title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Despite considerable congressional resistance, presidential and popular pressure led to a November 1993 agreement brokered by the Catholic Church between the administration and Congress. This package of constitutional reforms was approved by popular referendum on 30 January 1995. In August 1994, a new Congress was elected to complete the unexpired term. Controlled by the anti-corruption parties: the populist Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) headed by Ríos Montt, and the center-right National Advancement Party (PAN), the new Congress began to move away from the corruption that characterized its predecessors.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Under de León, the peace process, now brokered by the United Nations, took on new life. The government and the URNG signed agreements on human rights (March 1994), resettlement of displaced persons (June 1994), historical clarification (June 1994), and indigenous rights (March 1995). They also made significant progress on a socio-economic and agrarian agreement.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: National elections for president, Congress, and municipal offices were held in November 1995. With almost 20 parties competing in the first round, the presidential election came down to a 7 January 1996 run-off in which PAN candidate Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen defeated Alfonso Portillo Cabrera of the FRG by just over 2 percent of the vote. Arzú won because of his strength in Guatemala City, where he had previously served as mayor, and in the surrounding urban area. Portillo won all of the rural departments except Petén.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Under the Arzú administration, peace negotiations were concluded, and the government and the guerrilla umbrella organization URNG, which became a legal party, signed peace accords ending the 36-year internal conflict on 29 December 1996. The General Secretary of the URNG, Comandante Rolando Morán, and President Álvaro Arzú jointly received the UNESCO Peace Prize for their efforts to end the civil war and attaining the peace agreement. The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1094 on 20 January 1997 deploying military observers to Guatemala to monitor the implementation of the peace agreements.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: By the end of the war, it is estimated that 140,000–200,000 people had been killed or had disappeared. The overwhelming majority of those killed in human rights abuses were victims of official-sanctioned terror by government forces. The internal conflict is described in the report of the Archbishop's Office for Human Rights (ODHAG). ODHAG attributed almost 90.0 percent of the atrocities and over 400 massacres to the Guatemalan army (and paramilitary), and less than 5 percent of the atrocities to the guerrillas (including 16 massacres).


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: In a report in 1999, the UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) stated that the state was responsible for 93 percent of the human rights violations committed during the war, the guerrillas for 3 percent. They peaked in 1982. 83 percent of the victims were Maya. Both sides used terror as a deliberate policy.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Declassified CIA documents report that the U.S. Government organized, funded, and equipped the 1954 "coup d'état", deposing the elected Guatemalan presidential government of Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. Analysts Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh report that "after a small insurgency developed, in the wake of the "coup", Guatemala's military leaders developed and refined, with U.S. assistance, a massive counter-insurgency campaign that left tens of thousands of massacred, maimed or missing [people]." Historian Stephen G. Rabe, reports that "in destroying the popularly elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman (1950–1954), the United States initiated a nearly four-decade-long cycle of terror and repression." The "coup d'état" installed lead usurper Colonel Castillo Armas as head of government, and then he and "the United States began to militarize Guatemala almost immediately, financing and reorganizing the police and military."


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: The report by the Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) shows that the United States institutionalized its "National Security Doctrine" in nearly every country in Latin America. In Guatemala, this strategy was first implemented "as anti-reformist, then anti-democratic policies, culminating in criminal counterinsurgency." In 1962, the Kennedy administration shifted the mission of the armies in Latin America, including Guatemala, from "hemispheric defense" to "internal security". Charles Meachling Jr., who led U.S. counterinsurgency and internal defense planning from 1961 to 1966, explains the results of this new initiative as a shift from toleration of "the rapacity and cruelty of the Latin American military", to "direct complicity" in their crimes, to U.S. support for "the methods of Heinrich Himmler's extermination squads."


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Also in 1962, Guatemalan specialist Susanne Jonas has alleged that U.S. Special Forces set up a secret military training base. After a successful (U.S. backed) coup against president Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes in 1963, U.S. advisors began to work with Colonel Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio to defeat the guerrillas, borrowing "extensively from current counterinsurgency strategies and technology being employed in Vietnam." In subsequent years, Arana earned the nickname "Butcher of Zacapa". Amnesty International cited estimates that 3,000 to 8,000 peasants were killed by the army and paramilitary organizations in Zacapa and Izabal under Colonel Arana between October 1966 and March 1968. Other estimates are that 15,000 peasants were killed to eliminate 300 suspected rebels. After July 1966, when President Julio César Méndez Montenegro signed a pact permitting the army to pursue a more aggressive counterinsurgency program, there was an influx of American military and security advisors in Guatemala. Up to 1,000 U.S. Green Berets were estimated to be operating in Zacapa during the 1966–68 period, providing training and support for Guatemalan counterinsurgency operations. Jonas claims that the ratio of military advisers to local military officials in Guatemala was the highest of any Latin American country in the late 1960s and 70s, and moreover that "there is substantial evidence of the direct role of U.S. military advisers in the formation of death squads: U.S. Embassy personnel were allegedly involved in writing an August 1966 memorandum outlining the creation of paramilitary groups, and the U.S. military attaché during this period publicly claimed credit for instigating their formation as part of "counterterror" operations."


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: A retrospective analysis of US government "Biographic Register" and "Foreign Service Lists" revealed that many of the same U.S. personnel operating in Guatemala during the 1960s and 70s also served in South Vietnam, particularly in Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS).


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: In 1977, the Carter administration published a report citing the Guatemalan government as a "gross and consistent human rights violator" while noting that the situation was improving under the administration of president Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García. Angered by this report, the Laugerud government renounced all US military assistance on 11 March 1977. Congress then reduced military aid to Guatemala for that year and prohibited military aid after 1978. Despite the prohibition, covert and overt US support for the Guatemalan army continued as the administration continued to send equipment to Guatemala through the CIA or reclassified military items as non-military. In fiscal years 1978, 1979 and 1980 (the three years for which the Carter administration can be held responsible), the US delivered approximately $8.5 million in direct military assistance to Guatemala, mostly Foreign Military Sales credits, as well as export licensing for commercial arms sales worth $1.8 million, a rate which differs very little from that of the Nixon-Ford Administrations. According to Elias Barahona, former Press Secretary for the Ministry of Home Affairs in Guatemala from 1976 to 1980, the United States also worked closely with the government of Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia on the development of anti-guerilla strategies through the "Programme for the Elimination of Communism". This was also confirmed by several other senior civil servants who worked under Lucas Garcia.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Additionally, the reaction of U.S. policymakers in multilateral lending institutions was at best ambiguous during the Carter administration and economic and financial aid continued to reach Guatemala. The U.S. only voted against 2 of 7 multilateral development bank loans for Guatemala between October 1979 and May 1980. In August 1980, it was reported that the U.S. had reversed its position entirely on multilateral development assistance to Guatemala. At that time, the U.S. refused to veto a $51 million loan from the IDB that was earmarked for government use in the turbulent Quiché area of northern Guatemala.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: After the election of Ronald Reagan, the U.S. undertook more active measures to ensure close relations with the Guatemalan government. In April 1981, President Reagan's national security team agreed to supply military aid to the Guatemalan regime in order to exterminate leftist guerrillas and their "civilian support mechanisms," according to a document from the National Archives.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: The US provided military logistical support to the Guatemalan Army, which was reclassified as non-military "regional stability controls" to circumvent the Congressional Embargo. Such aid included a $3.2 million shipment of 150 jeeps and trucks and shipments of three Bell-212 and six Bell-412 helicopters – worth $10.5 million – which were reportedly indispensable to the Guatemalan Army's capacity to transport its troops into the highlands for counterinsurgency sweeps. Lieutenant Col. George Maynes – former U.S. Defense Attache and Chief of the U.S. MilGroup in Guatemala – also worked with Guatemalan Army Chief-of-Staff Benedicto Lucas Garcia in the planning and development of the counterinsurgency program which was implemented by the Lucas Garcia regime in the highlands in late-1981 and early 1982. Maynes had close relations with Gen. Benedicto Lucas, functioning as an advisor in counterinsurgency matters. In an interview with investigative journalist Allen Nairn, Lt. Col. Maynes stated that Benedicto Lucas consulted with him on a regular basis. USAID assisted the army's "model village" or resettlement camp programs there as well.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: When Gen. Efrain Rios Montt seized power in 1982, the administration saw an opportunity to justify additional aid for Guatemala, including a $4 million shipment of helicopter spare parts. In October 1982, it was discovered that the US Army Special Forces were instructing Guatemalan Army cadets in a wide range of counterinsurgency tactics at the Escuela Politecnica, the Guatemalan Army's main officer training school. Captain Jesse Garcia, a 32-year-old Green Beret interviewed by the New York Times during a training exercise in October 1982, described his work in Guatemala as "not much different" than that of US advisors in El Salvador. The US Special Forces had been operating in Guatemala since at least 1980 under the guise of the Personnel Exchange Program, and were officially classified as "English Instructors". The curriculum offered to Guatemalan cadets by the US Special Forces during this period included training in surveillance, small arms, artillery, demolitions, ambushes, "helicopter assault tactics" and how to destroy towns. Another US Green Beret interviewed by the New York Times – Major Larry Salmon – who had operated in Guatemala from 1980 to 1982, described how he had helped the Guatemalans plan their tactical training and had given course instructions to the Guatemalan Army Parachute Brigade. By 1983, it was also confirmed that Guatemalan military officers were once again being trained at the US School of the Americas in Panama.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: In early 1982, with authorization from the State Department and The Pentagon, ten American-made M41 Walker Bulldog light tanks were illegally delivered to Guatemala by ASCO – a Belgian company – at a cost of US$34 million. The 10 tanks were part of a U.S. government authorized shipment of 22 tanks from Belgium to the Dominican Republic. Only twelve of the tanks were unloaded and the remainder were shipped to the Guatemalan military in Puerto Barrios on the Caribbean coast.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Human Rights Watch in 1984 criticized U.S. President Ronald Reagan for his December 1982 visit to Ríos Montt in Honduras, where Reagan dismissed reports of human rights abuses by prominent human rights organizations while insisting that Ríos Montt was receiving a "bum rap". Human Rights Watch reported that soon after, the Reagan administration announced that it was dropping a five-year prohibition on arms sales and moreover had "approved a sale of $6.36 million worth of military spare parts," to Rios Montt and his forces. Human Rights Watch described the degree of U.S. responsibility thus:


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: In January 1983, shortly after President Reagan's "bum rap" comment, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Elliott Abrams went on television to defend the announced resumption of military aid: The army massacres and the ensuing refugee flows should be blamed "on the guerrillas who are fighting the government", he said. Massacres and refugees are "the price of stability." As opposition to U.S. policy grew, the London Economist, three months later observed, "What liberal Americans can reasonably expect is that a condition of military help to Guatemala should be an easing of the political persecution of the center – which played into the hands of the extreme left in the first place."


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: The CEH's coordinator, Christian Tomuschat, stated that until the mid-1980s the United States government and U.S.-based multinationals exerted strong pressures "to maintain the country's archaic and unjust socioeconomic structures." In addition, he said, U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support to "some illegal state operations". In the 1980s and 1990s, the CIA employed Guatemalan intelligence officials as informants and supplied them with intelligence for their war efforts against guerrillas, farmers, peasants, and other opponents.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Among them, Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, base commander of the Military Intelligence Section (G-2). Alpirez discussed in an interview how the CIA helped advise and to run G-2. He claimed that U.S. agents trained G-2 men. Alpirez described attending CIA sessions at G-2 bases on "contra-subversion" tactics and "how to manage factors of power" to "fortify democracy." He said the CIA officials were on call to respond to G-2 questions, and that the G-2 often consulted the agency on how to deal with "political problems."


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: The agency also helped to provide "technical assistance" including communications equipment, computers and special firearms, as well as collaborative use of CIA-owned helicopters that were flown out of a piper hangar at La Aurora civilian airport and from a separate U.S. Air facility. The CIA also supplied the Guatemalan army and G-2 with "civil material assistance," which included medical supplies, Vietnam-era metal jeep parts, compasses, and walkie-talkies. When asked to summarize the CIA's relations with the Army Intelligence Directorate (D-2), one D-2 commander stated, "It's quite simple and I won't deny it: between the 1960s and 1990s, we had a structure from the CIA. The money, the resources, the training, and the relations were all from and through the CIA. This was the case because our intelligence, in the end, has had to serve the interests of the U.S."


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: An Intelligence Oversight Board report from 1996 writes that military aid was stopped during the Carter administration but later resumed under the Reagan Administration. "After a civilian government under President Cerezo was elected in 1985, overt non-lethal US military aid to Guatemala resumed. In December 1990, however, largely as a result of the killing of US citizen Michael DeVine by members of the Guatemalan army, the Bush administration suspended almost all overt military aid." "The funds the CIA provided to the Guatemalan liaison services were vital to the D-2 and Archivos." The CIA "continued this aid after the termination of overt military assistance in 1990." "Overall CIA funding levels to the Guatemalan services dropped consistently from about $3.5 million in FY 1989 to about 1 million in 1995." The report writes that "the CIA's liaison relationship with the Guatemalan services also benefited US interests by enlisting the assistance of Guatemala's primary intelligence and security service – the army's directorate of intelligence (D-2) – in areas such as reversing the 'auto-coup" of 1993'" "In the face of strong protests by Guatemalan citizens and the international community (including the United States) and – most importantly – in the face of the Guatemalan army's refusal to support him, President Serrano's Fujimori-style 'auto-coup' failed."


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: It is unknown to what extent American military and intelligence personnel participated directly in torture and human rights abuses in Guatemala. Few citizens who were taken and tortured by the military and intelligence services survived and most were "disappeared." However, a handful of those who did survive torture in Guatemala over the years have recounted that American agents were present during torture sessions or interrogated them after they had already been tortured.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: One man known as "David" was abducted by plainclothes soldiers in Guatemala City in 1969. He was stripped, beaten, burned with cigarettes and hooded with a bag full of insecticide before being fondled and threatened with rape. He was then subjected to repeated electric shocks on the sensitive parts of his body under the supervision of a "gringo" (a man speaking in an American accent) and told repeatedly to confess to being a guerrilla. After days of torture, his blindfold was removed and he was confronted by two Americans claiming to be from the Red Cross who told him that if he confessed to being a guerrilla, they would protect him from further torture. When "David" did not confess, they left and he never saw them again.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: In another testimony, a fourteen-year-old boy known as "Miguel" was abducted in Guatemala City with two of his friends in 1982. Members of his family and several other friends were also seized by security forces. Over the course of two days, "Miguel" and his friends where beaten, denied food and suffocated with hoods. They also witnessed a dying man lying on the floor, bleeding through bandaged eyes. They were then taken one-by-one to the headquarters of the feared DIT (Department of Technical Investigations) where they were interviewed by an American. The American was described as a short-haired caucasian man in his forties, with a military build who was flanked with two Guatemalan guards. It was noted that the "gringo" seemed to be an experienced interrogator, who knew many details about him and his family. One of his surviving friends (also interrogated by the "gringo") noted how he bragged about his experiences in Vietnam and Africa. At one point he threatened to "burn Miguel's ass" with hot coals if he didn't cooperate. Two of his friends who were captured later "disappeared."


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Another man "Juan" was a URNG guerrilla who was captured by the army in 1988 and turned over to the G-2 for interrogation. He was beaten with a bat, shocked on the testicles and underarms with electrodes and suffocated with a rubber hood full of insecticide (a very common torture technique in Guatemala). The army also seized his children from their church and threatened to drag them to death behind a car if he did not give better information. During one session, he was ushered into a room with two men, one of whom was notably taller than the other man and spoke in a heavy North American accent. The American promised Juan better treatment under the condition that he answer his questions, most of which pertained to the URNG's ties with Cuba and whether or not they had received training or medical treatment from the Cubans.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Perhaps the best known and most highly publicized case is that of Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American Roman Catholic nun who later founded a human rights advocacy group, the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC). In 1989, while working as a missionary in Guatemala, Ortiz was kidnapped, tortured, and gang raped by state security agents, receiving 111 second-degree cigarette burns. She identified the leader of the unit as a North American with the U.S. embassy and said that several members of the George H. W. Bush administration "slandered" her by denying her story. On a trip to Guatemala in 1999 after the publication of the Truth Commission report, U.S. President Bill Clinton issued an apology declaring that "support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression of the kind described in the report was wrong."


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: During the Central American crisis, the Israeli government cooperated closely with the United States in providing supplementary military and intelligence support for US-backed regimes in the region. This was especially true in Guatemala after 1977, when U.S. support became subject to constraints stemming from the rising tensions between Guatemala and Belize and Congressional opposition to the Guatemalan government's human rights practices. While the CIA and the US Green Berets continued to function covertly in Guatemala – providing training and counterinsurgency advice – a critical aspect of American support involved outsourcing operations to proxies such as Israel and Argentina. In a declassified National Security Council memo dated 1 August 1983, NSC aids Oliver North and Alfonso Sapia-Bosch reported to National Security Advisor William P. Clark that his deputy Robert McFarlane was planning to exploit Israeli intelligence networks to secretly arrange for the loan of 10 UH-1H "Huey" helicopters to Guatemala, which lacked the FMS (Foreign Military Sales) credits to obtain the helicopters. The memo reads, "With regard to the loan of ten helicopters, it is [our] understanding that Bud [Robert McFarlane] will take this up with the Israelis. There are expectations that they would be forthcoming."


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: By 1983, the "New York Times" reported that Israel was not only acting as a surrogate for the United States (in a similar fashion to its actions in Nicaragua), but also working to oppose the Soviet Union and grow the market for Israeli arms. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) calculates that 39 percent of Guatemala's weapons imports between 1975 and 1979 were from Israel. These shipments included Galil automatic rifles, IMI Uzi submachine guns, FN MAG general purpose machine guns, IAI Arava STOL aircraft, RBY MK 1 armored cars, patrol boats, field kitchens, and large quantities of ammunition.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Numerous sources – including the Israeli press – estimated that up to 300 Israeli advisors were operating in Guatemala. The nature of Israel's advisory role in Guatemala included training in intelligence and surveillance and courses in urban counterinsurgency. With funding from USAID, Israeli specialists – acting as subcontractors for the United States – held torture workshops with the Contras in Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras. High-ranking officers from Guatemala also attended courses in interrogation in Tel-Aviv – also with funds from USAID.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Though primarily a proxy for the United States, impact of Israeli training and the role of Israeli advisors in prosecuting the war during this period was publicly emphasized numerous times by top-ranking Guatemalan military officials during the 1980s. In 1981, Guatemalan Army Chief-of-Staff Gen. Benedicto Lucas Garcia – the architect of the Guatemalan army's "scorched-earth" policy – proclaimed that the "Israeli soldier is the model for our soldiers". In a 1982 interview with ABC News, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt attributed the success of his coup to the fact that his soldiers "were trained by Israelis". General Rodolfo Lobos Zamora, a leading military official during the conflict, mentioned the United States, Israel, and Argentina as countries that "spontaneously" offered military aid Guatemala. Despite some public praise for Israel, some Guatemalan officials were nonetheless critical of Israel's role. General Héctor Gramajo stated in an interview, "Maybe some Israeli's taught us intelligence but for reasons of business...The hawks (Israeli arms merchants) took advantage of us, selling us equipment at triple the price."


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Military regimes in the South American Southern Cone provided material support and training to the Guatemalan government. Argentina


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: in particular was a prominent source of both material aid and inspiration to the Guatemalan military. Many of the tactics used by the Guatemalan security forces were similar to those used by Argentina during the Dirty War. Argentina's involvement with the Guatemalan government fit within the broader context of Operation Charly, a covert operation (backed by the CIA) aimed at providing intelligence training and counterinsurgency assistance to the governments in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala as a supplement to U.S. operations in the region.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Argentine involvement in Guatemala is believed to have begun in 1980 and consisted of training in counterinsurgency methods, many of which were employed by the Videla regime during its own "dirty war" against leftist "subversives" and suspected guerillas. Argentine military advisors sent to Guatemala (as well as El Salvador and Honduras) were veterans of the "dirty war" who were familiar with the techniques employed by the military and security forces and were experienced in the use of torture and political assassination. A squadron of the notorious Batallón de Inteligencia 601 (Argentina's elite special forces battalion) worked directly with the death squads. Through its connections in the Guatemalan security forces, the Argentines were involved with the 'Secret Anticommunist Army' (ESA) carried out thousands of assassinations of leftist political activists, students, unionists and others in Guatemala City during the Lucas Garcia regime as part of its "pacification campaign." Argentine military advisors also participated in the Guatemalan army's rural counteroffensive in 1981 during "Operation Ash 81". Argentina's collaboration with the governments in Central America came to an end during the Falklands War in 1982.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: One Argentine intelligence officer who is known to have been active in Guatemala during this time is Alfredo Mario Mingolla, who participated in the 1980 'Cocaine Coup' in Bolivia which put General Luis García Meza in power. With the help of former SS officer and Nazi German war criminal Klaus Barbie and Argentine advisors such as Mingolla, the Bolivian regime violently repressed its opposition. Mingolla was also one of the Argentine advisors known to have been involved in training Battalion 3–16 in Honduras with the CIA, which was responsible for hundreds of disappearances. In Guatemala, Mingolla worked with the military intelligence services (G-2), which was responsible for coordinating many of the assassinations and disappearances in Guatemala.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: In addition to training officers in Guatemala, Argentine advisors are alleged to have trained Guatemalan officers in Honduras. Argentine training of Guatemalans in Honduras has been attested to by a defector from Battalion 3–16, Jose Federico Valle, who described his training in intelligence in 1980. Valle was one of 120 trainees from several Central American countries who attended courses offered by American, Argentine, Chilean and Panamanian advisors. Valle claims that among these trainees were 60 to 70 officers from El Salvador and Guatemala. Guatemalans were also trained in Argentina as well. In October 1981, the Guatemalan government and the Argentine military junta formalized secret accords which augmented Argentine participation in government counterinsurgency operations. As part of the agreement, two hundred Guatemalan officers were dispatched to Buenos Aires to undergo advanced military intelligence training, which included instruction in interrogation.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: Argentina also provided shipments of military hardware to the Guatemalan regime in the late-1970s and early-1980s, though the scale of these shipments is unknown. The government of Argentina is known to have supplied quantities of Israeli-made weapons and hardware to the Guatemalan military on several occasions.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: During the 1980s, the Guatemalan intelligence services had covert ties with South Africa. It is known that South Africa provided the Guatemalan government with military advice and training in counterinsurgency tactics based on those the SADF and paramilitary forces (such as the Koevoet) employed in Namibia and elsewhere. Of particular interest to the G-2 was the experience that the South Africans had in fighting Cuban forces in Angola. This cooperation coincided with a time when South Africa enjoyed warm relations with the United States and Israel, both of which were key allies of the Guatemalan regime. At the time, the CIA was actively supporting the apartheid regime's efforts to undermine the MPLA government in Angola, mainly through its support of UNITA. Israel had also helped South Africa develop its own arms industry at a time when it was becoming increasingly internationally isolated.


title: Guatemalan Civil War

text: While the full extent of this cooperation is unknown, it is reported that a number of Guatemalan officers traveled to South Africa and Namibia in early 1983 to study South African techniques being employed against the SWAPO independence movement. South Africa is also alleged to have offered to deploy counterinsurgency troops to Guatemala, though what was made of this offer by their Guatemalan counterparts is unknown. It was also reported in November of the following year, that high ranking South African Generals L.B. Erasmus and Alexander Potgeiter headed an SADF delegation to Guatemala which toured Guatemalan military bases and installations and held talks with high-ranking officials of the Mejia Victores government to discuss military aid.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: Sir Michael Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 5th Baronet (born 5 May 1940) is an American-born television, film, music video, and theatre director. Beginning his career in British television, Lindsay-Hogg became a pioneer in music film production, directing promotional films for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Following his work with these bands, he branched out into film and theatre, while still maintaining successful careers in television and music video production.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: Michael Lindsay-Hogg was born in New York City in 1940 to actress Geraldine Fitzgerald. He was educated at Trinity School in New York and at Choate School in Connecticut. For most of his early life, he understood that his father was Fitzgerald's husband, Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, to whom she was married until 1946. When Michael Lindsay-Hogg was 16, his mother reluctantly divulged that there had been pervasive rumours that his father was Orson Welles, and she denied them—but in such detail that he was left confused and skeptical. Fitzgerald evaded the subject for the rest of her life.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: Lindsay-Hogg knew Welles, worked with him in the theatre, and met him at intervals throughout Welles's life. After he learned that Welles's oldest daughter, Chris, his childhood playmate, had long suspected that he was her brother, Lindsay-Hogg initiated a DNA test, which proved inconclusive. In his 2011 autobiography, Lindsay-Hogg reported that his questions were resolved by his mother's close friend Gloria Vanderbilt, who wrote that Fitzgerald had told her that Welles was his father. A 2015 Welles biography by Patrick McGilligan, however, argues that Welles could not be the father: Fitzgerald left the U.S. for Ireland in May 1939, and was pregnant at the time she returned in late October, while Welles did not travel overseas during that period.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: Lindsay-Hogg grew up with a stepfather, American businessman Stuart Scheftel, who married Fitzgerald in 1946.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: Lindsay-Hogg began his career in 1965, directing episodes of the British pop programme "Ready Steady Go!" featuring artists such as the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and The Who. In addition to these he directed episodes of "Blackmail", "The Informer", "A Man of Our Times", "Half Hour Story", and "The Company of Five", a series of television plays. He served as the series director of "The Ronnie Barker Playhouse" in 1968. In 1969, an episode that he directed of the mystery/supernatural anthology series "Journey to the Unknown" was released as part of a TV movie.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: Through his work on "Ready Steady Go!", Lindsay-Hogg became acquainted with some of the top rock artists of the day, and was subsequently hired to direct promotional films for their songs. Some of his early promo film work includes films for the Beatles' "Paperback Writer", "Rain", "Hey Jude", and "Revolution" and the Rolling Stones' "2000 Light Years from Home", "Jumpin' Jack Flash", and "Child of the Moon". His work on these and other films led Camerimage to award him a retrospective "Music Video Pioneer" award in 2012. The Rolling Stones liked his work, and he was approached in 1968 to direct a full-length television special. Lindsay-Hogg conceived "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus", featuring the Stones and other musicians playing in a circus atmosphere. The band was not completely satisfied with the result, and the film did not see release until 1996.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: Lindsay-Hogg was hired by the Beatles to direct a film. Originally conceived as a television special, "Get Back" was to feature footage of the Beatles recording a new album and rehearsing for a concert appearance. However, the film and album were shelved for a time following the Beatles' rooftop concert in January 1969. The Beatles returned to the project, and released the newly retitled "Let It Be" (1970) along with an album of the same name. Material originally captured for Lindsay-Hogg's 1970 documentary was used by Peter Jackson for the 2021 documentary series "", which portrays more harmony than acrimony during those sessions.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: Following "Let It Be", Lindsay-Hogg continued his work in UK television, directing both episodes and TV movies, including work on the TV serial "Brideshead Revisited" (1981). His work on the BBC series "Play for Today" and "Play of the Week", and the serial "Brideshead Revisited" were each nominated for BAFTA awards, in 1974, 1978, and 1983, respectively, with "Brideshead Revisited" winning for Best Drama Series/Serial. His second feature film as director, "Nasty Habits" (1977), is a comedy satire of the Watergate scandal. His third theatrical film, "The Sound of Murder", was released in 1982.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: Lindsay-Hogg continued directing music videos throughout the 1970s, including many for the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney and Wings. In 1985, he directed the video for Whitney Houston's single "You Give Good Love". During the 1980s he returned to directing concert films, including Simon and Garfunkel's "The Concert in Central Park", Neil Young's "Neil Young in Berlin" and "Paul Simon, Graceland: The African Concert". Lindsay-Hogg's work in the 1980s also included directing TV movies of various plays and novels, including adaptations of "Doctor Fischer of Geneva" (1984), "Master Harold...and the Boys" (1985), "As Is" (1986), and "The Little Match Girl" (1987).


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: Lindsay-Hogg's "The Object of Beauty" for the BBC's "Screen Two" series of television films received positive reviews in 1991, and his comedy/drama for HBO, "Running Mates", was broadcast in 1992. "Frankie Starlight" (1995), which followed, was met with mixed reception. In 1994, he directed the Roger Daltrey concert film "". The VH1 television movie entitled "Two of Us" (2000) is a fictionalized account of the last meeting between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. He directed a film adaptation of Samuel Beckett's absurdist play "Waiting for Godot" (2001).


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: In addition to his television and film work, Lindsay-Hogg is known for his work in theatre. He directed both the original 1978 production (for which he was nominated for a Tony Award) and 1980 revival of "Whose Life Is It Anyway?". He also directed Broadway productions of "Agnes of God" (1982), and "The Boys of Winter" (1985). Off-Broadway, he helmed Larry Kramer's AIDS drama "The Normal Heart" in 1985.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: His autobiography entitled "Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond" was published in 2011. It chronicles his career and his relationship with Orson Welles. After a long hiatus from television and film work, Lindsay-Hogg began directing the television series "Tinsel's Town" in 2015.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: Lindsay-Hogg married Lucy Mary Davies in 1967; they divorced in 1971. Lucy Lindsay-Hogg subsequently became the second wife of photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, in 1978.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: For 10 years, in the 1970s, Lindsay-Hogg was romantically involved with British actress Jean Marsh. He had also been involved with Gloria Vanderbilt, who had assured Lindsay-Hogg that Orson Welles was his father.


title: Michael Lindsay-Hogg

text: In 1999, he succeeded to the baronetcy of Rotherfield Hall in East Sussex after the death of his father Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th Baronet.


title: Whitney Port

text: Whitney Eve Port-Rosenman (born March 4, 1985) is an American television personality, fashion designer and author. In 2006, Port came to prominence after being cast in the reality television series "The Hills", which chronicled the personal and professional lives of Port and friends Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag, and Audrina Patridge. During its production, she held internship positions with "Teen Vogue" and Kelly Cutrone's People's Revolution.


title: Whitney Port

text: After moving to New York City to begin an internship with Diane von Fürstenberg in 2008, Port was commissioned to star in her own spin-off series "The City", which originally documented the lives of Port and companions Jay Lyon, Olivia Palermo, and Adam Senn. After undergoing several casting adjustments and receiving solid ratings the series was canceled in 2010 after airing two seasons, due to high production costs. Port launched her fashion line "Whitney Eve" in 2009. In 2012, she served as a judge on the eighth cycle of "Britain & Ireland's Next Top Model".


title: Whitney Port

text: Whitney Eve Port was born in Los Angeles to parents Jeffrey and Vicki (née Woskoff). Her father owned a fashion company, Swarm. Port has a brother Ryan and three sisters Ashley, Paige, and Jade, and was raised in a Jewish household.


title: Whitney Port

text: Port attended Warner Avenue Elementary School and Crossroads School, alongside her "The Hills" co-stars, Spencer and Stephanie Pratt. In 2007, she graduated from the University of Southern California with a bachelor's degree in gender studies. Afterwards, Port held internships with the magazines "Women's Wear Daily" and "W".


title: Whitney Port

text: In 2006, MTV developed the reality television series "The Hills" as the spin-off of "". It originally chronicled the lives of Lauren Conrad, who appeared on its predecessor, her housemate Heidi Montag, and friends Audrina Patridge and Port. During production of the first season, Port and Conrad held internships with "Teen Vogue" under the direction of West Coast "Vogue" editor Lisa Love, who stated the girls had to interview successfully for the positions, "regardless of what the cameras wanted". In 2007, Port notably tripped down the stairs during a live segment for "Good Morning America". During the third season of "The Hills", Port was promoted as the West Coast fashion contributor for "Teen Vogue", and left the position in 2008. Later that year, Port and Conrad began interning with Kelly Cutrone's public relations firm, People's Revolution. Port rejected an opportunity to become housemates with Conrad and Patridge, saying she "[prefers] to keep some things private".


title: Whitney Port

text: In March 2008, Port debuted her first fashion line "Whitney Eve". Upon the conclusion of the fourth season of "The Hills" that December, Port moved to New York City to accept an internship position with Diane von Fürstenberg. That month, she was commissioned to star in the spin-off series "The City", which additionally placed emphasis on her boyfriend Jay Lyon, their friends Erin Lucas and Adam Senn, and her co-worker Olivia Palermo. During the first half of the inaugural season, Port severed ties with Lyon, clashed with Palermo at the workplace, and ultimately returned to People's Revolution. After underwhelming ratings, Lyon, Lucas, and Senn were replaced by Port's friend Roxy Olin and Palermo's new co-worker Erin Kaplan in the second half of the first season. The series' second season saw the development of "Whitney Eve", and aired its final episode in July 2010 before being officially cancelled that October.


title: Whitney Port

text: In late 2010, Port made an appearance on the online series, "Hollywood Is Like High School with Money", for which she served as the executive producer. The program additionally served as a promotional platform for her "Whitney Eve" collection. In January 2011, Port was featured in a magazine spread in "Maxim". In February, Port released her first book "True Whit: Designing a Life of Style, Beauty, and Fun". Later that year, she hosted the Hulu-exclusive game show, "Genuine Ken".


title: Whitney Port

text: In 2012, Port was confirmed to join the judging panel of the eighth cycle of "Britain and Ireland's Next Top Model", alongside fellow new hire Tyson Beckford, and returning judges Elle Macpherson and Julien MacDonald. She left the program upon the conclusion of the season. Port had a cameo role in the film, "What To Expect When You're Expecting", starring Jennifer Lopez.


title: Whitney Port

text: At the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards, MTV announced a reboot of "The Hills" entitled "", slated to premiere in 2019. Port was announced as part of the cast of the new series. Port had started a YouTube channel in 2012 to promote the release of her fashion line, which then followed her life as a wife and mother. Since 2019, it has primarily become a reaction channel of Port and her husband to Port's appearances on "The Hills: New Beginnings", "The City" and "The Hills". Port also started her podcast "With Whit," in collaboration with Dear Media, in August 2019.


title: Whitney Port

text: As of 2021, Port and her husband have continued filming reaction videos to "The Hills" and other related shows, for their YouTube channel. She also launched her new clothing line CozeCo in June 2021.


title: Whitney Port

text: In March 2013, Whitney's father, Jeffrey Port, died from a year-long battle with kidney cancer. In November 2013, she announced her engagement to her former "The City" producer, Tim Rosenman, whom she began dating in 2012. They were married on November 7, 2015. Port and Rosenman have a son, Sonny Sanford Rosenman, born July 27, 2017. Port has suffered a chemical pregnancy, and three miscarriages, in July 2019, January 2020 and November 2021.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Irena Stanisława Sendler (), also referred to as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland, "nom de guerre" Jolanta (15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008), was a Polish humanitarian, social worker, and nurse who served in the Polish Underground Resistance during World War II in German-occupied Warsaw. From October 1943 she was head of the children's section of "Żegota", the Polish Council to Aid Jews ().


title: Irena Sendler

text: In the 1930s, Sendler conducted her social work as one of the activists connected to the Free Polish University. From 1935 to October 1943, she worked for the Department of Social Welfare and Public Health of the City of Warsaw. During the war she pursued conspiratorial activities, such as rescuing Jews, primarily as part of the network of workers and volunteers from that department, mostly women. Sendler participated, with dozens of others, in smuggling Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then providing them with false identity documents and shelter with willing Polish families or in orphanages and other care facilities, including Catholic nun convents, saving those children from the Holocaust.


title: Irena Sendler

text: The German occupiers suspected Sendler's involvement in the Polish Underground and in October 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo, but she managed to hide the list of the names and locations of the rescued Jewish children, preventing this information from falling into the hands of the Gestapo. Withstanding torture and imprisonment, Sendler never revealed anything about her work or the location of the saved children. She was sentenced to death but narrowly escaped on the day of her scheduled execution, after "Żegota" bribed German officials to obtain her release.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In post-war communist Poland, Sendler continued her social activism but also pursued a government career. In 1965, she was recognised by the State of Israel as Righteous Among the Nations. Among the many decorations Sendler received were the Gold Cross of Merit granted her in 1946 for the saving of Jews and the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour, awarded late in Sendler's life for her wartime humanitarian efforts.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Sendler was born on 15 February 1910 in Warsaw, to Stanisław Henryk Krzyżanowski, a physician, and his wife, Janina Karolina (née Grzybowska). She was baptized Irena Stanisława on 2 February 1917 in Otwock. She initially grew up in Otwock, a town about southeast of Warsaw, where there was a Jewish community. Her father, a humanitarian who treated the very poor, including Jews, free of charge, died in February 1917 from typhus contracted from his patients. After his death, the Jewish community offered financial help for the widow and her daughter, though Janina Krzyżanowska declined their assistance. Afterwards she lived in Tarczyn and Piotrków Trybunalski.


title: Irena Sendler

text: From 1927, Sendler studied law for two years and then Polish literature at the University of Warsaw, interrupting her studies for several years from 1932 to 1937. She opposed the ghetto benches system practiced in the 1930s at many Polish institutions of higher learning (from 1937 at the University of Warsaw) and defaced the "non-Jewish" identification on her grade card. She reported having suffered from academic disciplinary measures because of her activities and reputation as a communist and philo-Semite. By the outbreak of World War II she submitted her magister degree thesis, but had not taken the final exams. Sendler joined the Union of Polish Democratic Youth ("Związek Polskiej Młodzieży Demokratycznej") in 1928; during the war she became a member of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). She was repeatedly refused employment in the Warsaw school system because of negative recommendations issued by the university, which ascribed radically leftist views to her.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Sendler became associated with social and educational units of the Free Polish University ("Wolna Wszechnica Polska"), where she met and was influenced by activists from the illegal Communist Party of Poland. At "Wszechnica" Sendler belonged to a group of social workers led by Professor Helena Radlińska; a dozen or more women from that circle would later engage in rescuing Jews. From her social work on-site interviews Sendler recalled many cases of extreme poverty that she encountered among the Jewish population of Warsaw.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Sendler was employed in a legal counseling and social help clinic, the Section for Mother and Child Assistance at the Citizen Committee for Helping the Unemployed. She published two pieces in 1934, both concerned with the situation of children born out of wedlock and their mothers. She worked mostly in the field, crisscrossing Warsaw's impoverished neighborhoods, and her clients were helpless, socially disadvantaged women. In 1935, the government abolished the section. Many of its members became employees of the City of Warsaw, including Sendler in the Department of Social Welfare and Public Health.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Sendler married Mieczysław Sendler in 1931. He was mobilized for war, captured as a soldier in September 1939 and remained in a German prisoner of war camp until 1945; they divorced in 1947. She then married Stefan Zgrzembski (born Adam Celnikier), a Jewish friend and wartime companion, by whom she had three children, Janina, Andrzej (who died in infancy), and Adam (who died of heart failure in 1999). In 1957 Zgrzembski left the family; he died in 1961 and Irena remarried her first husband, Mieczysław Sendler. Ten years later they divorced again.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Soon after the German invasion, on 1 November 1939, the German occupation authorities ordered Jews removed from the staff of the municipal Social Welfare Department where Sendler worked and barred the department from providing any assistance to Warsaw's Jewish citizens. Sendler with her colleagues and activists from the department's PPS cell became involved in helping the wounded and sick Polish soldiers. On Sendler's initiative the cell began generating false medical documents, needed by the soldiers and poor families to obtain aid. Her PPS comrades unaware, Sendler extended such assistance also to her Jewish charges, who were now officially served only by the Jewish community institutions. With Jadwiga Piotrowska, Jadwiga Sałek-Deneko and Irena Schultz, Sendler also created other false references and pursued ingenious schemes in order to help Jewish families and children excluded from their department's social welfare protection.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Around four hundred thousand Jews were crowded into a small portion of the city designated as the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazis sealed the area in November 1940. As employees of the Social Welfare Department, Sendler and Schultz gained access to special permits for entering the ghetto to check for signs of typhus, a disease the Germans feared would spread beyond the ghetto. Under the pretext of conducting sanitary inspections, they brought medications and cleanliness items and sneaked clothing, food, and other necessities into the ghetto. For Sendler, one initial motivation for the expanding ghetto aid operation were her friends, acquaintances and former colleagues who ended up on the Jewish side of the wall, beginning with Adam Celnikier (he managed to leave the ghetto at the time of its liquidation). Sendler and other social workers would eventually help the Jews who escaped or arrange for smuggling out babies and small children from the ghetto using various means available. Transferring Jews out of the ghetto and facilitating their survival elsewhere became an urgent priority in the summer of 1942, at the time of the Great Action.


title: Irena Sendler

text: This work was done at huge risk, as—since October 1941—giving any kind of assistance to Jews in German-occupied Poland was punishable by death, not just for the person who was providing the help but also for their entire family or household.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Sendler joined the Polish Socialists, a left-wing branch of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). The Polish Socialists evolved into the Polish Socialist Workers' Party (RPPS), which cooperated with the communist Polish Workers' Party (PPR). Sendler was known there by her conspiratorial pseudonym Klara and among her duties were searching for places to stay, issuing fake documents and being a liaison, guiding activists to clandestine meetings. In the RPPS there were Poles she knew, involved in saving Jews, as well as Jews that she had helped. Sendler participated in the secret life of the ghetto. She described a commemoration event there, on the anniversary of the October Revolution but in the spirit of the Polish leftist tradition; it included artistic performances by children. While in the ghetto, she wore a Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people.


title: Irena Sendler

text: The Jewish ghetto was a functioning community and to many Jews seemed the safest available place for themselves and their children. In addition, survival on the outside was plausible only for people with access to financial resources. This calculation lost its validity in July 1942, when the Germans proceeded with the liquidation of the ghetto in Warsaw, to be followed by the extermination of its residents. Sendler and her associates—as related by Jonas Turkow—could take a small number of children, and a certain number could be accepted and supported by Christian institutions, but a larger-scale action was prevented by the lack of funds. Initial funds for transfer and maintenance of ghetto children were provided by members of the Jewish community, still in existence, in cooperation with women from the Welfare Department. Sendler and others, in accordance with their mission, wanted to help the neediest children (such as orphans) first. Turkow, who contacted Wanda Wyrobek and Sendler to take out of the ghetto and arrange care for his daughter Margarita, wanted to prioritize children of the most "deserving" (accomplished) people.


title: Irena Sendler

text: During the Great Action, Sendler kept entering or trying to enter the ghetto. She made desperate attempts to save her friends, but among her former Welfare Department associates unable or unwilling to leave the ghetto were Ewa Rechtman and Ala Gołąb-Grynberg. According to Jadwiga Piotrowska, who saved numerous Jewish children, during the Great Action people from the Welfare Department operated individually (had no organization or leader). Other accounts suggest that women from that group concentrated on making arrangements for Jews who had already left the ghetto, and that Sendler in particular took care of adults and adolescents.


title: Irena Sendler

text: "Żegota" (the Council to Aid Jews) was an underground organization that originated on 27 September 1942 as the Provisional Committee to Aid Jews, led by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a resistance fighter and writer. By that time, most Polish Jews were no longer alive. "Żegota", established on 4 December 1942, was a new form of the committee, expanded by the participation of Jewish parties and chaired by Julian Grobelny. It was financed by the founder of the Provisional Committee, the Government Delegation for Poland, a Polish Underground State institution representing the Polish government-in-exile. Working for "Żegota" from January 1943, Sendler functioned as a coordinator of the Welfare Department network. They distributed money grants that became available from "Żegota". Regular payments, however insufficient for the needs, enhanced their ability to assist the hiding Jews. In 1963, Sendler specifically listed 29 people she worked with within the "Żegota" operation, adding that 15 more perished during the war. In regard to the action of saving Jewish children, according to a 1975 opinion written by Sendler's former Welfare Department co-workers, she was the most active and organizationally gifted of participants.


title: Irena Sendler

text: During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a network of emergency shelters was created by Sendler's group: private residencies where Jews could be temporarily housed, while "Żegota" worked on producing documents and finding longer-term locations for them. Many Jewish children went through the homes of Izabella Kuczkowska, Zofia Wędrychowska, and other social workers. Helena Rybak and Jadwiga Koszutska were activists from the communist underground.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In August 1943, "Żegota" set up its children's section, directed by Aleksandra Dargiel, a manager in the Central Welfare Council (RGO). Dargiel, overwhelmed by her RGO duties, resigned in September and proposed Sendler to be her replacement. Sendler, then known by her "nom de guerre" Jolanta, took over the section from October 1943.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Permanently, Jewish children were placed by Sendler's network with Polish families (25%), in Warsaw orphanage of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary led by Mother Provincial Matylda Getter, Roman Catholic convents such as the Sister Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Turkowice (sisters Aniela Polechajłło and Antonina Manaszczuk) or the Felician Sisters, in Boduen Home charity facilities for children, and other orphanages (75%). A nun convent offered the best opportunity for a Jewish child to survive and be taken care of. To accomplish the transfers and placement of children, Sendler worked closely with other volunteers. The children were often given Christian names and taught Christian prayers in case they were tested. Sendler wanted to preserve the children's Jewish identities, so she kept careful documentation listing their Christian names, given names, and current locations.


title: Irena Sendler

text: According to American historian Debórah Dwork, Sendler was the inspiration and the prime mover for the whole network that saved Jewish children. She and her co-workers buried lists of the hidden children in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities. The aim was to return the children to their original families, if still alive after the war.


title: Irena Sendler

text: On 18 October 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo. As they ransacked her house, Sendler tossed the lists of children to her friend Janina Grabowska, who hid the list in her loose clothing. Should the Gestapo access this information, all children would be compromised, but Grabowska was never searched. The Gestapo took Sendler to their headquarters and beat her brutally. Despite this, she refused to betray any of her comrades or the children they rescued. She was placed in the Pawiak prison, where she was subjected to further interrogations and beatings, and from there on 13 November taken to another location, to be executed by firing squad. According to biographer Anna Mieszkowska and Sendler, these events took place on 20 January. Her life was saved, however, because the German guards escorting her were bribed, and she was released on the way to the execution. Sendler was freed due to the efforts of Maria Palester, a fellow Welfare Department activist, who obtained the necessary funds from "Żegota" chief Julian Grobelny; she used her contacts and a teenage daughter to transfer the bribe money. On 30 November, Warsaw's mayor Julian Kulski asked the German authorities for permission to re-employ Sendler in the Welfare Department with back-pay for the period of her imprisonment. Permission was granted on 14 April 1944, but Sendler found it prudent to remain in hiding, as Klara Dąbrowska, a nurse. Already in mid-December 1943, she resumed her duties as manager of the children's section of "Żegota".


title: Irena Sendler

text: During the Warsaw Uprising, Sendler worked as a nurse in a field hospital, where a number of Jews were hidden among other patients. She was wounded by a German deserter she encountered while searching for food. She continued to work as a nurse until the Germans left Warsaw, retreating before the advancing Soviet troops.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Sendler's hospital, now at Okęcie, previously supported by "Żegota", ran out of resources. She hitchhiked in military trucks to Lublin, to obtain funding from the communist government established there, and then helped Maria Palester to reorganize the hospital as the Warsaw's Children Home. Sendler also resumed other social work activities and quickly advanced within the new structures, in December 1945 becoming head of the Department of Social Welfare in Warsaw's municipal government. She ran her department according to concepts, radical at the time, that she had learned from Helena Radlińska at the Free University.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Sendler and her co-workers gathered all of the records with the names and locations of the hidden Jewish children and gave them to their "Żegota" colleague Adolf Berman and his staff at the Central Committee of Polish Jews. Almost all of the children's parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had gone missing. Berman and Sendler both felt that the Jewish children should be reunited with "their nation", but argued vehemently about specific aims and methods; most children were taken out of Poland.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Over the years, among Sendler's social and formal functions were a membership in Warsaw City Council, chairmanships of the Commission for Widows and Orphans and of the Health Commission there, activity in the League of Women and in the managing councils of the Society of Friends of Children and the Society for Lay Schools.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Sendler joined the communist Polish Workers' Party in January 1947 and remained a member of its successor, the Polish United Workers' Party, until the party's dissolution in 1990. According to the research done by Anna Bikont, in 1947 Sendler advanced to the party executive by becoming a member of the Social Welfare Section at the Central Committee's Social-Vocational Department. From then she continuously held a succession of high-level party and administrative posts during the entire Stalinist period and beyond, including the jobs of department director in the Ministry of Education from 1953 and of department director in the Ministry of Health in 1958–1962. Especially prior to 1950, Sendler was heavily involved in Central Committee work and party activism, which included implementation of social rules and propagation of ideas dictated by the Stalinist doctrine, and policy enforcement; by engaging in such pursuits, she abandoned some of her previously held views and lost some important acquaintances. After the fall of communism, however, Sendler claimed having been brutally interrogated in 1949 by the Ministry of Public Security, accused of hiding among her employees politically active former members of the Home Army (AK), a resistance organization loyal during the war to the Polish government-in-exile. She attributed the premature birth of her son Andrzej, who did not survive, to such persecution. Anna Bikont quoted Władysław Bartoszewski, who asserted before his death in 2015 that Sendler was not persecuted in communist Poland. Her continuing employment in high-level state positions also speaks against the possibility that she was a subject of serious investigation.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In the Polish People's Republic, Sendler received at least six decorations, including the Gold Cross of Merit ("Złoty Krzyż Zasługi") for the wartime saving of Jews in 1946, another Gold Cross of Merit in 1956, and the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1963. Materials dealing with her activities during the war were published, but Sendler became a well-known public personality only after being "rediscovered" by the group from an American high school in 2000 (at the age of ninety). She was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations and received her award at the embassy of Israel in Warsaw in 1965, together with Irena Schultz. In 1983 she traveled to Israel, invited by Yad Vashem Institute for the tree-planting ceremony.


title: Irena Sendler

text: From 1962, Sendler worked as deputy director in several Warsaw trade medical schools. At every stage of her career, she worked long hours and was intensely involved in various social work programs, such as helping teenage prostitutes in the ruins of post-war Warsaw recover and return to society, organizing a number of orphanages and care centers for children, families and the elderly, or a center for prostitutes in Henryków. She was known for her effectiveness and displayed a sharp edge when confronted with obstruction or indifference.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Sendler's husband, Stefan Zgrzembski, never shared her enthusiasm for the post-1945 reality. Their marriage kept deteriorating. According to Janina Zgrzembska, their daughter, neither parent paid much attention to the two children. Sendler was entirely consumed by her social work passion and career, at the expense of her own offspring, who were raised by a housekeeper. Around 1956, Sendler asked Teresa Körner, whom she had helped during the war and who was now in Israel, to assist her with immigration to Israel with children, who were Jewish and not safe in Poland. Körner discouraged Sendler's move.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In the spring of 1967, suffering from a variety of health problems, including a heart condition and anxiety disorder, Sendler applied for a disability pension. She was dismissed from the school's vice-principal position in May 1967, shortly before the Arab–Israeli War. From the fall of 1967, she continued working at the same school as a teacher, manager of teacher workshops and librarian, until her 1983 retirement. According to Sendler, in 1967 her daughter Janina was removed from the already published list of students admitted to the University of Warsaw, but Janina reported that she had simply failed to satisfy the admission requirements. The antisemitic campaign of 1967–68 in Poland left Sendler deeply traumatized.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Sendler never told her children of the Jewish origin of their father; Janina Zgrzembska found out as an adult. It wouldn't make any difference, she said: the way they were brought up, race or origin didn't matter.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In 1980, Sendler joined the Solidarity movement. She lived in Warsaw for the remainder of her life. She died on 12 May 2008, aged 98, and is buried in Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In 1965, Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations. In 1983 she was present when a tree was planted in her honor at the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In 1991, Sendler was made an honorary citizen of Israel. On 12 June 1996, she was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. She received a higher version of this award, the Commander's Cross with Star, on 7 November 2001.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Sendler's achievements were largely unknown in North America until 1999, when students at a high school in Uniontown, Kansas, led by their teacher Norman Conard, produced a play based on their research into her life story, which they called "Life in a Jar". The play was a surprising success, staged over 200 times in the United States and abroad, and it significantly contributed to publicizing Sendler's story. In March 2002, Temple B'nai Jehudah of Kansas City presented Sendler, Conard, and the students who produced the play with its annual award "for contributions made to saving the world" (Tikkun olam award). The play was adapted for television as "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler" (2009), directed by John Kent Harrison, in which Sendler was portrayed by actress Anna Paquin.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In 2003, Pope John Paul II sent Sendler a personal letter praising her wartime efforts. On 10 November 2003, she received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian decoration, and the Polish-American award, the Jan Karski Award "For Courage and Heart", given by the American Center of Polish Culture in Washington, D.C.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In 2006, Polish NGOs "Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej" and "Stowarzyszenie Dzieci Holocaustu", the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland, and the Life in a Jar Foundation established the Irena Sendler's Award "For Repairing the World" (), awarded to Polish and American teachers. The Life in a Jar Foundation is a foundation dedicated to promoting the attitude and message of Irena Sendler.


title: Irena Sendler

text: On 14 March 2007, Sendler was honoured by the Senate of Poland, and a year later, on 30 July, by the United States Congress. On 11 April 2007, she received the Order of the Smile; at that time, she was the oldest recipient of the award. In 2007 she became an honorary citizen of the cities of Warsaw and Tarczyn.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In April 2009 Sendler was posthumously granted the Humanitarian of the Year award from The Sister Rose Thering Endowment, and in May 2009, Sendler was posthumously granted the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Around this time American filmmaker Mary Skinner filmed a documentary, "Irena Sendler, In the Name of Their Mothers" (Polish: "Dzieci Ireny Sendlerowej"), featuring the last interviews Sendler gave before her death. The film made its national U.S. broadcast premiere through KQED Presents on PBS in May 2011 in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day and went on to receive several awards, including the 2012 Gracie Award for outstanding public television documentaries.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In 2010 a memorial plaque commemorating Sendler was added to the wall of 2 Pawińskiego Street in Warsaw – a building in which she worked from 1932 to 1935. In 2015 she was honoured with another memorial plaque at 6 Ludwiki Street, where she lived from the 1930s to 1943. Several schools in Poland have also been named after her.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In 2013 the walkway in front of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw was named after Sendler.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In 2016, a permanent exhibit was established to honor Sendler's life at the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes museum, in Fort Scott, KS.


title: Irena Sendler

text: Gal Gadot has been cast to play Sendler in a historic thriller written by Justine Juel Gillmer and produced by Pilot Wave.


title: Irena Sendler

text: In 2010, Polish historian Anna Mieszkowska wrote a biography "Irena Sendler: Mother of the Children of the Holocaust". In 2011, Jack Mayer tells the story of the four Kansas school girls and their discovery of Irena Sendler in his novel "Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project".


title: Irena Sendler

text: In 2016, "Irena's Children", a book about Sendler written by Tilar J. Mazzeo, was released by Simon & Schuster. A version adapted to be read by children was created by Mary Cronk Farell. The young reader's edition was named as a notable book for older readers by the Sydney Taylor Book Award. Another children's picture book titled "Jars of Hope: How One Woman Helped Save 2,500 Children During the Holocaust", is written by Jennifer Roy and illustrated by Meg Owenson.


title: Irena Sendler

text: "Sendlerowa. W ukryciu" ('Sendler: In Hiding'), a biography and book about the people and events related to Sendler's wartime activities, was written by Anna Bikont and published in 2017. The book received the 2018 Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage.


title: Irena Sendler

text: "a."Sendler was one of the first Poles recognized as Righteous Among the Nations due to the efforts of Jonas Turkow, who stated for a Polish language periodical in Israel: "This noble woman ... worked for "Żegota" and saved hundreds of Jewish children, placing them in orphanages, convents and other places". The number of Jewish children saved through Sendler's efforts is not known. The Social Welfare Department of the Central Committee of Polish Jews stated in January 1947 that Sendler saved at least several dozen Jewish children. Later in her life, Sendler repeatedly claimed that she had saved 2,500 Jewish children. When Michał Głowiński, who as a child survived the war with Sendler's help, was working on his book "The Black Seasons" in the late 1990s, Sendler insisted that he write about the 2,500 children she saved. As Głowiński later told Anna Bikont, he felt obliged to comply because "one cannot refuse Sendler". Sendler often spoke of the list of 2,500 children she produced, kept in two bottles and gave to Adolf Berman, but no such list has ever materialized and Berman never mentioned its existence. For the first time she talked about the list and the 2,500 saved children (and adults) in 1979; back then, however, she did not suggest that she was personally responsible for their survival and named twenty-four people also involved in their rescue.


title: Irena Sendler

text: "b."Actual events tend to be difficult to reconstruct because later, purposely or inadvertently, for different audiences and at different times, Sendler told different stories with aspects that were mutually incompatible or contrary to known facts. For example, in 1998 Sendler claimed that the communist authorities kept refusing to issue her passport for twenty years, despite the invitations from Yad Vashem she had been receiving during that period. Anna Bikont found those claims to be false. The passport was refused in 1981, after the first such invitation, because of the lack of diplomatic relations with Israel, and the decision was reversed in 1983. Previously Sendler also had a passport: on several occasions she went to Sweden to visit her son, who was receiving medical treatment there.


title: Acid jazz

text: Acid jazz (also known as club jazz, psychedelic jazz, or groove jazz) is a music genre that combines elements of funk, soul, and hip hop, as well as jazz and disco. Acid jazz originated in clubs in London during the 1980s with the rare groove movement and spread to the United States, Japan, Eastern Europe, and Brazil. Acts included The Brand New Heavies, D'Influence, Incognito, Us3, and Jamiroquai from the UK and Buckshot LeFonque and Digable Planets from the U.S. The rise of electronic club music in the middle to late 1990s led to a decline in interest, and in the twenty-first century, the movement became indistinct as a genre. Many acts that might have been defined as acid jazz are seen as jazz-funk, neo soul, or jazz rap.


title: Acid jazz

text: The genre's name was coined by Gilles Peterson, and the label was started by Bangs, Eddie Piller, and Gilles. The name refers to the acid house genre, which was popular in UK clubs in the 1980s.


title: Acid jazz

text: Acid jazz consisted of two related movements. The first was based on records by disc jockeys and music producers who added percussion and electronic dance beats to jazz tracks from the 1960s and 1970s. The second movement included groups who were influenced by these recordings and who emphasized a groove. Acid jazz borrowed from jazz, funk, and hip-hop. Because it relies heavily on percussion and live performance, it is sometimes associated with jazz, but its emphasis on groove aligns it more with funk, hip hop, and dance music. The style is characterized by danceable grooves and long, repetitive compositions. Acid jazz bands usually include horns, a rhythm section (drum set and additional percussion), a vocalist who may sing or rap, and a DJ.


title: Acid jazz

text: Acid jazz has its origins in the 1960s, when psychedelic styles were being incorporated into other musical genres, jazz being one of these. Some cite "Six Pack" and "Soul Fiesta" by The Apostles (1969) as acid jazz records during the 1960s. Acid jazz became popular in London clubs during the 1980s when disc jockeys associated with the rare groove movement played obscure jazz records. Their interests were in the fringe of jazz fusion, jazz funk, and the soul jazz of the 1950s and 1960s. Particularly significant were records from the Blue Note catalogue. These DJs included Gilles Peterson, who had residencies at several London clubs in the 1980s. Peterson began in a small pirate radio station and then moved to the larger Kiss-FM. In 1988 with producer Eddie Piller he formed the label Acid Jazz Records. The first release from the company was the compilation "Totally Wired", which contained obscure jazz funk tracks from the 1970s with updated new tracks.


title: Acid jazz

text: In 1990 Peterson left to start the label Talkin' Loud at Phonogram. The company signed Galliano, Young Disciples, and Urban Species. Another British record label, Fourth and Broadway Records, was formed in 1990 and began a compilation series with the title "The Rebirth of Cool". The label's roster included Pharoah Sanders, Stereo MCs, MC Solaar, and Courtney Pine.


title: Acid jazz

text: In 1991 acid jazz broke into the mainstream with the success of Brand New Heavies. After one self-titled album (1990) with Acid Jazz Records, the group signed with FFRR Records and had the hit singles "Never Stop" and "Dream Come True". Other bands included Incognito and Us3, whose "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)" (1993) was the biggest hit in the genre. Also successful was Jamiroquai, an early act for Acid Jazz Records that signed with Sony, which released "Travelling Without Moving" (1996) and the hit single "Virtual Insanity". Other live acts included Stereo MCs and the James Taylor Quartet. The mainstream success of acid jazz was followed by many compilations which left the public confused about the genre.


title: Acid jazz

text: Acid jazz spread to the United States in the early 1990s. It reached New York City in 1990 when British promoter Maurice Bernstein and his South African partner Jonathan Rudnick opened Groove Academy as a party at the Giant Step club in the basement of the Metropolis Café in Union Square. Groove Academy turned into a record label and media company. Acid jazz musicians in New York City included Brooklyn Funk Essentials, DJ Smash, and Jerome Van Rossum. In San Francisco acid jazz was released by Ubiquity Records, by Solsonics in Los Angeles, and The Greyboy Allstars in San Diego.


title: Acid jazz

text: A Tribe Called Quest borrowed from jazz for their album "The Low End Theory" (1991). Under the name Buckshot LeFonque, Branford Marsalis and Digable Planets won a Grammy Award for the 1993 single "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)".


title: Acid jazz

text: Formed in New York in 1990, Groove Collective produced their self-titled debut in 1993. The rapper Guru released a series of albums recorded with jazz musicians as the "Jazzmatazz" series.


title: Acid jazz

text: Stemming from Chicago in 1993, Liquid Soul achieved a national profile in 1996 when their self-titled debut LP was re-released by Ark21. In 2000 their album "Here's the Deal" was nominated in the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album category.


title: Acid jazz

text: Acid jazz soon gained an international following, including in Japan, Germany, Brazil and Eastern Europe. From Japan, United Future Organization gained an international reputation, signing an American record deal in 1994. Other acts from Japan included Mondo Grosso, and Gota Yashiki Skalpel came from Poland.


title: Acid jazz

text: The rise of electronic club music in the mid- to late-1990s led to a decline in interest in acid jazz among the record buying public, although the genre continued to have a reduced worldwide following. In the twenty-first century the movement became so intertwined with other forms that it became indistinct as a genre and many acts that might have been defined as acid jazz are now seen as jazz funk, neo soul or jazz rap.


title: Acid jazz

text: "Q" magazine stated "Acid jazz was the most significant jazz form to emerge out of the British music scene". One major legacy of the genre is its influence on the jam band movement, with acid jazz proving a suitable medium for extended improvisation for acts such as Medeski, Martin and Wood and The Greyboy Allstars.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Protein biosynthesis (or protein synthesis) is a core biological process, occurring inside cells, balancing the loss of cellular proteins (via degradation or export) through the production of new proteins. Proteins perform a number of critical functions as enzymes, structural proteins or hormones. Protein synthesis is a very similar process for both prokaryotes and eukaryotes but there are some distinct differences.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Protein synthesis can be divided broadly into two phases - transcription and translation. During transcription, a section of DNA encoding a protein, known as a gene, is converted into a template molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA). This conversion is carried out by enzymes, known as RNA polymerases, in the nucleus of the cell. In eukaryotes, this mRNA is initially produced in a premature form (pre-mRNA) which undergoes post-transcriptional modifications to produce mature mRNA. The mature mRNA is exported from the cell nucleus via nuclear pores to the cytoplasm of the cell for translation to occur. During translation, the mRNA is read by ribosomes which use the nucleotide sequence of the mRNA to determine the sequence of amino acids. The ribosomes catalyze the formation of covalent peptide bonds between the encoded amino acids to form a polypeptide chain.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Following translation the polypeptide chain must fold to form a functional protein; for example, to function as an enzyme the polypeptide chain must fold correctly to produce a functional active site. In order to adopt a functional three-dimensional (3D) shape, the polypeptide chain must first form a series of smaller underlying structures called secondary structures. The polypeptide chain in these secondary structures then folds to produce the overall 3D tertiary structure. Once correctly folded, the protein can undergo further maturation through different post-translational modifications. Post-translational modifications can alter the protein's ability to function, where it is located within the cell (e.g. cytoplasm or nucleus) and the protein's ability to interact with other proteins.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Protein biosynthesis has a key role in disease as changes and errors in this process, through underlying DNA mutations or protein misfolding, are often the underlying causes of a disease. DNA mutations change the subsequent mRNA sequence, which then alters the mRNA encoded amino acid sequence. Mutations can cause the polypeptide chain to be shorter by generating a stop sequence which causes early termination of translation. Alternatively, a mutation in the mRNA sequence changes the specific amino acid encoded at that position in the polypeptide chain. This amino acid change can impact the protein's ability to function or to fold correctly. Misfolded proteins are often implicated in disease as improperly folded proteins have a tendency to stick together to form dense protein clumps. These clumps are linked to a range of diseases, often neurological, including Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Transcription occurs in the nucleus using DNA as a template to produce mRNA. In eukaryotes, this mRNA molecule is known as pre-mRNA as it undergoes post-transcriptional modifications in the nucleus to produce a mature mRNA molecule. However, in prokaryotes post-transcriptional modifications are not required so the mature mRNA molecule is immediately produced by transcription.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Initially, an enzyme known as a helicase acts on the molecule of DNA. DNA has an antiparallel, double helix structure composed of two, complementary polynucleotide strands, held together by hydrogen bonds between the base pairs. The helicase disrupts the hydrogen bonds causing a region of DNA - corresponding to a gene - to unwind, separating the two DNA strands and exposing a series of bases. Despite DNA being a double stranded molecule, only one of the strands acts as a template for pre-mRNA synthesis - this strand is known as the template strand. The other DNA strand (which is complementary to the template strand) is known as the coding strand.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Both DNA and RNA have intrinsic directionality, meaning there are two distinct ends of the molecule. This property of directionality is due to the asymmetrical underlying nucleotide subunits, with a phosphate group on one side of the pentose sugar and a base on the other. The five carbons in the pentose sugar are numbered from 1' (where ' means prime) to 5'. Therefore, the phosphodiester bonds connecting the nucleotides are formed by joining the hydroxyl group on the 3' carbon of one nucleotide to the phosphate group on the 5' carbon of another nucleotide. Hence, the coding strand of DNA runs in a 5' to 3' direction and the complementary, template DNA strand runs in the opposite direction from 3' to 5'.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: The enzyme RNA polymerase binds to the exposed template strand and reads from the gene in the 3' to 5' direction. Simultaneously, the RNA polymerase synthesizes a single strand of pre-mRNA in the 5'-to-3' direction by catalysing the formation of phosphodiester bonds between activated nucleotides (free in the nucleus) that are capable of complementary base pairing with the template strand. Behind the moving RNA polymerase the two strands of DNA rejoin, so only 12 base pairs of DNA are exposed at one time. RNA polymerase builds the pre-mRNA molecule at a rate of 20 nucleotides per second enabling the production of thousands of pre-mRNA molecules from the same gene in an hour. Despite the fast rate of synthesis, the RNA polymerase enzyme contains its own proofreading mechanism. The proofreading mechanisms allows the RNA polymerase to remove incorrect nucleotides (which are not complementary to the template strand of DNA) from the growing pre-mRNA molecule through an excision reaction. When RNA polymerases reaches a specific DNA sequence which terminates transcription, RNA polymerase detaches and pre-mRNA synthesis is complete.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: The pre-mRNA molecule synthesized is complementary to the template DNA strand and shares the same nucleotide sequence as the coding DNA strand. However, there is one crucial difference in the nucleotide composition of DNA and mRNA molecules. DNA is composed of the bases - guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine (G, C, A and T) - RNA is also composed of four bases - guanine, cytosine, adenine and uracil. In RNA molecules, the DNA base thymine is replaced by uracil which is able to base pair with adenine. Therefore, in the pre-mRNA molecule, all complementary bases which would be thymine in the coding DNA strand are replaced by uracil.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Once transcription is complete, the pre-mRNA molecule undergoes post-transcriptional modifications to produce a mature mRNA molecule.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: The 5' cap is added to the 5' end of the pre-mRNA molecule and is composed of a guanine nucleotide modified through methylation. The purpose of the 5' cap is to prevent break down of mature mRNA molecules before translation, the cap also aids binding of the ribosome to the mRNA to start translation and enables mRNA to be differentiated from other RNAs in the cell. In contrast, the 3' Poly(A) tail is added to the 3' end of the mRNA molecule and is composed of 100-200 adenine bases. These distinct mRNA modifications enable the cell to detect that the full mRNA message is intact if both the 5' cap and 3' tail are present.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: This modified pre-mRNA molecule then undergoes the process of RNA splicing. Genes are composed of a series of introns and exons, introns are nucleotide sequences which do not encode a protein while, exons are nucleotide sequences that directly encode a protein. Introns and exons are present in both the underlying DNA sequence and the pre-mRNA molecule, therefore, in order to produce a mature mRNA molecule encoding a protein, splicing must occur. During splicing, the intervening introns are removed from the pre-mRNA molecule by a multi-protein complex known as a spliceosome (composed of over 150 proteins and RNA). This mature mRNA molecule is then exported into the cytoplasm through nuclear pores in the envelope of the nucleus.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: During translation, ribosomes synthesize polypeptide chains from mRNA template molecules. In eukaryotes, translation occurs in the cytoplasm of the cell, where the ribosomes are located either free floating or attached to the endoplasmic reticulum. In prokaryotes, which lack a nucleus, the processes of both transcription and translation occur in the cytoplasm.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Ribosomes are complex molecular machines, made of a mixture of protein and ribosomal RNA, arranged into two subunits (a large and a small subunit), which surround the mRNA molecule. The ribosome reads the mRNA molecule in a 5'-3' direction and uses it as a template to determine the order of amino acids in the polypeptide chain. In order to translate the mRNA molecule, the ribosome uses small molecules, known as transfer RNAs (tRNA), to deliver the correct amino acids to the ribosome. Each tRNA is composed of 70-80 nucleotides and adopts a characteristic cloverleaf structure due to the formation of hydrogen bonds between the nucleotides within the molecule. There are around 60 different types of tRNAs, each tRNA binds to a specific sequence of three nucleotides (known as a codon) within the mRNA molecule and delivers a specific amino acid.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: The ribosome initially attaches to the mRNA at the start codon (AUG) and begins to translate the molecule. The mRNA nucleotide sequence is read in triplets - three adjacent nucleotides in the mRNA molecule correspond to a single codon. Each tRNA has an exposed sequence of three nucleotides, known as the anticodon, which are complementary in sequence to a specific codon that may be present in mRNA. For example, the first codon encountered is the start codon composed of the nucleotides AUG. The correct tRNA with the anticodon (complementary 3 nucleotide sequence UAC) binds to the mRNA using the ribosome. This tRNA delivers the correct amino acid corresponding to the mRNA codon, in the case of the start codon, this is the amino acid methionine. The next codon (adjacent to the start codon) is then bound by the correct tRNA with complementary anticodon, delivering the next amino acid to ribosome. The ribosome then uses its peptidyl transferase enzymatic activity to catalyze the formation of the covalent peptide bond between the two adjacent amino acids.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: The ribosome then moves along the mRNA molecule to the third codon. The ribosome then releases the first tRNA molecule, as only two tRNA molecules can be brought together by a single ribosome at one time. The next complementary tRNA with the correct anticodon complementary to the third codon is selected, delivering the next amino acid to the ribosome which is covalently joined to the growing polypeptide chain. This process continues with the ribosome moving along the mRNA molecule adding up to 15 amino acids per second to the polypeptide chain. Behind the first ribosome, up to 50 additional ribosomes can bind to the mRNA molecule forming a polysome, this enables simultaneous synthesis of multiple identical polypeptide chains. Termination of the growing polypeptide chain occurs when the ribosome encounters a stop codon (UAA, UAG, or UGA) in the mRNA molecule. When this occurs, no tRNA can recognise it and a release factor induces the release of the complete polypeptide chain from the ribosome. Dr. Har Gobind Khorana, a scientist originating from India, decoded the RNA sequences for about 20 amino acids. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968, along with two other scientists, for his work.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Once synthesis of the polypeptide chain is complete, the polypeptide chain folds to adopt a specific structure which enables the protein to carry out its functions. The basic form of protein structure is known as the primary structure, which is simply the polypeptide chain i.e. a sequence of covalently bonded amino acids. The primary structure of a protein is encoded by a gene. Therefore, any changes to the sequence of the gene can alter the primary structure of the protein and all subsequent levels of protein structure, ultimately changing the overall structure and function.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: The primary structure of a protein (the polypeptide chain) can then fold or coil to form the secondary structure of the protein. The most common types of secondary structure are known as an alpha helix or beta sheet, these are small structures produced by hydrogen bonds forming within the polypeptide chain. This secondary structure then folds to produce the tertiary structure of the protein. The tertiary structure is the proteins overall 3D structure which is made of different secondary structures folding together. In the tertiary structure, key protein features e.g. the active site, are folded and formed enabling the protein to function. Finally, some proteins may adopt a complex quaternary structure. Most proteins are made of a single polypeptide chain, however, some proteins are composed of multiple polypeptide chains (known as subunits) which fold and interact to form the quaternary structure. Hence, the overall protein is a multi-subunit complex composed of multiple folded, polypeptide chain subunits e.g. haemoglobin.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: There are events that follow protein biosynthesis such as proteolysis and protein-folding. Proteolysis refers to the cleavage of proteins by proteases and the breakdown of proteins into amino acids by the action of enzymes.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: When protein folding into the mature, functional 3D state is complete, it is not necessarily the end of the protein maturation pathway. A folded protein can still undergo further processing through post-translational modifications. There are over 200 known types of post-translational modification, these modifications can alter protein activity, the ability of the protein to interact with other proteins and where the protein is found within the cell e.g. in the cell nucleus or cytoplasm. Through post-translational modifications, the diversity of proteins encoded by the genome is expanded by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Cleavage of proteins is an irreversible post-translational modification carried out by enzymes known as proteases. These proteases are often highly specific and cause hydrolysis of a limited number of peptide bonds within the target protein. The resulting shortened protein has an altered polypeptide chain with different amino acids at the start and end of the chain. This post-translational modification often alters the proteins function, the protein can be inactivated or activated by the cleavage and can display new biological activities.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Following translation, small chemical groups can be added onto amino acids within the mature protein structure. Examples of processes which add chemical groups to the target protein include methylation, acetylation and phosphorylation.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Methylation is the reversible addition of a methyl group onto an amino acid catalyzed by methyltransferase enzymes. Methylation occurs on at least 9 of the 20 common amino acids, however, it mainly occurs on the amino acids lysine and arginine. One example of a protein which is commonly methylated is a histone. Histones are proteins found in the nucleus of the cell. DNA is tightly wrapped round histones and held in place by other proteins and interactions between negative charges in the DNA and positive charges on the histone. A highly specific pattern of amino acid methylation on the histone proteins is used to determine which regions of DNA are tightly wound and unable to be transcribed and which regions are loosely wound and able to be transcribed.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Histone-based regulation of DNA transcription is also modified by acetylation. Acetylation is the reversible covalent addition of an acetyl group onto a lysine amino acid by the enzyme acetyltransferase. The acetyl group is removed from a donor molecule known as acetyl coenzyme A and transferred onto the target protein. Histones undergo acetylation on their lysine residues by enzymes known as histone acetyltransferase. The effect of acetylation is to weaken the charge interactions between the histone and DNA, thereby making more genes in the DNA accessible for transcription.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: The final, prevalent post-translational chemical group modification is phosphorylation. Phosphorylation is the reversible, covalent addition of a phosphate group to specific amino acids (serine, threonine and tyrosine) within the protein. The phosphate group is removed from the donor molecule ATP by a protein kinase and transferred onto the hydroxyl group of the target amino acid, this produces adenosine diphosphate as a biproduct. This process can be reversed and the phosphate group removed by the enzyme protein phosphatase. Phosphorylation can create a binding site on the phosphorylated protein which enables it to interact with other proteins and generate large, multi-protein complexes. Alternatively, phosphorylation can change the level of protein activity by altering the ability of the protein to bind its substrate.


title: Protein biosynthesis

text: Post-translational modifications can incorporate more complex, large molecules into the folded protein structure. One common example of this is glycosylation, the addition of a polysaccharide molecule, which is widely considered to be most common post-translational modification.