Witness History: Archive 2014

At the start of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Polish civilians were imprisoned in the Soviet Union following the occupation of their country by the USSR. But in August 1941, after Nazi Germany invaded Russia, many of the Poles were suddenly set free. We hear from one former prisoner who found himself stranded in Soviet Central Asia for the rest of the Second World War.Photo: Nazi troops order Soviet women to leave their homes, summer 1941 (Keystone/Getty Images)

In August 1971 the British Army began detaining hundreds of people suspected of belonging to paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. They were held without charge or trial. We hear from Gerry McKerr, who was detained for more than three years under the internment laws. Photo: Belfast, August 1971 (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

On 8 August 1974 Richard Nixon became the first US president in history to resign from office, following the Watergate scandal. Witness has been speaking to journalist Tom DeFrank, who watched the drama unfold minute by minute.Photo: Nixon announces his resignation on national television (Getty Images)

In August 1984, the 2000 year old remains of a man were discovered preserved in a peat bog in England. It was believed he was a victim of ritual sacrifice. We speak to Rick Turner, the local archaeologist who found "Lindow Man"

In the early hours of 5 August 1944, hundreds of Japanese prisoners of war being held near the Australian town of Cowra staged the largest breakout of World War Two. Hear oral history accounts of that night from the archives of the Australian War Memorial's Australia–Japan Research Project.Photo: The No. 12 Australian Prisoner of War Camp near Cowra, Australia. Credit: The Australian War Memorial.

On 4 August 1964 the bodies of three civil rights workers murdered by racists in the Ku Klux Klan were discovered in Mississippi. Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner had been working on a project to register African-Americans to vote. Witness speaks to Andrew Goodman's younger brother, David.Picture: Andrew Goodman (Associated Press)

On 1 August 1944, resistance fighters in the Polish capital rose up against German occupying forces. The uprising lasted for 63 days and some 200,000 people were killed - the city itself was largely destroyed. Zbigniew Pelczynski was one of the young Poles fighting to free Warsaw from the Nazis.(Photo: Zbigniew Pelczynski in 1946)

In July 2004, the American TV celebrity was convicted for lying to federal prosecutors and sent to jail for five months. Famous for her cookery and home-making books, Stewart had many fans in prison and even managed to make friends. One of them, Susan Spry, talks to Witness.(Photo: Martha Stewart. Credit: Getty Images)

In 1969 two young Australians bought a lion cub in Harrods and raised it in their London flat. John Rendall and Anthony Bourke then released the lion into the wild in Kenya. In 2011 Alan Johnston spoke to John Rendall about the extraordinary moment when they were reunited with Christian, which became a YouTube sensation.

In July 1949, the British-built de Havilland Comet took off for the first time to become the world's first jet-propelled passenger plane. But a flaw in its construction would end up costing lives and leaving crash investigators baffled. Mike Ramsden was an apprentice aeronautical engineer who worked on the jetliner.(Photo: Mike Ramsden (right) in 1955 with a second generation Comet at the de Havilland airfield at Hatfield, England)

World War One began in the summer of 1914. Using archive recordings of eyewitnesses from Germany, France, Britain and Belgium, we tell the story of the start of a war which would devastate a generation.(Photo: Crowds celebrate in Berlin, following the declaration of war, 4 August 1914. Credit: General Photographic Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

It's 30 years since the release of the film Purple Rain, starring pop music phenomenon Prince. It would go on to win an Oscar for Best Original Song Score. Witness speaks to Robert Rivkin, known as Bobby Z, the drummer in Prince's backing band The Revolution.Photo: Prince. Credit: Getty Images

In 1987, the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli military rule began in Gaza. Palestinian-born Maher Nasser had gone to work for the United Nations in Gaza shortly before the intifada began; and he tells Witness what life was like there before and during the unrest. (Photo: a Palestinian demonstrator throws a rock during violent protests against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in December 1987. Credit: Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)

In the summer of 1947 India declared independence after hundreds of years of British rule. English-born Anne Wright had moved there when she was a child. She speaks to Witness about life in the last days of British India.Photo: Anne Wright (left) with her sister, at home in India.

In 1997 a young Spanish politician was kidnapped and murdered by the Basque separatist group ETA. His death led to one of the biggest demonstrations ever seen in Spain. Witness speaks to Gustavo de Aristegui, an interior ministry official who later became a friend of the family.(Photo: Miguel Angel Blanco's sister, Maria del Mar, in front of a mural of her brother. Credit: Getty Images)

In 1994, 85 people were killed when a car bomb exploded outside a Jewish community centre in the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires. No-one has ever been convicted for the bombing. We hear from two people whose lives were changed that day.Photo: A man walks over the rubble left after a bomb exploded at the Argentinian Israeli Mutual Association. Credit: Ali Burafi/AFP/Getty Images)

German army officer, Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg attempted to kill Adolf Hitler by planting a briefcase bomb in a meeting at Hitler's headquarters on 20 July, 1944. The attack was supposed to be the trigger for a coup against the Nazi regime. We hear from von Stuaffenberg's son, General Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.Photo: Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (AFP/Getty images)

On July 20th 1974 Turkish troops invaded Cyprus. Within a few weeks they controlled almost half of the island. Thousands of Cypriots, both Greek and Turkish, were displaced by the fighting. Hear from two Cypriots who were young women at the time of the invasion.(Photo: Turkish troops on the beach on 20 July 1974. Credit: AP)

In July 1979 left-wing Sandinista rebels toppled the last member of the Somoza dynasty that had ruled Nicaragua for more than 50 years. Witness speaks to Daisy Zamora, one of the Sandinista revolutionaries who seized power. (Photo: Sandinista rebel fighters. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

In July 1969, United States Senator Edward Kennedy was involved in a car accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne died. Around 10 hours elapsed before the politician reported the incident to police. Jim Arena was the police chief whose job it was to investigate the accident.(Photo: US Senator Edward Kennedy. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

On July 13 1954, the celebrated Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, died at the age of 47. The art critic, Raquel Tibol, lived in Frida's house during the last year of the artist's life - she speaks to Witness about the pain and torment of her final days.(Photo: Frida Kahlo with her husband, the painter Diego Rivera, at their home in Mexico city, April 1939. Credit: AP)

In July 1904, the great Latin American poet Pablo Neruda was born in a remote town in the south of Chile. Witness presents an interview which Neruda gave to the BBC in 1965. Listen to the memories of fellow Chilean author, Ariel Dorfman.Picture: Pablo Neruda receives the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In July 1995 Bosnian Serb troops murdered thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the worst atrocity in Europe since World War Two. The men had taken refuge in the UN 'safe area' of Srebrenica, but peacekeepers there were unable to protect them. One man whose brother, father and mother were among those killed describes what happened the day that Srebrenica fell.(Photo: Forensic experts unearth a mass grave containing the bodies of some of those killed at Srebrenica. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

On 9 July 1985 the Greenpeace campaign ship was bombed by French secret agents in Auckland, New Zealand. One environmental campaigner was killed and the Rainbow Warrior was sunk. Hear from the ship's captain Pete Willcox who was on board when the attack took place.(Photo: Captain Pete Willcox, courtesy of Greenpeace)

It is 20 years since the death of North Korea's founding leader Kim Il Sung. Peace campaigner Dr Antonio Betancourt from the Summit Council for World Peace was in Pyongyang during the outpouring of national grief.(Photo: Dr Antonio Betancourt meeting Kim Il Sung just months before the leader's death)

When armed militants took over a mosque in central Islamabad, they were protected by thousands of religious students who supported them and refused to leave the site. Government troops were sent in to end the siege. Three female students describe what it was like to be on the inside of the Red Mosque.(Photo: Students of the Jamia Hafsa Madrassa Islamabad. Credit: Associated Press)

In 2006 Sunni tribal militia turned against Al Qaeda in Iraq and began working with US forces. It was a turning point in the insurgency in Iraq.We hear from a former US Marine, David Goldich, who served in Anbar province and witnessed the emergence of the Awakening movement.Photo: Members of the Sunni Anbar Awakening with Iraqi police commandos and US troops, September 2007. (Ahmed Al Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images)

Artek was the Soviet Union's most popular holiday camp, on the shores of the Black Sea in Crimea. Thousands of children visited every year - Maria Kim Espeland went there in the 1980s.(Photo: Group of children attending Artek. Credit: Irina Vlasova)

In the middle of World War Two an optimistic musical about American rural life in the early 1900s, became a hit on Broadway. Created by Rodgers and Hammerstein its songs were soon being sung around the world. Gemze DeLappe was in the original production.(Photo: Female chorus line from Oklahoma. Credit: Courtesy of Rodgers and Hammerstein Organisation)

Within months of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, concerns were raised about abuse at the American-run prison of Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad. Witness hears from two former detainees, Salah Hassan and Ali Shallal Abbas, about their experiences. Listeners may find parts of this report distressing.(Photo: The words 'God Help Me' are scrawled in Arabic on a prison door inside the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, 16 September 2003 in Baghdad. Credit: Robert Sullivan/AFP/Getty Images)

**Warning: Some listeners might find parts of this programme disturbing** In 1994 Fred and Rosemary West were charged with a series of gruesome murders of young women and girls, committed over a twenty-year period in the south of England. Witness speaks to Leo Goatley, Rosemary West's defence lawyer.(Photo: Composite image of victims of Fred and Rosemary West)

The heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was killed in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. He - and his wife Sophie - were shot by a young Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, while touring the Bosnian capital. His death was the trigger for the outbreak of World War One.(Photo: The Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo)

In 1965, a pioneering computer dating scheme, Operation Match, was launched in the USA.Student Edward Reingold, one of thousands of young Americans who signed up, went on to find the love of his life.Photo: Edward Reingold and Ruth Nothmann, who met via Operation Match, in their early days of courtship.

In June 1942 the village of Lidice in German-occupied Czechoslovakia was completely destroyed in retaliation for the assassination of a top ranking Nazi. Adolf Hitler was so outraged by the murder of Reinhard Heydrich that he ordered that all the men from the village be shot, the women sent to concentration camps and the children 'placed in suitable educational establishments'. In the end most of the children were gassed and the women sent to a concentration camp.(Photo: The Skleničková family in 1931. Credit: Courtesy of Jaroslava Skleničková)

In the spring and summer of 1991 tens of thousands of Albanians commandeered cargo ships to take them to Italy. The immigrants were escaping a collapsing communist dictatorship. Robert Budina was one of the Albanians on board the Vlora, a cargo ship which had been carrying sugar from Cuba.(Photo: Albanian immigrants on board the Vlora. Copyright: Associated Press)

In June 1954 separatist Karen rebels in Burma hijacked a passenger plane. They wanted to use it to help arm fellow insurgents in the west of the country. Witness hears from Saw Kyaw Aye, who led the hijackers. (Photo: Saw Kyaw Aye, now in his late 80s)

In 1969 the Cuyahoga River in the US caught fire. It became a national embarrassment and inspired new laws to protect the environment.(Photo: Cuyahoga River. Credit: BBC)

It has been 50 years since the Civil Rights Act passed through the United States Congress, guaranteeing new rights for African Americans and other minority communities. Paul Schuster speaks to former lobbyist Jane O'Grady, who was on Capitol Hill during the weeks of filibuster and debate.(Photo: President Lyndon B. Johnson (right) talks to civil rights leaders in the White House. Credit: AP)

Among the mourners at the funeral of the great Soviet writer, Maxim Gorky, in 1936 was a mysterious baroness. Moura Budberg had been Gorky's lover and, before that, the lover of a British secret agent who'd been thrown into a Soviet jail. Her extraordinary life led some to call her the Russian Mata Hari. But was she really a spy?(Photo: Baroness Moura Budberg. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In 1989 the body of Imre Nagy, Prime Minister during the 1956 Hungarian uprising, was reburied in a public ceremony in Budapest. He had been executed on the orders of Moscow. It marked the beginning of the end of Communism in Hungary. Ivan Baba was master of ceremonies at the 1989 funeral.

In June 1994 police chased the former American football star along the freeways of Los Angeles. They wanted to arrest him following the death of his ex-wife. Hear from one of the policemen who helped bring him in - detective Tom Lange.(Photo: Detective Lange and another police officer flanking OJ Simpson after the car chase. Credit: Vince Bucci. AFP/Getty Images)

Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso on the radical movement which burst onto the Brazilian music scene in the late 1960s Photo: Gilberto Gil in Paris in 2003 (AFP) and Caetano Veloso in Italy in 2008 (Getty Images)

Since its launch in the 1950s, the Brazilian version of the VW Beetle has had a special place in the nation's heart. Cheap, charismatic and virtually indestructible, it was many Brazilians' first car and is affectionately known as the Fusca. The Fusca played a key role in the development of Brazil's economically and politically vital national car industry. Witness speaks to two Fusca fans.(Photo: A Fusca in the colonial town of Paraty. Credit: Getty Images)

In June 2002 investigative journalist Tim Lopes was brutally killed by a drug gang in a Rio de Janeiro shanty town. Witness speaks to his son, Bruno Quintella, who was 19 years old at the time.(Photo: Tim Lopes and his son, Bruno, courtesy of the family)

In 1960, Brazil opened a new capital city in its remote central plains. Designed by the modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer, it was intended to bring development to the interior and symbolise Brazil's future ambitions. Witness speaks to Osorio Machado, an engineer who worked on the construction of Brasilia.(Photo: Getty Images)

In 1897, at least 15,000 people died when the Brazilian army crushed a rebellion by peasants in the arid backlands of north-east Brazil. The rebels were led by a charismatic preacher called Anthony the Counsellor. The War of Canudos is now seen as a defining moment in the emergence of modern Brazil. Witness tells the story of the conflict using a contemporary account by the Brazilian author, Euclides Da Cunha. The programme also speaks to professor David Treece of King's College London.(Photo: Survivors of the War of Canudos pictured shortly after the final assault)

On 6 June 1944, Allied forces launched their long awaited invasion of Nazi-occupied France. It was a crucial step in the liberation of western Europe. Using original BBC reports from the time - from Chester Wilmot, Richard Dimbleby, Robin Duff, Ward Smith and Alan Melville - we tell the story of D-Day.

It is 60 years since the great British mathematician died. He is believed to have killed himself after he was put on trial because he was gay. Hear from the Greenbaum sisters who knew Alan Turing as a family friend when they were children.Picture: Alan Turing, Science Photo Library

In June 1989 the communist authorities in China crushed a huge pro-democracy protest in Beijing. Demonstrators, most of them students, had been occupying Tiananmen Square for weeks on end. On June 4th the army was sent in to clear the area, killing hundreds. Diane Wei Liang and Hayou Zhang were among the protestors - they remember that day.(Photo: Demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

In June 1971, an 18-month long occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay by Native Americans came to an end. It was credited with raising awareness of indigenous rights. Hear from 'Indians Of All Tribes' spokesman and protest participant John Trudell.(Photo: Alcatraz Island. Credit: Getty Images)