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The Music of Terezin
I’ve written before about Terezin, or Theresienstadt, the concentration camp ghetto near Prague where Czech Jews – including the cream of Jewish and Czech cultural life – were incarcerated by the Nazis before being transported to Auschwitz and death. Two years ago the BBC broadcast a day of music of Terezin from the Barbican. Fifteen… Continue reading
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Ilse Weber, 1903 – 1944. Poet and writer, murdered by the Nazis
This month marks the anniversary of the birth of Ilse Weber, born in January 1903, an accomplished poet, songwriter and writer sent to the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia in 1942, and murdered in Auschwitz two years later.. Her eldest son, Hanus, was one of the children rescued from the Nazis by Nicholas Winton and… Continue reading
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Terezin – memorialised in music
Originally posted online 24 January 2022 Holocaust Memorial Day falls this week, and the BBC’s contribution, yesterday, was an extraordinary day of music at the Barbican Centre, music written in Nazi camps and wartime ghettos by Jewish composers. Most were held in Terezin, or Theresienstadt as the Nazis called it, just north of Prague in… Continue reading
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Infiltrating a right wing plot to “smash” Searchlight – the inside story
Forty years on – the inside story of how we infiltrated a right wing plot to “smash” Searchlight Continue reading
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Your tour guide is a wanted terrorist…
How a Searchlight investigation into a tour guide company first exposed links between the National Front and London-based Italian fascists wanted for terrorism Continue reading
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British Movement – Our part in its downfall
The last of my articles about the exploits of anti-fascist super mole Ray Hill. This time – how he engineered the collapse of British Movement, then the UK’s biggest openly neo-Nazi organisation. Continue reading
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When a fugitive fascist terror cell broke cover…
How an Italian fascist terror cell broke cover in London to support a comrade accused of murder and a £10 million pound bank raid … Continue reading
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UK’s Ministry of Justice in denial over activities of violent racist prison gang
The UK Ministry of Justice is in denial over the activities of a violent anti-Muslim gang operating in some of Britain’s most secure prisons. Continue reading
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Avtar Singh Jouhl (1937-2022) : Founder of the Indian Workers’ Association, and friend and ally of Searchlight
The Searchlight team was saddened to hear of the death Avtar Singh Jouhl, an old friend and ally of the magazine, who died on on 7th October 2022. Searchlight worked with Avtar Jouhl throughout his time at the Indian Workers’ Association and we had spent time with him more recently when we gathered at the… Continue reading
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Peekskill 1947 – “the first great open manifestation of American fascism”.
This weekend marks the anniversary of one of the great stands against American fascism, at Peekskill, NY, in 1947. And at the heart of it was the great black American singer, Paul Robeson. Continue reading
About Me
I’ve been an active anti-fascist since 1974, working for Searchlight magazine from 1975 till 1989. From 1983 till 1989 I was its editor and co-wrote ‘The Other Face of Terror’, with Ray Hill, the celebrated Searchlight infiltrator into the European neo-Nazi movement. After that, and for the next 20 years, I worked as an investigative journalist with ITV’s World in Action and the BBC’s Panorama. I blog about the history and practice of anti-fascism, especially in the UK.
andy bell 