network of tunnels have been discovered at the site of Nazi Germanys eastern army headquarters in what is now north-east Poland.

The previously undiscovered system of underground corridors is now fuelling speculation that they may contain the lost Amber Room or other wartime treasures.

The find, which was made by staff from the Mamerki museum and a group of volunteer historical searchers, is described as the biggest discovery ever made at the 200-hectare forest headquarters.

Bartomiej Plebaczyk from the museum said: At the moment based on how the entrances are spaced out, it looks like the tunnel is about 50 metres long, but it could be longer.

Mamerki museum

The opening and exploration of the tunnel is planned for the second half of June.Mamerki museum

He added: Some of them have been filled in, perhaps in order to hide them, so we will have to remove a lot of material before we can see what is inside the tunnel.

Plebaczyk suggested that the tunnel could reveal interesting artefacts from World War II that the Germans wanted to hide.

Theories have been put forward that the Amber Room, known before its disappearance as the Eighth Wonder of the World, may have been hidden under the ground in Mamerki.

The piece of art was stolen by the Germans from the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg during the war and the 450 kg of amber panels, gems, gold leaf and mirrors that made up the decorations, said to be worth as much as $500 million, were taken to the castle in Knigsberg, todays Kaliningrad.

Bartomiej Plebaczyk from the Mamerki museum said: The tunnel is part of a hitherto unknown system of underground corridors that requires careful penetration. It may be an ideal place to hide treasure.Tomasz Waszczuk/PAP

They have never been seen since.

Many theories about their fate have been put forward, including that they were destroyed when the castle in Knigsberg was bombed by the RAF, or destroyed by Soviet shelling during the siege of the city.

Plebaczyk said: The tunnel is part of a hitherto unknown system of underground corridors that requires careful penetration. It may be an ideal place to hide treasure.

Will it lead to the Amber Chamber? So far nothing can be ruled out.

Tomasz Waszczuk/PAP

Tomasz Waszczuk/PAP

The concrete bunkers in Mamerki cover an area of about 200 hectares. Even though 75 years have passed since the end of the war, Plebaczyk believes there is still much to be found.Tomasz Waszczuk

First we need to prepare the formal legal opinions necessary to carry out this operation and get permission from the local heritage protection office.

The concrete bunkers in Mamerki cover an area of about 200 hectares. Even though 75 years have passed since the end of the war, Plebaczyk believes there is still much to be found.

The museum often carries out archaeological work at the site in the spring before the main tourist season.

This years find is not the first one at the site to fuel speculation that the Amber Room may be hidden underground there.

The Amber Room, known before its disappearance as the Eighth Wonder of the World, was stolen by the Germans from the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg during the war.Public domain

Last year, what was thought to be another tunnel entrance was discovered. However, it turned out to lead nowhere.

The complex of bunkers from the time of the Third Reich is the best-preserved site of this type in Poland.

During World War II, Mauerwald was the headquarters of the Oberkommando des Heeres, the Nazi High Command of Land Forces.

Around 1,500 soldiers, including generals and officers, were stationed at the Wehrmacht quarters in Masuria during World War II.

The room was taken to the castle in Knigsberg, todays Kaliningrad and has never been seen since.Public domain

In total, the Mamerki complex consisted of more than 250 military objects of various types, but only the large bunkers have survived to this day. The largest has walls 7 metres thick.

Many of the surviving bunkers and their connecting tunnels are now open to the public and form part of a museum telling the story of the war.

However, very few artefacts of the war have been found at the site. Museum officials are confident that further searches will lead to their discovery.

The opening and exploration of the tunnel is planned for the second half of June.

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Secret network of tunnels found at former Nazi German army HQ raise speculation they could contain legendary Amber Room - The First News

Dalton Delan | The Unspin Room: From Nazi occupation to COVID, she’s endured it all and survived – Berkshire Eagle

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She survived a bout with COVID-19. Piece of cake. Not nearly as harrowing as her wartime North Atlantic crossing, when rough seas and a seasick stomach buried her in her cabin for days.

At 15 years old, she was on her way to be reunited with her family, all of whom she had left in Vienna at 13. That world seems unreal to us today, when it appears through our limited point of view that the pandemic is the worst ordeal.

She has lived a life in the spirit that the past is gone. Her vivacious personality has carried her through. One would think she had seen it all. But last week, the past burst from the mist as the Statue of Liberty did that gray November dawn in 1940 when her escape from the Holocaust tossed her up on our shores.

Perhaps politicians and pundits unsympathetic to those now separated at the Southern border will take note here of what it is like to risk your very family to make it to America. My cousin Wendy heard a podcast by Julian Borger of Manchesters The Guardian recounting the classified ads his paper had run in the late 1930s, placed by Jews desperate to save their children by relocating them from areas in Europe overrun by the Nazis. Wendy contacted Borger, because family lore had it that her mother Lori, beautiful and brilliant wife of my uncle Marty, had been sent to London from Vienna during World War II. We knew little else, beyond that Loris mother had placed an ad, as my aunt would have it, for her blue-eyed girl.

Following a tip from Borger, Wendy found for the first time the actual personal ad from Oct. 14, 1938, reminder of an era before the internet, when even a long-distance call was out of reach. The power of this particular newspaper ad to save a life turned out not to be from The Guardian. In fact, it had been intended for The Times of London. But after the Anschluss, when the Nazis annexed Austria, Loris mother Irma Beller inspected the classifieds at the Times Vienna bureau, and worried that the text was too tiny and the plea for her daughter would get lost.

Irma walked over to the Vienna bureau of Londons Jewish Chronicle, then almost a century old. She preferred the size of the type in its classifieds. So she placed the ad: 13-year-old intelligent, pretty, healthy Viennese girl asks for a new home in Jewish family. One solitary letter reached her in response. That familys arms stretched out from England to rescue this child. They corresponded by mail. They never spoke.

In January 1939, Lori embarked on a dicey border crossing by train, then hazarded the English Channel on her own, the number 61 taped to her blouse to identify her to the occupants of that house number, the Steinberg family, who would embrace this companion for their daughter Stella.

Young Lori spoke little English when she arrived, but picked it up quickly. She had to. Nobody spoke German. A kind teacher helped. The family endured the nightly terror of the Blitz, sleeping underground.

Loris father traveled to Shanghai, hoping to transit from there to America. Her brother went to Holland, thinking to ultimately find a new home in Palestine. Her mother made it to New York. One family strewn across four countries and three continents in a world aflame. Lori learned to knit and ride a bicycle, and also endured her first period frightened out of her wits without her mother to explain it. A girl grew to womanhood.

After life in what my university professor Lore Segal described as Other Peoples Houses, my aunt boarded another boat alone, troopship RMS Samaria, bound from Liverpool. To this day, Lori prizes the wire puzzle crafted for her by a sailor who took pity on her loneliness.

In a Bronx apartment, where time and tide finally reunited the family, she found her old bed, shipped from Vienna by her thoughtful mother. Lori slept in a cocoon of two worlds.

Some years ago, my aunt reflected, I look in the mirror and I see my mother. When I asked her about this recently, she pooh-poohed it as just a physical resemblance. Did she wink? They share the same bravery, and I hear in her voice more spirit than most anyone I know. When I inquire what she gleaned from her terrifying and magnificent journey, she remembers the Steinbergs, the good Samarian, other kind folks she encountered along the way. She sums up for me: There are good people everywhere.

My dear aunt, widowed 19 years, survivor of COVID, stroke, wolfpacks of the North Atlantic and an Austria overwhelmed by evil, beams at me. Her mother called her Sunshine.

Dalton Delan can be followed on Twitter @UnspinRoom. He has won Emmy, Peabody and duPont-Columbia awards for his work as a television producer.

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Dalton Delan | The Unspin Room: From Nazi occupation to COVID, she's endured it all and survived - Berkshire Eagle

Disgusting and despicable: Neo-Nazi group gathers in front of New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston – Boston Herald

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A neo-Nazi group recently gathered in front of the New England Holocaust Memorial, a disgusting and despicable demonstration in Boston while there has been a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic violence across the country, the Anti-Defamation Leagues regional leader tells the Herald.

Members of the Nationalist Social Club on Sunday stood in front of the New England Holocaust Memorial across from City Hall Plaza. Holding flags, members of the white supremacist group took a photo in front of the memorial, and posted the picture on the social media site Telegram.

This is the kind of thing they like to do. They like to be provocative and want to spread hate, anti-Semitism, and they try to incite people, said Robert Trestan, ADL New Englands regional director.

They purposefully chose to go to the Holocaust Memorial, a place that is sacred for Boston-area Jews, to basically spread a message that the Holocaust didnt happen and to send the message that you dont belong here, Trestan added. Its disgusting and despicable.

The neo-Nazi group also recently posted photos of their members demonstrating in Nashua, N.H., as they held a White Lives Matter sign.

The white supremacists also spray-painted racist graffiti in Nashua, writing, Death to Israel and Keep New England White.

Its pretty concerning that theyre right here, Trestan said. This isnt across the country. This is in our neighborhood. They are trying to send these messages to our neighbors who live here.

Theyre on a little bit of a publicity road trip, he added. At a time right now when were seeing a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic violence against Jews, this is a concern. Its a concern that it might incite or inspire other people to attack Jews or other groups.

There has been a rise in violence against those in the U.S. Jewish community since the Mideast conflict erupted two weeks ago, according to the ADL.

Anti-Semitic incidents reported to ADL have jumped by 63%, according to preliminary data from ADLs Center on Extremism. The week before the conflict between Israel and Hamas started, there were 67 reports of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S., compared with 113 reports during the last week.

Also during the recent escalation of violence, there has been a surge in anti-Semitism on social media. ADLs experts found a 348% spike in anti-Semitic language on a prominent 4chan board.

The spike weve witnessed in recent weeks has been among the sharpest in recent memory, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted about the rise in anti-Semitic hate and violence. Itll take all of us to combat it.

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Disgusting and despicable: Neo-Nazi group gathers in front of New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston - Boston Herald

The Nazi Fixation on Jews Cost Them the War – A Magazine of American Culture

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AnIntellectual Takeoutreader posted a commentabout my recent article, Debunking the Myths About WWII, askingwhy I didnt write about the biggest myth of all the myths, the systematic killing of Jews [sic!] while fighting a war on four fronts?

While this readers syntax is convoluted, his question seems to imply that Germany was too busy fighting a war to undertake genocide. I have devoted some attention to this interesting issue in my time, and I believe that at least a summary of my findings is called for.

The 20thcentury witnessed in the conduct of some European nations a departure from the concept of natural morality, which hadrestrained their behavior before the catastrophe of 1914. Before the Bolshevik terror brutalized an already exhausted Europe, it was not mere expediency that prevented states from resorting to mass extermination as a means to an end. The limitations on the behavior of states derived from an underlying consensus thatraison detatentailed continued membership of the community of civilized nations.

Until June 22, 1941, Germany arguably was waging what the historian and philosopherErnst Nolte calledein europischer Normalkrieg, ora traditional European war. This war turned exterminationist (ein Vernichtungskrieg) with the attack on the USSR and the ensuing decision tolaunch theFinal Solution.Against the Russians, whom Germany treated as both ideological and racial enemies, no laws applied: the war in the East aimed at destroying not simply the Soviet government and its ability to resist, but the peopleas suchand the rule of lawas such.

Once the final decision was made at Wannsee in January 1942, the Nazi regime devoted huge resources to the mass murder of Jews in pursuit of their utopian vision of a homogenous national community. This goal was pursued even when the projects completion was clearly detrimental to the conduct of military operations. Thelogistics of the Holocaust were on par with those required by entire armies.The resources thus expendeddid not help Germanys war effort, but rather were a burden on it. As early as mid-1942, train allocation for transporting German and Dutch Jews to the East had to be balanced with trains carrying ammunition, fuel, food, and other supplies to the front.

The misuse of resources and the effort invested inOperation Reinhard in 1942, which established three new death campsBelzec, Sobibor, and Treblinkaand focused on the killing of Polish Jews, materially contributed to the 6th Armys defeat at Stalingrad.

Most notably this reversal of priorities happened in the summer of 1944, when hundreds of trainsbadly needed to cope with the twin military crises in the East (Operation Bagration) and in the West (Operation Overlord)were diverted to transport more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews to the death camps in Poland, along the militarily marginal north-south railway connecting Budapest and Silesia.

For many Nazi leaders, mass murder of Jews was eminently goal-oriented and genocide made sense within their distorted worldview. Far from being too busy fighting the war to kill the Jews, the Nazis were too busy fighting the race war to have any chance of winning the real one.

Dr. Srdja Trifkovic, Foreign Affairs Editor ofChronicles, is the author ofThe Sword of the Prophet and Defeating Jihad.

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The Nazi Fixation on Jews Cost Them the War - A Magazine of American Culture

The other problem with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Nazi analogy – Yahoo News

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The decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to retain a mask mandate for representatives who haven't been vaccinated against COVID-19 is just like the Holocaust, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) claimed in a television appearance Friday. "We can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany," Greene said, "and this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about."

It's not, and Greene has been widely upbraided for her remarks, including by several fellow Republicans. Many of these condemnations rightly focused on how Greene's words trivialize unthinkable suffering: "Comparing wearing masks to the abuse of the Holocaust is a not-so-subtle diminution of the horrors experienced by millions," said former Virginia Rep. Denver Riggleman (R) in a representative critique.

That's certainly true, but there's another problem with the Nazi analogy, too: Once you analogize your enemy to Adolf Hitler, you have all but invited violence. "There's nowhere to go from Hitler," observes journalist Matt Taibbi in Hate Inc., his book on political media. "It's a rhetorical dead end. Argument is over at that point. If you go there, you're now absolving your audiences of all moral restraint, because who wouldn't kill Hitler?"

As Taibbi's brief accounting of recent use of this metaphor reiterates, Greene is far from alone in her indefensible jump to the Hitler comparison. In his days as a Fox News pundit in the early 2000s, Glenn Beck was particularly bad about this. Turning his fire leftward, Taibbi argues that, a decade later, the center-left media's "conventional wisdom was that [former President Donald] Trump was Hitler" and all his voters were "racist, white nationalist traitor-Nazis." From either side, the Nazi analogy is a "sweeping, debate-ending dictum," Taibbi concludes, and in "the fight against Hitler, everything is permitted."

I suppose one might fairly analogize a present-day genocide to the Holocaust, but in that case, an analogy hardly seems necessary. In domestic politics, however, the Nazi metaphor should be used with extreme parsimony, if at all. That's particularly true in a time like ours, when our norms against political violence are already under strain.

More stories from theweek.comThe Fog of Trump is liftingBiden says he underestimated Trump's ability to spread 'the big lie'Rand Paul blamed pop star Richard Marx for threatening package. Marx's reply was right there waiting for Stephen Colbert.

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The other problem with Marjorie Taylor Greene's Nazi analogy - Yahoo News

Former Nazis give their ‘Final Account’ in new documentary J. – The Jewish News of Northern California

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There is a remarkable scene toward the end of the new documentary Final Account, a collection of eyewitness testimonies from elderly Germans and Austrians who remember the Nazi regime (and, to various degrees, were part of it).

In the sequence, a former Waffen-SS officer sits down with a group of students in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee the site of the infamous Wannsee Conference, where Nazi officials met in 1942 to map out the parameters of the Final Solution. The officer, Hans Werk, speaks of the tremendous shame he feels for himself and his country to have orchestrated the genocide of 6 million Jews.

When Werk is challenged by a young German an anonymous right-winger obsessed with protecting the Fatherland and sick of hearing about shame from his elders the former Nazi fires back, recounting Jewish friends and neighbors of his who had assumed they were also part of the Fatherland, until they were marched off to the camps. The true Nazi ideology was not patriotism, he says, but hate.

Do not let yourselves be blinded! he shouts.

The film, which opened in movie theaters on May 21, itself has the same aim in mind.

Final Account is the result of more than a decade of interviews conducted by British documentarian Luke Holland, who discovered his Jewish heritage as a teenager upon learning that his mothers family had been murdered in the Holocaust. Holland died last year at 71, after a long battle with cancer, shortly after completing the film; it now lives as his final account, too.

There is a workmanlike quality to Final Account, which is made up almost entirely of contemporary interviews with former Nazis, in German with English subtitles, conducted mostly in cozy apartments and retirement homes.

Naturally there are many fewer eyewitnesses left alive today than there were four decades ago, when French Jewish filmmaker Claude Lanzmann interviewed scores for his landmark 10-hour documentary Shoah.

Lanzmann could talk to high-ranking SS officers, including some who oversaw the death camps. By contrast, Hollands interview subjects were largely children or teenagers at the time.

Many of the anecdotes in Hollands film revolve around the subjects joining the Hitler Youth as kids or watching their parents support the Nazi party. A few worked at the camps, or the train stations that led prisoners to them, but their own accounts seem to conveniently distance themselves from the actual murders. Some continue to deny the genocide ever took place.

These occasional denialists feel more like sideshows to the 90-minute films main goal and they might be committing a crime on camera, since both Germany and Austria have outlawed the practice of Holocaust denial.

By and large, most of the interviews in Final Account focus on the language of culpability: when (or if) ones presence within an evil regime constitutes being a perpetrator of its aims.

We didnt support the party, but we liked the uniform, one subject says, conjuring the comic images of exuberant Nazi children in Jojo Rabbit.

We didnt support the party, but we liked the uniform.

Others remember the odd yet mundane details that allowed them to build an everyday life around the atrocities taking place in their name, like a former nanny who remembers taking her employers kids to their local concentration camp to say hi to their mom at her place of work.

Holland is never seen on camera, but the fluent German speaker occasionally prods his subjects from offscreen to acknowledge their participation in crimes against humanity, much as Joshua Oppenheimer did to architects of the Indonesian genocide in The Act of Killing.

Together, Holland, Oppenheimer and Lanzmann all form an unsettling lineage of Jewish filmmakers who have felt compelled to confront genocide participants face to face on film.

Final Account doesnt have quite the same revelatory feel as its predecessors in this genre the film rarely breaks through the surfaces of its subjects accounts to dig at whatever their emotional truth might be. Maybe there isnt any: One of the overarching messages is that populations can follow hateful ideologies blindly, even blandly, if they feel acceptable enough to the masses.

But there are moments that wrestle with deeper questions.

he Wannsee scene, in which one generation of German seems incapable of passing on his personal and historical shame to the next, invokes not only the past but also the future of Holocaust memory. Their conversation is in anticipation of a world in which we have no more final accounts.

When that does happen, and there are no more eyewitnesses left, how are we to continue the lessons of Never Again? What forms of education and vigilance will keep us from becoming once again blinded to the past?

Its a question that has haunted the last century of Jewish life and, by necessity, must also haunt the next.

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Former Nazis give their 'Final Account' in new documentary J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

He Posed as a Neo-Nazi and Caught the London Nail Bomber – The Daily Beast

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Nazis are the absolute worst, and for yet another reminder of that age-old fact, theres Nail Bomber: Manhunt, Netflixs non-fiction revisitation of the 1999 London bombings that left three people dead and nearly 150 injured. Carried out by a neo-Nazi named David Copeland whose motivation was to cause a racial war in this country, the three attacks against Englands Black and gay communities terrorized the country and, for a time, baffled police. While director Daniel Vernons documentary (premiering May 26) doesnt dig deeply enough into its talepreferring instead to reside on the suspenseful surface throughoutit serves as a chilling warning that multicultural societies remain at risk from white-nationalist outfits that view homogeny as the only true path forward, and Hitler as their guiding light.

Nail Bomber: Manhunt is a straightforward chronological retelling of this notorious period in Londons history, employing archival footage and interviews with survivors and investigators to lay out the specifics of its saga. Of particular note is the participation of Arthur, a man who speaks to director Vernon while wearing a hoodie, his face concealed in shadow in order to keep his true identity a secret. As a young anti-fascist, Arthur joined the intelligence-gathering wing of Searchlight, an anti-fascist magazine whose mission was to infiltrate and monitor fascist groups. Going undercover as a hatemonger was a harrowing assignment for Arthuras well as a thrilling one, with the covert operative admitting, I like being a spy. Its a buzz.

Arthurs main target was the British National Party (BNP), a far-right political group led by John Tyndall, who in archival footage is seen spewing anti-immigrant, pro-white ugliness to legions of uniformly Caucasian admirers (as one person puts it, Tyndall was a magnet for misfits, lunatics, and losers). Those followers, Arthur and others explain, were typically working-class intolerant men whod attend BNP meetings held at pubs, where literature about the Nazis and making bombs, as well as hit lists about preferred targets, were freely disseminated. The idea was to rile up the Nazi faithful, get them drunk, and give them ideas about who to strike out againstand strike out they did, often leaving these gatherings and promptly assaulting innocent pedestrians.

It was in this milieu that Copeland found a home, although despite the young man once appearing in a photo alongside Tyndall, police initially had no clue who Copeland was, much less that he was the fiend behind the bombings. When the first device went off in a crowded market street in Brixton, south London, on Saturday, April 17, 1999, it came without warning. It was a miracle that no one was fatally hurt, and Vernons documentary benefits from firsthand accounts of the moments directly before and after the blast. Two men recount how, after finding the bomb, they watched as a drug addict literally removed the explosive from the bag and then ran off with the bagan absurd and unreal sight that, to this day, leaves them astonished.

Two more detonations swiftly followed: on Saturday, April 24, on Brick Lane in Londons East End, and on Friday, April 30, at The Admiral Duncan pub (a prominent gay venue) on Old Compton Street in Soho, central London. In each case, the bomb was designed for maximum carnage, its hundreds of nails intended to maim and kill. Though police were apparently slow to concede that the first two attacks were racially motivatedor that the killer had an interest in slaughtering minoritiesthe investigation soon turned on CCTV footage from the bombings and the surrounding areas, which revealed a young white male in a white baseball cap carrying around suspicious shoulder bags. Flyers and posters were plastered across London and broadcast on the news and in the papers, and once that happened, Nail Bomber: Manhunt turns its attention back to Arthur, who took one look at the photographs and realized that he potentially knew the perpetrator: a man known to him as Dave from Barking.

Arthur is the most fascinating figure in Nail Bomber: Manhunt, confessing that the longer he stayed undercover with his white-nationalist BNP brothers, the more he became indoctrinated by their repugnant ideology, to the point that he doubted the Holocaust happened. Arthurs candidness speaks directly and scarily to the way in which immersion in bubble-like environmentsin person, and onlinecan result in brainwashing, and the selflessness of his sacrifice is hammered home during the films coda. Nonetheless, director Vernon misses an opportunity by not spending more time with Arthura decision undoubtedly guided by the need to protect him from his dangerous Nazi cohorts (who still believe hes one of them) but deprives the proceedings of greater insight into his work.

the longer he stayed undercover with his white-nationalist BNP brothers, the more he became indoctrinated by their repugnant ideology, to the point that he doubted the Holocaust happened.

Nail Bomber: Manhunts superficiality extends to its refusal to both properly ID any of its on-camera speakers, and to tell us anything substantial about Copeland, whose path to terrorist neo-Nazism (and to spread fear, resentment, and hatred) is left wholly unremarked-upon. Even hints about Copelands homosexualitywhich might have compelled him to carry out the Soho attackare consigned to a brief audio clip of him angrily asserting his heterosexuality to the cops. Like the role that author Bernard OMahoney played in tricking Copeland to admit that he was fit to stand trial (through love letters in which OMahoney posed as a doting Aryan woman who admired the bombings), Copelands sexuality and general backstory are two of the many ripe-for-exploration threads that wind up sidelined by director Vernon, who prizes concision and propulsion (the entire affair runs a fleet 72 minutes) over depth.

Images of inner audio-tape mechanisms and kaleidoscopic CT scans are the sole formal flourishes utilized by Nail Bomber: Manhunt, which otherwise tackles its chosen subject with taut efficiency and restraint (aided by Andrew Phillips nerve-wracking score). The lesson it forwards is a familiar one about white-nationalist fury (and its attractiveness to certain segments of the population), and the difficulty of thwarting lone-wolf terrorists. But in an age of increased neo-Nazi hate and minority-targeting crime, its timely resonance is impossible to miss.

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He Posed as a Neo-Nazi and Caught the London Nail Bomber - The Daily Beast

Mass grave of women and children unearthed at ex-Nazi concentration camp – The Mirror

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A gruesome mass grave of murdered women and children has been unearthed at a former Nazi concentration camp in Russia.

The remains of some 500 victims have been found, many showing gunshot wounds and evidence of torture.

Other inmates are believed to have died from malnutrition and disease.

Some 64 state investigators and search volunteers are currently working at the macabre and long-suspected site, part of a sinister hell camp system called Dulag-191 in Voronezh region.

Harrowing video footage shows diggers unearthing skulls and body parts in an area occupied by Hitlers forces during the Second World War.

The estimated death toll is about 500 people, said Mikhail Segodin, head of the Don search volunteer squad, referring to this specific mass burial.

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The main contingent of the camp was made up of women and children

Archives suggest that overall some 8,500 people perished at Dulag-191, he said.

The current search for human remains concentrates on 15 pits - mass graves each containing between 30 and 100 remains in the vicinity of Lushnikovo village, Ostrogozhsky district.

"Judging by the remains unearthed so far we see shot wounds, blunt traumas, in other words, broken bones, said Mr Segodin.

"The site is complicated because it was a camp for women and children.

The human remains are in a poor state, he said.

Mr Segodin added: Mostly tubular bones have survived, but often only teeth remain from the skulls.

The only thing that can be said for sure is that almost all of the people who died here were young.

We did not find any valuable things, except perhaps a cigarette case damaged by gun fire."

A Soviet intelligence report dated 2 September 1942 from the Office of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs for Voronezh region stated that "a concentration camp for women and children is located at a brick factory in the suburban village of Lushnikovka.

The camp was described as being in the open air, fenced with four rows of barbed wire and it was guarded by Magyars [Hungarians].

The report alleged: Prisoners are not fed, but children are allowed to gather alms, parcels are also allowed.

There are many ill people there, medical aid is not provided.

There is a high mortality rate."

Intelligence documents also suggested the murder of children and cruelty against prisoners of war.

Local historian Viktor Strelkin talked to eyewitnesses and surviving prisoners.

"I was told that in these pits, right under the feet of people who were still alive, lay the dead.

Sometimes they lay openly, or they were covered with 10 or 15 centimetres of soil, but it sagged and the corpses were visible again.

Segodin said: Search and identification work will continue together with specialists from the (Russian) Investigative Committee.

The concentration camp system Dulag-191 was created in the Voronezh region in 1942.

Inmates from Dulag-191 were forced to construct a railway for the Nazis known as the Berlinka line, built to supply German forces seeking to take Stalingrad.

The burial was found thanks to unclassified secret service documents, and aerial photographs made by a German pilot in 1942.

This established the exact location of the women and childrens camp

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Mass grave of women and children unearthed at ex-Nazi concentration camp - The Mirror

The hunt for Germany’s largest warship proved that U-boats were the Nazis’ best weapon – Business Insider

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On the night of May 18, 1941, the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen steamed out of its base at Gotenhafen (now Gdynia, Poland), followed five hours later by the Kriegsmarine's crown jewel, the battleship Bismarck.

Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were on a mission to wreak havoc on British merchant shipping. German U-boats were already very effective at this, but Grand Adm. Erich Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine, hoped to demonstrate to Hitler the value of Germany's surface fleet in order to avoid future budget cuts.

What followed was one of the most intense naval searches in military history, the result of which convinced Hitler that U-boats, not capital ships, were the Kriegsmarine's best weapons.

Britain was in a very desperate situation in May 1941. It had fended off the Luftwaffe's relentless aerial onslaughts in the Battle of Britain but was still isolated and heavily reliant on supplies coming across the Atlantic.

The Kriegsmarine had been trying to block trans-Atlantic shipping routes since the war began, and its capital ships had played an important role in intercepting or sinking Allied shipping.

German surface ships also drew Royal Navy warships away from other duties, such as escorting convoys, and supported U-boats, which were then few in number.

Happy with earlier success in Operation Berlin, Raeder planned another commerce raid.

To maximize damage, the raid was to include Germany's four best capital ships: battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which were sister ships, and Bismarck and its sister ship, Tirpitz.

But Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were damaged by constant RAF attacks while being repaired in port in France, keeping them out of action for months. Tirpitz's crew was also still being trained.

Prinz Eugen, not as well armed or armored as a battleship, was the only available ship capable of accompanying Bismarck. Not wanting to delay the operation any longer, German commanders ordered the ships into the Atlantic.

The mission, codenamed Operation Rheinbung, was led by Adm. Gnther Ltjens, the commander of Operation Berlin.

Ltjens was ordered to focus primarily on merchant raiding and to avoid fighting British capital ships if possible. But Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were discovered by the Royal Navy, which attempted to intercept the ships as they sailed through Denmark Strait and into the Atlantic on May 24.

The British force consisted of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Hood, which was widely considered the pride of the Royal Navy.

The British ships were no match for Bismarck, which was newer and better armored. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were able to fire full broadsides at the two British ships.

"When the big guns fired, the entire ship staggered," Heinrich Kuhnt, a sailor on the Bismarck, recalled after the war. "It felt like it was bending. It was pushed sideways in the water. It was amazing."

Minutes into the battle, one of Bismarck's 15-inch shells hit one of Hood's magazines. An enormous column of fire erupted from the battlecruiser, followed by a massive explosion that tore it in two.

"The ship broke into pieces," Otto Schlenzka, a sailor on Prinz Eugen, recalled. "We were sure an explosion of that kind must have killed everybody."

Hood went down with 1,415 sailors, all but three of its crew. Prince of Wales was also heavily damaged and had to withdraw. The Germans suffered no losses.

Shocked by the violent destruction of the Hood, the Royal Navy committed nearly all of its available capital ships in the area to finding and destroying Bismarck.

Though it suffered no casualties in the battle, Bismarck received a number of hits that ruptured a fuel tank and caused flooding.

Ltjens, aware of the Royal Navy's numerical superiority and of the danger of sailing a damaged warship, terminated the operation.

Prinz Eugen was ordered to continue commerce raiding on its own while the Bismarck headed for Nazi-occupied France.

Bismarck briefly evaded its pursuers, but a British reconnaissance aircraft, flown by a US Navy pilot, found it on May 26.

Subsequent torpedo attacks from Swordfish carrier planes disabled Bismarck's rudder, forcing it into a continuous turn.

With the Royal Navy closing in, Ltjens sent a final message to Berlin: "Ship unmaneuverable. We shall fight to the last shell. Long live the Fhrer."

On May 27, two British battleships and two heavy cruisers attacked Bismarck. They fired over 2,800 shells in a little less than two hours, hitting the German battleship some 400 times. Bismarck was left dead in the water.

The Germans detonated scuttling charges to sink the ship, while British heavy cruiser HMS Dorsetshire fired torpedoes to finish it off. Only 115 of Bismarck's 2,221-man crew survived.

Operation Rheinbung was a complete failure. Not only had the pride of the Kriegsmarine been sunk with nearly all hands, Prinz Eugen was unable to sink any merchant ships, meaning the primary objective was never achieved.

In the following weeks, the Royal Navy set about destroying the network German ships that refueled, resupplied, and rearmed German capital ships in the Atlantic. The result was the Kriegsmarine's almost complete reliance on U-boats during the rest of the Battle of the Atlantic.

In the end, the U-boats were the Kriegsmarine's most effective weapons. From September to December 1939, they sank 110 Allied vessels, while German capital ships only sank about a dozen.

Between July and October 1940, a period known as the "first happy time," by German submariners, U-boats sank nearly 300 ships carrying over a million tons of cargo.

Between January and August 1942, the "second happy time," U-boats sank another 600 ships carrying 3 million tons of cargo.

Hitler never ordered his capital ships into the Atlantic again, sending them to Norway or the Baltic instead. The Germans ramped up production of U-boats, which were easier to build than capital ships, and thousands of Allied ships were sunk before the war's end in 1945.

Originally posted here:

The hunt for Germany's largest warship proved that U-boats were the Nazis' best weapon - Business Insider

BBC investigating reporter who tweeted Hitler was right, compared Israel to Nazis – Fox News

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The BBC is reportedly investigating one of its Palestinian journalists for once tweeting that "Hitler was right" while comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.

Digital journalist Tala Halawa is a Palestine specialist for the corporations BBC Monitoring service and has reported on the recent deadly hostilities between Israel and Hamas,the Spectator noted.

"Israel is more Nazi than Hitler!" she wrote on hersince-deleted Twitter accountduring previous hostilities in 2014, according to the U.K. publication.

"Oh, #HitlerWasRight IDF go to hell #PrayForGaza," she wrote.

STATE DEPARTMENT ADMITS POSSIBILITY PALESTINIAN AID WILL FUND HAMAS ARSENAL

In other posts, she shared a graphic of a child being burned on a menorah, as well as a meme claiming that a "solution for Israel-Palestine conflict" would be to "relocate Israel into United States," the report said.

The BBC is reportedly investigating Palestinian digital journalist Tala Halawa for once tweeting that "Hitler was right" while comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. (Twitter)

The reporter also wrote that "Zionists cant get enough of our blood" and that "theyre crying the holocaust every single moment but theyre practicing it every single moment as well," the Spectator said.

Halawa worked for 24FM, a Palestinian radio station, at the time of the 2014 tweets, joining the BBC in 2017, according to her since-deleted LinkedIn account.

"These tweets predate the individuals employment with the BBC but we are nevertheless taking this very seriously and are investigating," a spokesperson for the U.K. broadcaster told the Spectator.

The posts come after a similar outrageembroiled CNNover one of its freelance contributors, Adeel Raja, who tweeted that "the world today needs a Hitler."

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It also came days after an official investigation ruled that former BBC journalist Martin Bashirused "deceitful behavior"to land his bombshell 1995 interview withPrincess Dianaabout cheating in her royal marriage.

To read more from the New York Post, click here.

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BBC investigating reporter who tweeted Hitler was right, compared Israel to Nazis - Fox News

Mass graves of women & children unearthed at Russian Nazi death camp as skulls with bullet holes reveal… – The US Sun

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A GRUESOME mass grave of hundreds of murdered women and children has been unearthed at a former Nazi concentration camp in Russia.

The remains of some 500 victims have been found at the horror site Dulag-191 in the Voronezh region, where around 8,500 people are thought to have died.

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Many corpses have gunshot wounds and evidence of torture, while other prisoners are believed to have died from malnutrition and disease - exposing the horrors inflicted during the Nazi regime.

Some 64 state investigators and search volunteers are currentlyworking amongst the macabre at the long-suspected Nazi site, a branch of the sinister hell camp system.

Harrowing video footage shows diggers unearthing skulls and body parts in the area occupied by Hitlers forces during the Second World War.

"The estimated death toll is about 500 people," saidMikhail Segodin, head of theDon search volunteer squad, referring to the mass grave.

"The main contingent of the camp was made up of women and children."

Archives suggest that overall some 8,500 people perished at Dulag-191, he said.

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The current search for human remains concentrates on 15 pits - mass graves each containing between 30 and 100 remains in the vicinityof Lushnikovo village, Ostrogozhskydistrict.

"Judging by the remains unearthed so far we see shot wounds, blunt traumas, in other words, broken bones," said Segodin.

"The site is complicatedbecause it was a camp for women and children. The human remains are in a poor state," he said.

Mostly tubular bones have survived, but often only teeth remain from the skulls.The only thing that can be said for sure is that almost all of the people who died here were young.

We did not find any valuable things, except perhaps a cigarette case damaged by gun fire."

Segodin added: Search and identification work will continue together with specialists from the (Russian) Investigative Committee.

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A Soviet intelligence report dated 2 September 1942 from the Office of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs for Voronezh region stated that "a concentration camp for women and children is located at a brick factory in the suburban village of Lushnikovka.

The camp was described as being in the open air, fenced with four rows of barbedwire and it was guarded by Magyars [Hungarians].

The report read: Prisoners are not fed, but children are allowed to gather alms, parcels are also allowed.

There are many ill people there, medical aid is not provided.There is a high mortality rate."

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Intelligence documents also suggested the murder of children and cruelty against prisoners of war.

The burial was found thanks to unclassified secret service documents, and aerial photographs taken by a German pilot in 1942, which helped establish the exact location of the women and childrens camp.

Local historian Viktor Strelkin talked to eyewitnesses and surviving prisoners.

"I was told that in these pits, right under the feet of people who were still alive, lay the dead.

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Sometimes they lay openly, or they were covered with 10 or 15 centimetres of soil, but it sagged and the corpses were visible again.

The hellish concentration camp system Dulag-191 was created in the Voronezh region in 1942.

Inmates from Dulag-191 were forced to construct a railway for the Nazis known as the Berlinka line, built to supply German forces seeking to take Stalingrad.

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Mass graves of women & children unearthed at Russian Nazi death camp as skulls with bullet holes reveal... - The US Sun

New Nazi documentary Final Account is a powerful & prescient warning for our identity politics obsessed age – RT

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Luke Hollands film, which chronicles the complicity of ordinary Germans in the crimes of the Third Reich, is a reminder that its easy to label our enemies as Nazisbut the true search for evil should begin in the mirror.

Final Account is a collection of interviews with elderly, ordinary Germans recounting their experiences of life under the collective madness of the Nazi regime and their connection to, or complicity with, the Holocaust.

The film opens with a quote from Primo Levi. Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.

Director Luke Holland, whose mother lost her family in the Holocaust and who himself died of cancer in 2020 after the films completion, but before its premiere, goes on to prove Levis thesis.

Holland began production in 2008, and ultimately interviewed 300 people for this fascinating project. His bare-bones, oral history approach works exquisitely well in revealing the banality of evil.

Hollands subjects were indoctrinated into the Nazi system early in life. The women went through the League of German Girls, the men the Hitler Youth. The males then graduated to the Waffen SS, some becoming concentration camp guards and one a member of Hitlers elite bodyguards, the Leibstandarte.

Their recollections regarding the Holocaust run the gamut. Some claim to have known nothing, while others say they heard whispers and gossip, but were too afraid to speak up or act. Others give grudging admissions of complicity, while some admit the egregiousness of the crime, but doubt its scale. And one, the former member of the Leibstandarde, is unbowed by the weight of history.

He says the Fuhrer was a great leader with a good plan, except that the Jews should have been deported and not exterminated. Hes so unabashedly defiant he refuses to accept the Nuremberg ruling that the Waffen SS, of which he was a member, was a criminal organization because then I would dirty myself. His reasoning is wrapped in patriotism as he explains that the Nuremberg court wasnt a German court, and therefore lacks authority in his eyes.

Other stories reveal how Jew hatred and the Holocaust were normalized. Stories of children being taught anti-Semitic songs in school, reading books with derogatory Jewish depictions and being indoctrinated by teachers into Nazi ideology are common.

Tales of visiting camps in order to get a cavity filled from a dentist who was a prisoner, or of routinely seeing prisoners escorted to and from camps, some being worked or starved to death slowly before their eyes, are mundanely recounted.

None of these revelations is met with tears or even overt remorse, just a stern, steely-eyed matter-of-factness.

The most compelling subject in the film is Hans Werk, a former member of the Waffen SS. Werk is at times elusive and at times defensive, but he evolves over a series of interviews.

The most electrifying moment in the entire film is when Werk goes to the site of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi leadership made official the Final Solution policy, to speak to a group of college students about his guilt.

After saying he is ashamed of what he did as a member of the SS, these students push back. At first it seems theyre resistant because they think hes lying about his contrition, then it becomes clear theyre actually angry with him for his shame. They call him a traitor for being ashamed of being German, and having fought for Germany.

This scene is compelling because its the only time the veneer of control recedes and the beast comes to the surface baring its teeth. Werk is shaken by the young men confronting him, and his horror at the realization that the disease of Nazism has passed to a new generation is readily apparent on his face as he pleads with them to dont let yourself be blinded.

Werks warning fell on deaf ears in that room, and across the globe as well. The Nazi disease, or as my Jungian therapist friend describes it the not-see disease is back in our collective psyche with a vengeance. Not seeing the humanity of the other has reached epidemic proportions.

The dehumanizing sentiment of Nazism is readily apparent in recent videos of Jews rampaging on the streets of Israel attacking Arabs, Palestinians roaming the streets of New York targeting Jews, blacks viciously assaulting Asians and whites, militarized police brutalizing minorities and rioters wreaking racially motivated havoc, as well as in stories of Uighurs being held in Chinese concentration camps.

This ugly sentiment is also found in the establishment-approved Critical Race Theory, a shamelessly anti-white and anti-Asian ideology that demands people be judged by racial and ethnic categories instead of by the content of their character, which is now being used to indoctrinate students in schools and becoming the default setting in corporate America.

This industrialized effort at dehumanization is horrifyingly reminiscent of the process which created the legions of functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions which populate the Nazi nightmare of Final Account.

Final Account is not a great film. It is somewhat derivative in style, as evidenced by its repeated use of a melancholy cello played over shots of hollowed out concentration camps. But it is most certainly a powerful and prescient one.

It is cold comfort that the collaborators and perpetrators of Nazi evil in Final Account will soon be dead of old age, for the spirit of Nazism is obviously alive and well in our world, living in all of our hearts, whether we have the courage to admit it or not.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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New Nazi documentary Final Account is a powerful & prescient warning for our identity politics obsessed age - RT

SA man with links to national neo-Nazi group accused of trying to make bomb – 7NEWS.com.au

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A South Australian man linked to a national neo-Nazi group has fronted court accused of trying to make a bomb.

The court heard police will need at least seven months to prepare their case against the northern suburbs man who has links to a controversial neo-nazi group that promotes hatred and white supremacy.

The accused bomb maker Patrick Patmore, who has been living in suburban Salisbury east in Adelaides north, was arrested in April.

The 32-year-old is accused of possessing a homemade bomb, having instructions on how to manufacture explosive devices and possessing prohibited weapons.

He wasnt keen to elaborate on the allegations on Wednesday, driving quickly away after his first but brief court appearance.

The accuseds bail conditions require him to report to Elizabeth police station twice a week.

A second man, arrested for possessing extremist material, will front court next month.

It follows a series of raids across the northern suburbs of Adelaide.

The case will return to court in December which is how long prosecutors said it will take to gather all the forensic evidence.

At the time of the arrests, the leader of the neo-nazi party, called the National Socialist Network, Thomas Sewell defended the actions of its alleged members.

A harassment campaign against us and our members, theyre not going to shake our morale - this only strengthens us, Sowell said in a video.

Hes since been arrested by Victorian counter-terrorism police on suspicion of armed robbery.

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SA man with links to national neo-Nazi group accused of trying to make bomb - 7NEWS.com.au

Utica man producing film about the history of radio – The Oakland Press

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Decades before Spotify, Pandora, and even satellite radio, terrestrial (land-based) AM and FM radio reigned supreme. Many listeners, including Utica resident Ron Robinson, idolized the disc jockeys just as much as the artists they played.

Robinson, 51, is working on a documentary film entitled Radio Dayz The Movie, which focuses on the history of radio, including the early days of Detroit radio. (The film) tells the story of radio through the people who worked in radio, he said.

Robinson interviewed several well-known radio personalities such as Paul W. Smith, Dick Purtain, Fred Jacobs, Dick Kernen, and more for the film. Robinson, who worked for WJR for 20 years before starting his own production company, has several connections in the industry. He started interviewing for the documentary in 2013.

Most people think of radio, they think of New York, California, and Chicago, and rightfully so. But, Detroit has been an important and ground-breaking city for the medium of radio, Robinson said.

The documentary is a chronological look at the history of radio, starting with the first radio stations. It also takes aim at the first radio celebrity, Fr. Charles Coughlin. The Detroit-area priest took to the airways in the 1920s and eventually garnered an audience of 30 million to his weekly radio show. Coughlin would later become a polarizing figure as World War II approached. Hes on the wrong side of history, if you will, Robinson said.

Other notable glimpses into radios history are also featured in the film, including President Franklin D. Roosevelts Fireside Chats and the healing effect these popular radio segments would have on a nation crippled by The Great Depression and the war.

Then I go and talk about the 1940s and 1950s and what Elvis and the Beatles mean to radio. Theres a part about how radio changed when TV became the mainstay in everybodys house, Robinson said.

Robinsons podcast Radio Dayz! delves into the history of radio as well and has served as a promotional piece for the documentary. What we do is let listeners in on what happened behind the scenes in radio, he said. Most people know their (radio personalities) voices, but not their story.

The documentary has served as a labor of love for Robinson. And although it is not yet complete, he plans to wrap up the project soon. He had hoped to finish in time for WWJs 100th anniversary but was unable to interview key radio personalities due to COVID-19 restrictions.

He said it is important to preserve radios history for future generations, especially today when few people even own a radio. There are so many stories people dont know and I want to share that with people because I think they will be better off and more enriched and appreciate where this country has been, he said.

When the film is complete, possibly later this year, Robinson hopes to have it available to stream.

This is Robinsons fourth documentary film. He also produced It Takes a Village, Networking, Your Business The Movie, and If You Build It, They Will Come. The later film focuses on the development of Jimmy Johns Field in Utica.

In addition to making documentary films, Robinson is a photographer and aerial/drone media pilot. His production company, Ron Robinson Studios, also offers video marketing services for businesses.

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Utica man producing film about the history of radio - The Oakland Press

Remember to say thank you before it is too late – The Daily Times

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Living most of my life in the Kings Creek area, I cant even guess how many times Ive driven by the baseball fields on Kings Creek Road in Weirton. During the warmer weather, its common to see someone on a tractor cutting the grass on the ballfields or dragging the infields. For so many years, that person was either Joe Tunno or Tim Welch, both of whom have spent countless hours of their lives quietly and unassumingly serving the youth of Weirton through the Weirton Baseball Association.

After hearing a few weeks ago about Welchs death, one of my first thoughts was that I never stopped just to tell Tim thank you for taking care of the fields. I took it for granted that Tim would do what so many of the rest of us cant or choose not to do. Tim never wanted anything in return for the thousands of hours he volunteered at the ballfields. Im not even sure if being thanked was important to him. I think not otherwise, he wouldnt have done so much for the kids in exchange for the little thanks he likely got. Tim began coaching my brother Toms Babe Ruth team in 1980 and during the next 30 years continued his unwavering service to the Weirton Baseball Association.

Tims gift of his time and talents didnt just benefit the WBA he also was involved for even more years with the Weirton Termite Basketball Association at the Millsop Community Center (along with Ron Greer, another gentleman whose volunteerism knew no bounds.)

For years, these two men kept the league together, coaching, getting sponsors, handling the draft, scheduling games, training young referees and dealing with emotional parents, among other things. It would not be uncommon for Tim to grab a whistle and officiate games when young referees failed to show up or were busy with another game.

Greer still is running the league after 50 years of service I cant imagine how many pounds of fish Ron has cooked while also volunteering at the local Lenten fish fries during the years or how many hours he has served the Weirton Jaycees. Among other causes, Ron also has been serving our special needs citizens as a board member and officer at the Hancock County Sheltered Workshop for many years.

I will make it a priority to reach out to Greer and Tunno and thank them for the good they do for the community. I could kick myself in the butt for not taking the time to thank Welch he was a quiet, kind, humble and unassuming man who, nevertheless, deserved my thanks.

We have been blessed in Weirton with individuals who have given their time and talents for the benefit of the youth in our community. As a youngster, I had the honor of playing basketball at St. Joseph for Jim Klash, who coached at the school for more than 30 years. I didnt know until after he passed away that Klash was a parishioner of St. Pauls, St. Joes rival in youth basketball back in the day. Klash also was one of the founding members of the Weirton Baseball Association Complex. He gave me one of my first jobs as an umpire. I hope the Weirton community and St. Joes never forget them.

I know Im forgetting or have failed to mention many men and women who have volunteered countless hours in our community during the years. I intend no disrespect. You know who they are. They were our coaches, league presidents and concession stand workers they opened, cleaned and closed the gyms where your kids and mine played ball, or they worked on the ballfields after a heavy Saturday morning rain so your kids could play their baseball game.

The next time you see them, go and tell them thanks for all they do or what they have done during the years before that opportunity passes you by. I certainly will. I missed that opportunity with Tim Welch and I regret my omission.

Weirton and its children are so very lucky to have such committed and generous volunteers, like Tim Welch, and we will miss them dearly and their selfless contributions to our community.

Thank you, Tim.

(McCune is a resident of Weirton. Tim Welch died April 18 at the age of 61.)

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Remember to say thank you before it is too late - The Daily Times