01-10-2017, 11:07 AM
Clare Hollingworth (10 October 1911 – 10 January 2017) was an English journalist and author. She was the first war correspondent to report the outbreak of World War II, described as "the scoop of the century".[1]
A rookie reporter for The Daily Telegraph in 1939, she spotted German forces massed on the Polish border, while travelling from Poland to Germany. She later helped rescue thousands of people from Hitler's forces by arranging British visas.[1]
On 31 August 1939, Hollingworth had been working as a journalist for less than a week for The Daily Telegraph when she was sent to Poland to report on worsening tensions in Europe. Hollingworth persuaded the British Consul-General in Katowice, John Anthony Thwaites, to lend her his chauffeured car for a fact-finding mission into Germany.[3] While driving along the German-Polish border, Hollingworth chanced upon a massive build-up of German troops, tanks and armoured cars facing Poland. The following morning Hollingworth called the British embassy in Warsaw to report the German invasion of Poland. To convince doubtful embassy officials, Hollingworth held a telephone out of her room window to capture the sounds of German forces.[3] Hollingworth's eyewitness account was the first report the British Foreign Office had about the invasion of Poland.[4]
During the following decades, Hollingworth reported on conflicts in Palestine, Algeria, China, Aden and Vietnam.[4] In 1946 she was among the survivors of the King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem that killed 91 people.[5]
John Simpson described her as the reporter who first interviewed the Shah of Iran, and, decades later, who last interviewed him too: "she was the only person he wanted to speak to".[6]
She was the author of five books: The Three Weeks' War in Poland (1940), There's a German Right Behind Me (1945), The Arabs and the West (1950), Mao (1985), and her memoirs, Front Line (1990, updated with Neri Tenorio in 2005).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Hollingworth
A rookie reporter for The Daily Telegraph in 1939, she spotted German forces massed on the Polish border, while travelling from Poland to Germany. She later helped rescue thousands of people from Hitler's forces by arranging British visas.[1]
On 31 August 1939, Hollingworth had been working as a journalist for less than a week for The Daily Telegraph when she was sent to Poland to report on worsening tensions in Europe. Hollingworth persuaded the British Consul-General in Katowice, John Anthony Thwaites, to lend her his chauffeured car for a fact-finding mission into Germany.[3] While driving along the German-Polish border, Hollingworth chanced upon a massive build-up of German troops, tanks and armoured cars facing Poland. The following morning Hollingworth called the British embassy in Warsaw to report the German invasion of Poland. To convince doubtful embassy officials, Hollingworth held a telephone out of her room window to capture the sounds of German forces.[3] Hollingworth's eyewitness account was the first report the British Foreign Office had about the invasion of Poland.[4]
During the following decades, Hollingworth reported on conflicts in Palestine, Algeria, China, Aden and Vietnam.[4] In 1946 she was among the survivors of the King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem that killed 91 people.[5]
John Simpson described her as the reporter who first interviewed the Shah of Iran, and, decades later, who last interviewed him too: "she was the only person he wanted to speak to".[6]
She was the author of five books: The Three Weeks' War in Poland (1940), There's a German Right Behind Me (1945), The Arabs and the West (1950), Mao (1985), and her memoirs, Front Line (1990, updated with Neri Tenorio in 2005).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Hollingworth
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.