History of Sorts

This is a slight deviation from my usual blogs. Because music has always played a major role in my life it is nive to acknowledge that every once in a while.

When you think of classic Rock bands, Genesis is usually not a band which springs to mind, strange in a way because that is basically what they are a classic Prog Rock band.

Their rise to fame was a bit of a strange one. although they had some successes in the early years but nothing really noteworthy.

They started off in 1967  with Peter Gabriel as their singer and front man, and their music was slightly psychedelic . Gabriel was only 17 at the time. I think the reason why they didn’t have any real success with him as a singer is because their music and appearance might have been a bit to extravagant.

In 1975/76 Phil Collins took…

The lesson we haven’t learn from the Holocaust is that we are still putting people in groups.

One of the reasons why the Nazis were so efficient in killing millions is because they were able to put people in groups. It made it easier for the ‘normal’ citizens to accept the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust.

When someone is different then you it makes you more indifferent to the fate of that person.

Today we do the same thing but we have replaced the idea of groups with the scientific term of ‘Ethnicity’

Determining that someone has a different ethnicity makes it easier to look away from what happens to them.

It is true that different people have some different genetic characteristics, but the similarities we all have ,outweigh the differences.

Even in some Holocaust literature I have seen the term Ethnicity. But only if we start to accept…

This is something I said before. I am Dutch and I am proud to be Dutch. One of the reasons why I am a proud Dutch man is because I was taught to face up to the mistakes my country made in the past.

Although there were many brave Dutch men and women who fought valiantly and risked their own lives to save their Jewish fellow citizens, there were also those who eagerly adhered to the wishes of their occupying Nazis masters.

Many signs were put up all across the country telling Jews they were not welcome. These signs were all in Dutch mostly made by Dutch companies. In a way this propaganda was very clever because the signs didn’t say “Forbidden for Jews” but “Jews not welcome” as if there was some kind of option, a guideline rather then a rule.

It was not explicitly saying “You are not…

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On April 4, 1945 Ohrdruf was the first concentration camp to be liberated by the US Army. Eight days later on April 12th, the camp was visited by Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower,  George S. Patton and Omar Bradley.

They were shocked by what they witnessed there , After his visit Eisenhower send a writing to General George C. Marshall, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, reporting on what he had seen.

“the most interesting—although horrible—sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as…

Leave his heart at my door
You’re overdue you know

That organ
Not for you anymore

This is my job
Let me handle it

You fear the accusation
Abandonment

*shrugs shoulders*

Why do you care?
Besides
He dropped yours off first

*points to a jar*

You see
Over there

Your heart in a jar
Delivered by him months before

Move on with your life
While you still have breath

Trust me
I know a thing or two about this

Death’s Door (a poem)
Christina Schmidt, MA
amedwithcoffee.com

Ireland remained neutral throughout World War II, but that is not to say there was no contribution from the Irish during the war. Many young Irish men did join the British army and also  partook in Operation Overlord, more common;y known as D-Day.

However this blog is not about any of those troops but about 2 less likely participants in Operation Overlord.

When Maureen Flavin took on a job as postmistress at the Blacksod light house in Co. Mayo in Ireland she had not anticipated the other job which was bestowed on her.The job was taking barometer and thermometer readings(basically weather forecasting) at the remote Blacksod weather station on Ireland’s west coast. But she did do her job and it made a global impact.

On her 21st birthday, June 3 1944, she took the barometer readings and noticed a sudden drop, indicating bad weather was coming. Maureen gave the report…

One of the most disturbing aspects  of the Holocaust I find is the fact that so many who were instrumental in so many evil deeds, were allowed to continue after the war.

In February or March 1939 a farmer called Richard Kretschmar requested Catel’s permission to euthanize one of his children, the child we now know to have been  Gerhard Kretschmar, often referred to as Child K, who had been born blind and deformed.

Werner Catel deferred the matter and advised the father to write directly to Hitler for permission. Hitler subsequently sent Dr. Karl Brandt to confer with Catel and decide on a course of action. On July 25, 1939 the child was killed. It would be the first child to be killed under Aktion T4 or the T-4 program, technically the poor boy would become the pilot case.

A year later, Werner Catel set up »children’s wards in…

How do you profile the mind of one of the most evil men whoever roamed the Earth?

The Office of Strategic Services(now CIA) tasked psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer and psychologist Henry Murray to come up with an extensive analysis of Hitler’s mind in 1943. The reports used many sources to profile Hitler, including a number of informants, including Hitler’s nephew, William Patrick Hitler but also Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf”

Langer’s report was titled ” Adolf Hitler: Psychological Analysis of Hitler’s Life & Legend”  It was published in 1972 as “The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report” by Basic Books. . Murray’s report was titled “Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler”

In order to keep this blog readable I will put the links of both reports at the end of this blog. Rather then putting the whole text in the blog. It would become an article  of close…