• Concentration camp Vught, also known as concentration camp Herzogenbusch , was the only purpose built concentration camp in the Netherland. The other 2 major camps, Westerbork and Amersfoort, were already built before the war as a refugee center and army barracks. The construction of Camp Vught began in May 1942. The camp consisted of 36…

    Read more →

  • For those of you who don’t speak English as a first language, you may not be familiar with the term ‘Hubris’ the definition is : excessive pride or self-confidence. On the dawn of June 22, 1941, the largest invasion force in human history surged across a 1,800-mile frontier. Over three million German and Axis soldiers,…

    Read more →

  • Approximately 25,000 Jews from Germany and Austria sought refuge in the Netherlands in the 1930s after the Nazis came to power. They were welcomed in the Netherlands because many Dutch were appalled by the treatment of the Jews in Germany. The photograph above shows a large protest meeting in the Amsterdam R.A.I. in 1938 against…

    Read more →

  • Cats of World War II

    Honestly, I am not a cat person. I have always preferred dogs. There is an expression, “A dog thinks you are God, a cat thinks he is.” I knew about the efforts of dogs, horses, elephants, and other animals during World War II, but never heard about the heroics of cats during World War II,…

    Read more →

  • Fathers Day

    Father’s day 2015 was the last time I saw my dad. It wasn’t a usual meeting but a quick hello via Skype. With the help of one of my nephews, he had tried to reach me earlier that day, but I had been out to the shop.We did finally connect later that evening, June 21,2015.…

    Read more →

  • Today, Father’s Day, I felt compelled to write something about all the Fathers who lived and were murdered during the Holocaust, but there were too many to mention, So I decided to honor them all via a poem. So many were murdered, only a few survived, but they all had something in common, none of…

    Read more →

  • We are in the middle of the FIFA Worldcup , and I thought it would be a good idea to look at some European footballers who were murdered during the Holocaust. György Szeder, born György Silberstein, this left winger used a different name to disguise his Jewish identity. He was just 19 when he joined…

    Read more →

  • +++Contains some sexual references++++++ Don’t worry I haven’t suddenly gone pornographic in my blogs, but in this Political Correct era I thought it better to warn people upfront that this blog may contain some sexual references, because God forbid imagine if I offended anyone. During World War II venereal disease(or STD’S/STI’s) was a serious problem…

    Read more →

  • One could be forgiven for thinking that the space race was between the USSR and the USA, and that the USSR were the first to initiate the race. But it was in fact the Germans who on this day 82 years ago ,sent  the first man-made object to reach outer space. The test launch of…

    Read more →

  • On June 20, 1942, the SS guard at the Auschwitz exit was visibly shaken. In front of him idled the car of Rudolf Höss, commandant of the notorious concentration camp. Inside were four armed SS men. One of them—a second lieutenant, or Untersturmführer—was shouting and cursing furiously. “Wake up, you buggers!” he bellowed in German.…

    Read more →