This doll belonged to a 7 year old Belgian girl her name was Aline Klajn. I could say 2 things about Aline. I could say she was from Polish parents and I could also say she was Jewish. But none of that warranted her death, but yet it did.
She was killed because she was Jewish. Her parents were Idessa and Wigdor and had moved to Belgium in the 1920s. When the Nazis occupied Belgium in 1940 , the signs were there that eventually every Jewish person was considered a ‘risk’ for the state and would have to be killed. For Aline it must have been her plastic doll that was a dangerous weapon which could be used against the Nazi regime, because I can see no other reason why she would be an enemy. Of course there was no reason whatsoever. Aside from being Jewish she was a human…
My phonebook is thinning out, not by design but by fate. The numbers are still there yet calling them is meaningless, for there will be no answer. You would give anything just to hear that voice one more time. Sometimes you feel like just giving up, but you know it is disrespectful to those who never gave up and lived a full life. Then you hear a story of a 10-year-old boy whose death could have been avoided, and in a bizarre way it gives you consolation. Because you know that those you said goodbye to those weren’t robbed of their prime, and although their life was cut short they still had a life more fruitful than that of many who lived longer.
These days teenagers and young adults are often referred to as “the snowflake” generation a term that refers to young people, typically university or college students, who seek to avoid emotionally charged topics, or dissenting ideas and opinions. This may involve support of safe spaces and trigger warnings in the university setting.
Although I agree with this to an extend, I think the problem is not with this generation but with the generation that raised them.
However during WWII young people didn’t have the time to get upset by something ‘offensive’ that was said to them. For many they had to put all their energy to survive.
Some were even brave enough to defy the most evil regime on earth, with a real risk of losing their lives.
The Churchill Club (Danish: Churchill-klubben) was a group of eight teenage schoolboys from Aalborg Cathedral School in the north of Jutland who…
When people hear the word Auschwitz ,a shiver goes down their spine, and that is a good thing. However so many people do not really know that much about Auschwitz. They think it was only one camp, where there were really many other camps connected to Auschwitz. about 40.
Some even think that from day 1, thousands of Jewish prisoners were transported to Auschwitz, but the when the first transport tool place on May 20 1940, 80 years ago today, there were only 30 prisoners.
The transport consisted of some 30 German inmates, who were branded as “professional criminals.” In Nazi Germany it didn’t take much to be categorized a professional criminal .The SS had selected them from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside of Berlin
Less then a month later , on June 14 another 728 inmates were transported to Auschwitz. The transport consisted of 728 Poles including 20…
Regardless if you are a fan of the man or not, anyone who watched that match last night must have had an awful shock.
Shortly before half time during the UEFA Euro 2020, group stage match between Denmark and Finland, the Danish midfielder and star player, Christian Eriksen collapsed. He was taken of the pitch and rushed to the Hospital after he received treatment on the pitch, He is awake and stable again, after a reportedly cardiac arrest. We all wish him a speedy recovery but it appears he may not play professional football again.
Not only was this an awful shock but it was also a surprise that the match resumed after some delay. Apparently Christian Eriksen said he wanted the match to be played. The match ended up in a 0-1 win to Finland.
This was not the first time that Denmark surprised sporting fans by playing matches during an UEFA Euro championship.
In 1992, most of the Danish team had been on a beach holiday because they failed to qualify for the tournament.
They had been in group 4 of the qualifying rounds together with Austria, the Faroe Islands, Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia won the group. Denmark ended up as the runner up and failed to qualify.
However just before the tournament started, Yugoslavia was disqualified as a result of the breakup of the country and the ensuing warfare there. As the runner up of group Denmark was called up to take Yugoslavia’s place.
To make the surprise even bigger ,Denmark reached a place in the semi finals after beating France and drawing with England. In the semis the met the Dutch team, who were the reigning champion and also the favourites to win it again, the match ended up in a draw and had to be decided by a penalty shoot out. To everyone’s surprise it was won by Denmark, securing them a spot in the final against Germany.
The finals were set to be played in the Ullevi stadium in Gothenburg Sweden, on June 26.
After having beaten the other giants in European football, the Danes also managed to beat the Germans by two goals.
So Denmark went from not qualifying in the first place ,to be crowned UEFU Euro champions 1992, defying all the odds. Hopefully Christian Eriksen will also defy all the odds and make a full recovery.
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The Nazis would never have been able to commit the crimes they committed if they hadn’t received the cooperation from businesses that supplied to them.
Technically some companies may not have been directly involved in the killing of Jews.Roma’s,Homosexuals and others, but by facilitating the third reich the played an equal part to the Holocaust.
J.A. Topf and Sons (German: J.A. Topf & Söhne) was an engineering company which was founded in Erfurt in 1878. It had a variety of products including chimneys and incinerators.
In 1939 the company decided to go into business with Hitler and his cronies.Not only did they design and built the ovens for the crematoria in several death camps, they also made improvements to make the ovens work more efficiently.
Kurt Prüfer, was the head of Topf & Söhne’s small crematoria department, he was the main oven designer. Kurt designed and developed a two-muffle transportable oven in…
I had planned to do a blog on the horrors of Babi Yar, but I decided against it. Firstly because there is not one word I could write which best describes the depravities committed by the Nazis,both German and Ukrainian.
(Notice dated September 28, 1941 in Russian, Ukrainian with German translation ordering all Kievan Jews to assemble for supposed resettlement)
Secondly there are so many comprehensive records and documentaries about it , and I just couldn’t do justice to any of them.
I will keep this blog short and focus on those tasked to destroy the evidence of the atrocities.
Sonderaktion 1005 consisted of Jewish inmates tasked to exhume the bodies of the Babi Yar massacres and burn the remains and scatter the ashes on farms nearby.
Before the Germans retreated from Kiev, they attempted to hide the atrocities they had committed at Babi Yar. Members od Sonderaktion 1005 who…
Dear Anne, today you would have turned 92, but we all know the history why that didn’t happen.
Some of that history is written in the diary you received on your 13th birthday, June 12 1942.So many people have read that diary, your private thoughts laid bare for the world to see. But I am sure you would not have minded that because aside it being a diary, it is also a historical record. You made sure of that because you could see and hear what was happening around you, You also heeded the call of the exiled Dutch government for people to record as much as they could.
What some people don’t realize if the Nazis would not have got to power, your diary would have looked so much different, it wouldn’t even have been written in Dutch but German, Because if the Nazis had not got to power your parents would not have had to move. Your German diary would have told a different story. The story about a different kind of anxiety. The anxiety of a regular teenage girl. Her first dance, her first kiss and perhaps even of the first time having sex with a boyfriend. The anxiety of seeing each other naked for the first time, and maybe how you blushed the first time he touched your breasts and you touched his penis. Who knows, what would be in that diary? I am not saying this to be disrespectful, far from it, like any other girl you deserved that level of intimacy but you were denied it. But your German diary would have been just that, a diary, only for you to read.
People call you an author. But you weren’t you were just a girl who had the endure something no girl should have to endure.
And like any other girl you had friends.
Lucia “Lucie” van Dijk , a Christian friend from the Montessori school. Lucie’s mother was an adamant member of the NSB,the Dutch Nazi party, until the end of the war, but Lucie’s disillusioned father left the party in 1942. You were shocked when the van Dijks became party members, but your dad ,Otto, patiently explained to her that they could still be good people even if they had distasteful politics.
Rie “Ietje” Swillens was another good friend of yours all the way through Montessori school.
Nanette Blitz Konig who was born on April 6, 1929 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. just a few months older then you. A friend and a class mate . You were in the same class at the Jewish Lyceum.
Like your family ,the Blitz family was arrested and taken to the Westerbork transit camp and from there were deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It was Nannette that reunited you with your sister Margot, in Bergen Belsen. However Nanette survived the war and the Holocaust. She now lives in Brazil.
Then there was another Nanette ; Nanette van Praag Sigaar.
You were also in the same class at the Jewish Lyceum, in Amsterdam. You even wrote about her in your diary. You said “Nannie is a funny, tiny, clever girl. I like her. She is smart.” What you didn’t know is that Nannie was murdered in Auschwitz on November 5,1942, just a few months after you received your diary as a birthday gift.
Your 13th birthday gift is now a gift to us all. Not just a gift but also a stark reminder of what humans are capable of doing to other humans.
You would have been 92 today. Nowadays you may have been famous as one of the first people being vaccinated against the Covid 19 virus. But you were killed by a much worse virus, hate.
Happy Birthday Anne, or rather Van Harte Gefeliciteerd.
Ironically Camp Westerbork had been set up in 1939 to house Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands.
Following the German invasion of the Netherlands, the Nazis took over the camp and turned it into a deportation camp. From this camp, 101,000 Dutch Jews and about 5,000 German Jews were deported to their deaths in Occupied Poland. In addition, there were about 400 Gypsies in the camp and, at the very end of the War, some 400 women from the resistance movement.
The Ordenienst, or Jewish police in Westerbork, were universally detested by camp inmates for their cruelty and role in collaborating with the Nazis. Composed of Jews from Holland and other European countries, members of the OD were responsible for guarding the punishment block and generally maintaining order in the camp. The OD consisting of 20 men in mid-1942, grew to a peak of 182 men in…
The one thing we all have in comon ,regardless of we are good or bad , at one stage of our lives we were all children.
Even the most evil men on who ever roamed the planaet started off as a child, like Joseph Mengele ,pictured above.
Below are a few more exampes of evil men when they were young.
John Wayne Gacy
Saddam Hussein
Adolf Hitler
Benito Mussolini
Jeffrey Dahmer
Ted Bundy
Donation
I am passionate about my site and I know a you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2 ,however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thanks To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you…
