Swaziland Chief Fought With Allied Forces in WWII

The World’s Alex Gallafent brings us the story of an 88-year-old tribal chief from Swaziland. He’s also a veteran of World War Two.

British Army Museum Exhibit Features War Horses

A new exhibition at the British Army museum highlights the hidden heroes of war – the 100′s of thousands of horses who were sent to the frontlines.

Job: The Story of a Simple Man

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German translator Ross Benjamin won the 2010 Woolf prize for his version in English of the critical study Speak, Nabokov. His latest translation, Joseph Roth’s 1930 novel Job: The Story of a Simple Man, comes from Archipelago Books. One of the finest literary evocations of the world of Eastern European Jewry obliterated by World War II, Job was a bestseller in 1931 when it was first appeared in English. Still, the novel has not gotten the attention it deserves, even though Roth (1894-1939) is now recognized as one of the major German writers of the 20th century. Benjamin’s translation does this masterpiece, a modern retelling of the biblical story of Job, justice in English. World Books editor Bill Marx spoke to Benjamin about the challenges of translating Roth. Download MP3

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Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished

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Jeb Sharp interviews Israeli filmmaker Yael Hersonski about her documentary A Film Unfinished. It’s about the Nazi propaganda footage shot in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. Hersonski pieces together the backstory to the reels of film found after the war and in so doing challenges our assumptions about memory, history and reality. (photo by Steven Davy) Download MP3

‘A Film Unfinished’

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A decade after the end of World War II, East German archivists began to sort through thousands of films stashed in a vault. One copy of an unedited film was found titled “the ghetto.” Another reel was discovered with outtakes of this film and showed that much of the scenes in original film were in fact staged. A new documentary called ‘A Film Unfinished” attempts to shed light on how the film was really shot. (Photo: Steven Davy) Download MP3

• ‘A Film Unfinished’ at the Sundance Film Festival

Exposing Japanese-Peruvian WWII internment camps

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On February 19th in 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, interning approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans. But that order had implications way beyond the American shores. It affected thousands of Japanese living in Peru and in other countries of South America. Their story is only now being told. Tyler Sipe reports. Download MP3 (photo: Tyler Sipe)

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• Japanese-Peruvian Oral History Project

Nazi Traitors, Hamid Karzai, Guinea

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On the history podcast this week a compilation of recent stories. Gerry Hadden tells us the story of a Nazi traitor who finally had his conviction overturned. Alex Gallafent tells us about changing U.S. views of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. And Marco Werman interviews Loyola University historian Elizabeth Schmidt about the significance of the September 28th stadium in Guinea. Download MP3

Nazi deserters pardoned

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This month Germany overturned the sentences of tens of thousands of German soldiers convicted of treason during World War II. The move comes late for most of the fighters. The vast majority were executed, died in concentration camps or were killed in so-called death battalions before the war ended. Still exonerating these rebellious ranks has symbolic importance for a country still dealing with its Nazi past. The World’s Gerry Hadden met one of Germany’s three surviving Nazi traitors and has his story. Download MP3

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• BBC coverage

Geo Quiz / geo answer

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Today’s Geo Quiz seeks an Italian town famous for baseball. The answer is Nettuno, a coastal city about 40 miles south of Rome, where local residents picked up the sport from American GIs during World War Two. Right now… Nettuno is hosting the annual Baseball World Cup. Reporter Nancy Greenleese takes us there.

Commemorating the beginning of WW2

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This week’s podcast explores clashing interpretations of what went wrong in 1939. We talk to Holocaust survivors too. And Marco Werman has a musical footnote to our coverage of the history and politics of the African country of Gabon.

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