Bolton Steam Museum
We set off from Manchester Victoria by train to Bolton. Just outside the Train and Bus Interchange is the Olympus Fish and Chip Restaurant – an award winning, upmarket family run business offering best quality fish and chip meals – and more. Sadly, today we were not serenaded by the resident pianist, but it was still an enjoyable visit.
We then made our way to Bus 125 for the short journey north west to Chorley Old Road.
Bolton Steam Museum has the largest collection of working textile mill steam engines in the country. It is operated entirely by volunteers. The steam engines drove the cotton mills providing power for the Industrial Revolution.
The volunteers demonstrated some of the engines operating by electric drive, but there are ten “steam” days per year.
Wendy worked her wonders in the small tea room serving us teas and coffees, which rounded off our visit.
More photos can be seen here.
80 Years Since Auschwitz Liberation
The Auschwitz concentration camp was operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. Auschwitz is the site of the Nazis’ Final Solution to the Jewish question – the largest mass murder in a single location in history.
Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Memorial Day.
Please watch this short film about the Nazi persecution of gay men, lesbians and trans people. Up to 15,000 men were deported to concentration camps.
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Holocaust Memorial Day
The theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is For a Better Future.
Open Day Marking Holocaust Memorial Day
Manchester Jewish Museum, 190 Cheetham Hill Road, Manchester M8 8LW
Sunday, 26 January – 12.00pm – 4.00pm – FREE entry
Book tickets here.
“The Prosecutor” by Jack Fairweather
The Prosecutor is the new book from the bestselling, costa prize-winning author of The Volunteer.
The true story of a gay Jewish lawyer who returned to Germany after WWII to prosecute war crimes, only to find himself pitted against a nation determined to bury the past.
At the end of the Nuremberg trial in 1946, some of the greatest war criminals in history were sentenced to death, but hundreds of thousands of Nazi murderers and collaborators remained at large. The Allies were ready to overlook their pasts as the Cold War began, and the horrors of the Holocaust were in danger of being forgotten.
In The Prosecutor, Jack Fairweather brings to life the remarkable story of Fritz Bauer, a gay German Jew who survived the Nazis and made it his mission to force his countrymen to confront their complicity in the genocide. In this deeply researched book, Fairweather draws on unpublished family papers, newly declassified German records, and exclusive interviews to immerse readers in the dark, unfamiliar world of postwar West Germany where those who implemented genocide run the country, the CIA is funding Hitler’s former spy-ring in the east, and Nazi-era anti-gay laws are strictly enforced. But once Bauer lands on the trail of Adolf Eichmann, he won’t be intimidated. His journey takes him deep into the rotten heart of West Germany, where his fight for justice will set him against his own government and a network of former Nazis and spies determined to silence him.
In a time when the history of the Holocaust is taken for granted, The Prosecutor reveals the courtroom battles that were fought to establish its legacy and the personal cost of speaking out. The result is a searing portrait of a nation emerging from the ruins of fascism and one man’s courage in forcing his people – and the world – to face the truth.
Out in the City 