Robert Philpot

Robert Philpot is a writer and journalist. He is the former editor of Progress magazine and author of “Margaret Thatcher: The Honorary Jew.”

Fritz and Thea Goldschmidt. (Courtesy Goldschmidt family)

September 27, 2021, 3:32 am

Family’s battle to recover Nazi-looted art paints auction house into a corner

Vienna-based seller im Kinksy is at the center of a dispute between grandchildren of a couple murdered in the Holocaust and a 2008 buyer whose anonymity it is sworn to maintain

By Robert Philpot

South Front, Waddesdon Manor. (Studio 8 (c) National Trust Waddesdon Manor)

September 18, 2021, 10:20 am

Medieval manors to German villas: Jewish homes tell stories of royalty, tragedy

An online tour of sprawling estates reveals the history of a segment of European Jewry seldom thought of today, despite its members’ opulence, philanthropy and political influence

By Robert Philpot

Journalist and author Hella Pick. (Bea Lewkowicz/ Association for Jewish Refugees)

August 21, 2021, 8:55 am

From Kindertransport to the White House, a British reporter’s remarkable journey

In her memoir ‘Invisible Walls,’ Hella Pick describes arriving in the UK knowing one word of English and growing into a journalist who witnessed our era’s most impactful events

By Robert Philpot

Ethel Rosenberg smiles and waves as she leaves New York's Women's detention home in an automobile for the death house in Sing Sing Prison April 11, 1951. The 35-year-old Mrs. Rosenberg and her husband, Julius, 32, were sentenced to die for furnishing wartime atom secrets to a soviet spy ring. (AP Photo/Murray Becker)

July 23, 2021, 8:39 pm

Was the Rosenberg trial America’s Dreyfus affair?

British author Anne Sebba’s new biography of Ethel Rosenberg is a gripping and tragic tale of a complex case involving family betrayal, misogyny, and antisemitism

By Robert Philpot

Ex-Labour MP Joan Ryan in Jerusalem, December 15, 2019. (courtesy Sivan Farage)

June 30, 2021, 11:11 am

Former Labour MP: Corbyn’s continued denial of antisemitism makes him culpable

After quitting UK party in protest against Jew-hatred under Jeremy Corbyn, onetime parliamentarian Joan Ryan will head the new branch of a nonprofit bolstering Europe-Israel ties

By Robert Philpot

An undated clandestine image of a Nazi-led forced march. (Courtesy US Holocaust Memorial Museum)

June 28, 2021, 11:47 am

London exhibition focuses on ‘overlooked and understudied’ Nazi death marches

Wiener Holocaust Library highlights early postwar efforts to investigate ‘mobile concentration camps’ and the identity of their victims

By Robert Philpot

Adolf Hitler and Crown Prince Wilhelm von Preussen at the Day of Potsdam in March 1933. (Bundesarchiv bild/ via Wikimedia Commons)

June 8, 2021, 1:30 am

German royal family lawsuit could backfire and reveal nobles’ support for Nazis

While the aristocracy is often lauded for the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler, evidence in a compensation claim sought by the Hohenzollern house may expose a closet full of skeletons

By Robert Philpot

Left: Chaim Herszman in Germany in 1946, Right: John Carr, author of 'Escape From the Ghetto,' the story of his father's audacious escape from the Nazis. (Courtesy John Carr)

April 8, 2021, 6:44 am

He killed a Nazi guard, fled ghetto with fake identities and joined the UK army

British author John Carr reveals his father’s audacious wartime journey from the Lodz ghetto to Gibraltar, where he signed up to fight the Germans – all while hiding his Jewishness

By Robert Philpot

Left: 'British Fascism After the Holocaust,' by Dr. Joe Mulhall (Courtesy); Center: Holocaust denier David Irving (CC-BY-SA 3.0/ Allan Warren); Top right: Holocaust denier and former KKK leader David Duke (AP/Burt Steel); Bottom right: British fascist Oswald Mosley (AP photo/Bead)

March 20, 2021, 9:26 am

Holocaust denial was already taking root in Britain during WWII, says UK author

Dr. Joe Mulhall, author of ‘British Fascism After the Holocaust,’ claims his country’s Nazi sympathizers created the ‘blueprint’ for today’s anti-Semitic historical revisionists

By Robert Philpot

Adolf Hitler, left (Bundesarchiv Bild); Winston Churchill, right (CC-SA 2.0/ Yousuf Karsh); 'The Black Book: The Britons on the Nazi List,' by Sybil Oldfield. (Courtesy)

March 12, 2021, 9:37 pm

Hitler kept secret hit list of 3,000 prominent Brits for after Nazis defeated UK

Author Sybil Oldfield reveals the Gestapo’s infamous ‘Black Book’ and the plan to Nazify Britain by rounding up the Jews – and non-Jews – who stood in the Third Reich’s way

By Robert Philpot

An undated photo of British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell. (AP Photo)

February 23, 2021, 10:43 am

From wooden shack to global media magnate: The rise and fall of Robert Maxwell

His death 30 years ago remains a mystery, but a new book by British author John Preston lifts the lid on the extraordinary life of the British newspaper publisher

By Robert Philpot

Clockwise from top left: Philip Sassoon; both gay and anti-Semitic, SA head Ernst Röhm, left, and his deputy Edmund Heines, right; Ronald Cartland; Victor Cazalet; Berlin gay club Eldorado; Robert Bernays. (Public domain; Bundesarchiv Bild)

January 29, 2021, 9:57 pm

Without these queer MPs, the UK would never have gone to war with Hitler

Labour MP and former minister Chris Bryant’s new book shows how the ‘Glamour Boys’ faced their own government’s dirty tactics as they fought anti-Semitism, cooperation with Germany

By Robert Philpot

The Wedgwood arriving in Haifa, 1 July 1946. (Donated to the Clandestine Immigration and Naval Museum, Haifa by Brigadier General Nir
Maor/ Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0)

January 28, 2021, 3:33 am

The secret maritime route that brought Holocaust survivors to pre-state Israel

From a US Army chaplain who rallied surviving Jews to a fake military unit, resilience and chutzpah star in Rosie Whitehouse’s new book about post-WWII exodus to the promised land

By Robert Philpot

Jewish-Lithuanian partisan group The Avengers on their return to Vilna at the time of the Red Army's liberation of the city, July 1944. (Wiener Holocaust Library Collections)

December 7, 2020, 1:43 pm

Modern Maccabees: UK exhibit highlights Jews’ overlooked resistance to the Nazis

Display at London’s Wiener Holocaust Library from December 8 reveals often underestimate rescue efforts and armed uprisings, as Jews fought back against their persecutors

By Robert Philpot

Response of Jacob Rafael of Modena, to a question relating to Jewish marriage law that might apply in the divorce of King Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon. Italy, 1530. Arundel MS 151, ff. 190-191v. (British Library Board)

December 3, 2020, 6:23 am

Don’t divorce her: Rabbi’s letter to Henry VIII at heart of British Library show

Hebrew manuscript exhibit includes earliest dated copy of the ‘Guide for the Perplexed’ and spans science, law, music, and magic. Viewable online now, and in person from December 3

By Robert Philpot