MARK TURNER holds on tight for a mesmerising display of Neath-born ragtime virtuosity
Death camp memorials of Dachau, Mauthausen and Majdanek
‘Let our fate be a warning to you’ is cut into the stone of Majdanek Mausoleum a timely reminder of what may come in the wake of racial hate and xenophobia
The Dachau concentration camp memorial by Yugoslav sculptor and Holocaust survivor Nandor Glid
[Galvin/flickr/Creative Commons] 
ALAN MORRISON introduces a UK poet whose despised daytime occupation provides the subject for his writing
MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long
PAUL DONOVAN recommends three new books that explore the human relationship with nature
Doomed adolescents, when the missing person is you, classic whodunnit, and an anti-capitalist eco-thriller
WILL STONE takes a ticket to indie disco heaven, but misses the rarely performed tunes
ON SATURDAY January 27 1945 — 76 years ago tomorrow — the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, in Nazi-occupied Poland, was liberated by the Soviet army.
There were 27 main concentration camps set up by the Nazi regime and in them over 1.6 million people were incarcerated and many exterminated. The inmates comprised those who didn’t conform to the Nazi concept of humanity: Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, communists, socialists, trade unionists and those with disabilities. The nazi programme of mass killing of ‘undesirables’ was the world’s most comprehensive and devastating attempt to establish an elite race of supermen and women.
Only belatedly, decades after the war’s end, did the former West German state erect any monuments at all to the victims of fascism. Up until 1995 there was no official research into the history of the concentration camps. This was hardly surprising, as many former Nazis were soon reoccupying their former posts in West Germany even before the flames of war had been extinguished.
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Despite the primitive means the director was forced to use, this is an incredibly moving film from Gaza and you should see it, urges JOHN GREEN
JOHN GREEN recommends an Argentinian film classic on re-release - a deliciously cynical tale of swindling and double-cross
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
JOHN GREEN is stirred by an ambitious art project that explores solidarity and the shared memory of occupation
