It’s cantaloupe season in the San Joaquin Valley, a time that takes me back to a summer during high school when I picked melons in Huron for farming pioneer Russell Giffen. I didn’t know Giffen. I was merely one of thousands of high school and college students who picked crops...
What Orwell's '1984' Tells Us About Today's World, 70 Years After It Was Published
Seventy years ago, Eric Blair, writing under a pseudonym George Orwell, published “1984,” now generally considered a classic of dystopian fiction. The novel tells the story of Winston Smith, a hapless middle-aged bureaucrat who lives in Oceania, where he is governed by constant surveillance. Even though there are no laws,...
On Anne Frank's 90th Birthday, Her Friends Meet Students
AMSTERDAM — For Jacqueline van Maarsen, attending Anne Frank's 13th birthday party in 1942 was a welcome distraction from the grim reality of life in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam during World War II. Enjoying movies and cookies at Anne's apartment meant "we didn't think about it at that moment," the 90-year-old Van...
Queen, World Leaders Honor Veterans on D-Day Anniversary
PORTSMOUTH, England — Queen Elizabeth II and world leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump gathered Wednesday on the south coast of England to honor the troops who risked and sacrificed their lives 75 years ago on D-Day, a bloody but ultimately triumphant turning point in World War II. Across the...
D-Day’s 75th Anniversary Renews Interest in Some Classrooms
CARY, N.C. — Kasey Turcol has just 75 minutes to explain to her high school students the importance of D-Day — and if this wasn't the 75th anniversary of the turning point in World War II, she wouldn't devote that much time to it. D-Day is not part of the...
D-Day Veterans Revisit Normandy, Recall Horror and Triumph
Planes spread out across the sky, nearly wingtip to wingtip. A sniper's bullet whizzing by the ear. Squeezing a dying soldier's hand, so he knew he was not alone. Across three quarters of a century, the old veterans remember that epic day on the beaches of Normandy. For historians, D-Day...
World War II Veteran, 95, Dies During Honor Flight Trip
SAN DIEGO — A 95-year-old former soldier died last weekend aboard a chartered Honor Flight carrying World War II veterans home to San Diego after an all-expenses-paid weekend trip to Washington, D.C. Frank Manchel collapsed about an hour before the American Airlines jet was due to land Sunday, The San...
How Muslims in Albania Saved Jews From the Holocaust
Most anywhere else in Nazi-occupied Europe, a run-in with authorities by a Jewish family probably would have resulted in severe malnutrition, eventual starvation, or execution. Not so in Albania. Following the German occupation in 1943, the Albanian population, the majority of whom were Muslims, refused to comply with the occupier’s...
Auschwitz Survivors Pay Homage as World Remembers Holocaust
WARSAW, Poland — The world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday amid a revival of hate-inspired violence and signs that younger generations know less and less about the genocide of Jews, Roma and others by Nazi Germany during World War II. As survivors of Auschwitz marked the 74th anniversary...
US, Israel Exit UN Cultural Agency, Claiming Bias
PARIS — The United States and Israel have officially quit the U.N.'s educational, scientific and cultural agency — the culmination of a process triggered more than a year ago amid concerns that the organization fosters anti-Israel bias. The withdrawal is mainly procedural yet serves a new blow to UNESCO, co-founded...