• Somebody once told me, “Evil acts can only be committed by men.” I disputed that notion. History has many examples of women who are just as evil—if not even more evil than men. Anyone who knows me knows how important eye health is to me. In 2011, I lost my right eye, and in 2015,…

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  • The best way to describe this story is a microcosm of the Holocaust history. But before I go into the story, I have to explain the wider background, to put it into context. Although I am fully Dutch, I was seen as a child of a mixed marriage, The Netherlands is a small country, however,…

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  • Jedem das Seine

    WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES In general, I try to avoid posting graphic pictures, for two reasons. Firstly, I know from my own experience if something is too graphic I look away. Secondly, we live in an era where so many people get offended by everything, especially the truth, that the only option they feel they…

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  • The general consensus is that once you introduce Hitler into a debate or an argument, you have lost that argument. Even though I subscribed to this opinion—my view has changed. I believe not comparing some current far-right politicians to Hitler is a mistake. For example, despite what Putin thinks, he has become a far-right dictator…

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  • Be a friend. You don’t need money:Just a disposition sunny;Just the wish to help anotherGet along some way or other; Just a kindly hand extendedOut to one who’s unbefriended;Just the will to give or lend,This will make you someone’s friend. Be a friend. You don’t need glory.Friendship is a simple story.Pass by trifling errors blindly,Gaze…

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  • The photographs in this post are categorized as artefacts. I don‘t really like that description because the definition of an artefact is—an object made by a human being, typically one of cultural or historical interest. These objects may have been made by a human being, but more than that—they were personal belongings. The narrative of…

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  • The painting above is from 1353, and it shows the citizens of Tournai burying victims of the Black Death, also known as the bubonic plague. However, the black death is now what I mean when I refer to the Medieval Holocaust, but it is directly linked to it. Jews in Europe have been persecuted since…

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  • Pip: History of Sorts is the kind of site that looks at a photograph of a selection ramp and refuses to let you scroll past — dirkdeklein has been doing that work, post after post, this week. Mara: The posts cover a lot of ground: the machinery of the camps themselves, the perpetrators and collaborators…

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  • I saw a robin yesterday. The saying goes, “When robins appear, loved ones are near,” alluding to the belief that the robin is a messenger. Not a messenger from the living but from the dead. In that belief, the robin doesn’t bring a sad message—but a message of hope and encouragement. Then I wondered was…

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  • Primo Levi is one of the most famous Holocaust survivors. He wrote in 1986, “It happened, and thus it can happen again.” For some survivors, this was a reality soon after being liberated. Howard Cwick was an American Jewish soldier who liberated Buchenwald.The shame he and other liberators felt came from not liberating the camp…

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