World War II (1939-45)

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      Judge Awards Schiele Drawing to Heirs of Merchant Killed by the Nazis

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      The drawing of Schiele’s wife was the focus of a trial at which three parties, all with Jewish roots, argued whether it had been looted by the Nazis and from whom.For three weeks in May a judge in Rochester, N.Y., heard evidence meant to solve the mystery of who really owns a drawing of a smiling woman by the Austrian artist Egon Schiele.For years, the drawing has been in the possession of a foundation named after Robert Owen Lehman Jr., who said he had received the work, “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife,” in the 1960s from his father, a financier who steered the Lehman Brothers investment firm through the Great Depression.But the heirs of two men, Heinrich Rieger and Karl Mayländer, both art collectors who knew Schiele and were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, had pursued competing claims to the work as well.During a bench trial at State Supreme Court, the heirs of Rieger, who had been Schiele’s dentist, and the heirs of Mayländer, a textile merchant who is the subject of two Schiele portraits, presented evidence to suggest their relatives had owned the work before chaos and Nazi looting caused countless gaps in the ownership histories of important art.On Thursday, Justice Daniel J. Doyle ruled in favor of the organization founded by the Mayländer heirs, who are now represented by a foundation that pursues the family’s interests. “The evidence presented at trial establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that the Mayländer Heirs have superior title to the drawing,” Justice Doyle wrote in an 86-page decision.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Overlooked No More: Otto Lucas, ‘God in the Hat World’

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      His designs made it onto the covers of fashion magazines and onto the heads of celebrities like Greta Garbo. His business closed after he died in a plane crash.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.To many fashionable women in the mid-20th century, no hat was worth wearing unless it was made by Otto Lucas.A London-based milliner, Lucas designed chic turbans, berets and cloches, often made from luxe velvets and silks and adorned with flowers or feathers.His designs made it onto the covers of magazines like British Vogue, and onto the heads of clients who reportedly included the actresses Greta Garbo and Gene Tierney, and the Duchesses of Windsor and Kent.The name Otto Lucas was ubiquitous in England, and at the height of his success, he sold thousands of hats each year around the world.The British actress Zena Marshall wearing a hat designed by Lucas.Colaimages/AlamyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Says He Would Not Pardon His Son in Felony Gun Trial

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      In a wide-ranging interview with ABC News, the president touched on Hunter Biden’s trial, Donald Trump’s felony conviction and the war in Gaza.President Biden said on Thursday that he would not grant Hunter Biden a pardon if he was convicted in his felony gun trial, a rare comment from Mr. Biden about the legal troubles facing his son.When asked during an interview with ABC News whether he would accept the outcome of the trial of his son, who faces charges including lying on an application to obtain a gun in October 2018, Mr. Biden said, “Yes.”In the wide-ranging interview, the president also defended his border policies and reiterated his support for a cease-fire proposal in the war in Gaza. When the topic turned to former President Donald J. Trump and his recent felony conviction, Mr. Biden said his opponent needed to “stop undermining the rule of law.”Last week, a New York jury found Mr. Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to a porn actress, in an unlawful conspiracy to aid his 2016 presidential campaign. He has since repeated his criticism of the judge in the case and suggested he could seek to prosecute his political opponents if elected again. At a campaign rally in Arizona on Thursday, Mr. Trump called his trial “rigged” and said the charges had been “fabricated.”Mr. Biden took on a sharper edge when asked about his political opponent’s broadsides after a recent executive order allowing the suspension of asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The former president called the move “weak and pathetic.”“Is he describing himself — weak and pathetic?” Mr. Biden said in the interview, which took place on the sidelines of his visit to the beaches of Normandy in France to observe the 80th anniversary of D-Day.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      World War II Veteran Dies at 102 While Traveling to D-Day Event in France

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      Robert Persichitti witnessed the raising of the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima. He died at a hospital in Germany.A World War II Navy veteran who witnessed the raising of the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima died while traveling to France to participate in an event commemorating D-Day, a veterans organization said.Robert Persichitti, 102, died Friday, said Richard Steward, president of the Honor Flight Rochester, a veteran’s organization that Mr. Persichitti belonged to. Mr. Persichitti, of Fairport, N.Y., was among the dwindling number of his generation still attending D-Day celebrations.According to WHEC News 10, an NBC affiliate in Rochester, N.Y., Mr. Persichitti flew overseas with a group connected to the National World War II Museum and a companion, whom the organization identified as Al DeCarlo. He was on his way to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, known as D-Day, which turned the tide of World War II in Europe.But Mr. Persichitti suffered a medical emergency while aboard a ship sailing toward Normandy, where the celebration was being held, and was airlifted to a hospital in Germany, WHEC 10 reported.Mr. Persichitti had a history of heart problems, but his death was not expected, Mr. Stewart said. “He died peacefully, and he did not die alone,” he said.According to Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military news organization, Mr. Persichitti served in Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Guam as a radioman second class on the command ship U.S.S. Eldorado. He was named to the New York State Senate’s Veterans Hall of Fame in 2020.Mr. Persichitti watched the raising of an American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.Joe Rosenthal/Associated Press“I served in the Pacific for 15 months aboard a ship,” Mr. Persichitti said in a 2022 interview with WDSU, an NBC affiliate in New Orleans. He said he helped handle “all the communications for the two operations: Iwo Jima and Okinawa.”Stars and Stripes reported that Mr. Persichitti was on the deck of the Eldorado when he witnessed the raising of an American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945, a moment depicted in one of the most famous photos in American history.Mr. Persichitti later returned to Mount Suribachi in 2019. “When I got to the island today, I just broke down,” he told Stars & Stripes in a 2019 interview.Mr. Stewart described Mr. Persichitti active and sharp, even at 102.“He was a fit and upright and got around, and had the complete faculties of someone who would be decades younger,” Mr. Stewart said. “He was really something.” More

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      WWII Rosie the Riveters Are Honored in Washington

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      Rosie the Riveters, American women who filled a crucial labor shortage during World War II and reshaped the work force, were honored at the Capitol.Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Marian Sousa moved to California to care for the children of her sister Phyllis Gould, who had gone to work as a welder in a Bay Area shipyard.Just a year later, Ms. Sousa, at 17 years old, joined the wartime work force herself, drafting blueprints and revising outdated designs for troop transports. Wearing a hard hat and with a clipboard in hand, she would accompany maritime inspectors on board ships she’d helped design and examine the product of her labors.She and her sister were just two of the roughly 6 million women who went to work during World War II, memorialized by the now iconic recruitment poster depicting Rosie the Riveter, her hair tied back in a kerchief, rolling up the sleeve of her denim shirt and flexing a muscle beneath the slogan, “We can do it!”More than eight decades later, Ms. Sousa, now 98, gathered at the Capitol on Wednesday with around two dozen other so-called Rosies — many of them white-haired and most wearing the red with white polka dots made famous by the poster — to receive the Congressional Gold Medal in honor of their efforts.Marian Sousa, wearing a red shirt with white polka dots in a nod to the classic recruitment poster depicting Rosie, at the ceremony on Wednesday.Kenny Holston/The New York Times“We never thought we’d be recognized,” Ms. Sousa said in an interview. “Just never thought — we were just doing the job for the country and earning money on the side.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New England Journal of Medicine Ignored Nazi Atrocities, Historians Find

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      The New England Journal of Medicine published an article condemning its own record during World War II.A new article in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the oldest and most esteemed publications for medical research, criticizes the journal for paying only “superficial and idiosyncratic attention” to the atrocities perpetrated in the name of medical science by the Nazis.The journal was “an outlier in its sporadic coverage of the rise of Nazi Germany,” wrote the article’s authors, Allan Brandt and Joelle Abi-Rached, both medical historians at Harvard. Often, the journal simply ignored the Nazis’ medical depredations, such as the horrific experiments conducted on twins at Auschwitz, which were based largely on Adolf Hitler’s spurious “racial science.”In contrast, two other leading science journals — Science and the Journal of the American Medical Association — covered the Nazis’ discriminatory policies throughout Hitler’s tenure, the historians noted. The New England journal did not publish an article “explicitly damning” the Nazis’ medical atrocities until 1949, four years after World War II ended.The new article, published in this week’s issue of the journal, is part of a series started last year to address racism and other forms of prejudice in the medical establishment. Another recent article described the journal’s enthusiastic coverage of eugenics throughout the 1930s and ’40s.“Learning from our past mistakes can help us going forward,” said the journal’s editor, Dr. Eric Rubin, an infectious disease expert at Harvard. “What can we do to ensure that we don’t fall into the same sorts of objectionable ideas in the future?”In the publication’s archives, Dr. Abi-Rached discovered a paper endorsing Nazi medical practices: “Recent changes in German health insurance under the Hitler government,” a 1935 treatise written by Michael Davis, an influential figure in health care, and Gertrud Kroeger, a nurse from Germany. The article praised the Nazis’ emphasis on public health, which was infused with dubious ideas about Germans’ innate superiority.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Rage and Grief

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      Käthe Kollwitz’s fierce belief in social justice and her indelible images made her one of Germany’s best printmakers. A dazzling MoMA show reminds us why.An artist friend texted me recently, asking how to contend with the anger and sadness she was feeling about the state of the world. I can think of no better balm than the Museum of Modern Art’s Käthe Kollwitz retrospective, the first ever at a New York museum that encompasses this German artist’s groundbreaking prints and drawings and her sculpture, posters and magazine illustrations.Once you’re there, go straight over to her series “Peasants’ War,” which she started in 1902, to find her own outlet for her burning desire for radical change. She was about 10 years into her already successful career when she made it, a remarkable feat given that she was a woman in a country that still didn’t allow women into art schools. In 1898, she had been nominated for a gold medal at the Greater Berlin Art Exhibition for her first major print cycle, “A Weavers’ Revolt” (1893-97), but did not receive it: The Prussian minister of culture thought her subject matter — a fictional uprising based on a contemporary play about an 1844 revolt, a watershed moment for many German socialists — too politically subversive, while Kaiser Wilhelm II himself objected to the idea of a woman garnering top prize.Born in 1867, Kollwitz was an avowed socialist whose career stretched from the 1890s to the 1940s, a period of tremendous social upheaval and two world wars. Though she was a member of the progressive Berlin Secession art movement, she kept a distance from the elite art world, living in a working-class Berlin neighborhood with her husband, a doctor who tended to the poor.Display of posters by Käthe Kollwitz at MoMA, left to right: “Vienna is dying! Save its Children,” 1920; “The Survivors,” 1923; “Help Russia,” 1921; “Never Again War!” from 1924; poster to legalize abortion, from 1923; “Release our Prisoners,” 1919. Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWith “Peasants’ War,” Kollwitz again turned to the past to share her outrage at the injustices around her “which are never ending and as large as a mountain.” The seven-part series deals with the historical revolt that swept German-speaking countries of Central Europe in the 16th century, not as a transcription of historical events but as an imagined narrative showing the exploitation of farm workers (men treated no better than animals yoked to a plow, a woman in the aftermath of a rape by a landowner), their explosive response, and the chilling repression that followed. It is a story worthy of Charles Dickens or Émile Zola, told from a woman’s point of view.The largest print, “Charge,” focuses on the figure of “Black Anna,” reputed to be a catalyst of the violence, urging a mob of peasants to action. She is no “Liberty Leading the People.” Unlike Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 image of a beautiful and bare-breasted personification of French freedom, Kollwitz’s crone is shown from the back, her sinewy arms raised and hands clenched urgently, practically launching herself into the crowd.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alderney Is a Small Island With a Dark History

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      Look closely at this tiny, idyllic island: Victorian-era fortifications dot the windswept coastline. A concrete anti-tank wall disrupts a quiet beach. Overgrown greenery covers bunkers and tunnels.This is Alderney, where the 2,100 people who call the island home do not lock their cars. Where the streets are quiet and the pubs (nine of them) are lively, and the roads don’t have traffic lights. And where reminders of World War II hide behind most corners.This fiercely independent island in the English Channel, roughly 10 miles from France, is at the center of a debate about how to remember Nazi atrocities and live mindfully among sites where misdeeds occurred — and how to reckon with the fact that Britain never held anyone responsible for running an SS concentration camp on its soil.Alderney residents today enjoy a deep love for the place, a yearning for a peaceful and quiet lifestyle and the added benefit of low taxes.Cristina Baussan for The New York TimesAlderney, a British Crown Dependency and part of the Channel Islands, has an independent president and a 10-member parliament. (King Charles III is its monarch, but Rishi Sunak not its prime minister.) The Channel Islands were the only British territory occupied by the Germans during World War II, and Alderney was the only one evacuated by the British government. Shortly after, as Germany occupied parts of Northwest Europe in June 1940, German troops moved to the island.The Nazis built four camps on Alderney. Helgoland and Borkum were labor camps run by the Nazis’ civil and military engineering arm. The SS, the organization that was largely in charge of the Nazis’ barbaric extermination campaign, took control of two others, Norderney and Sylt, in 1943.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More