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Juan Pujol García Double agent Juan Pujol García (codenamed “Garbo”) alongside his wife, Araceli González Carballo (BBC) Juan Pujol García was a chicken farmer who became a Spanish spy and worked as a double agent loyal to the United Kingdom against Nazi Germany during World War II, by relocating to Britain to carry out fictitious…
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The Dutch word ‘Moffen’ is a slur or derogatory term for Germans, pretty much in the same way as Krauts in the English language. Where the word ‘moffen(or mof singular)’comes from is not clear but it had been around since the 16th century. It more or less disappeared from the Dutch vocabulary for about 100…
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No matter how you twist or turn it, when you are complicit to a crime, you are just as guilty as the perpetrator, and perhaps even more guilty because you were an enabler of that crime. Hermann Stieve was Director of the Berlin Institute of Anatomy from 1935 to 1952, which was from the early…
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Forgotten History-The Hardaga & the Kabiljo families:Holocaust and Bosnian Muslim Genocide survivors
(originally posted in April 2016) There really isn’t such a thing as a happy Holocaust story but I think this is probably could be seen as a ‘happy’ story. It doesn’t only portray extreme bravery but also that deep down, good people are the same, regardless of what religious differences they have. Especially in the…
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John Lennon and the UFO Over New York: The Strange Encounter of August 23, 1974 On the evening of August 23, 1974, John Lennon, the former Beatle and one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, claimed to have witnessed something extraordinary in the skies over New York City. What might have been…
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The Freckleton air disaster remains one of the most devastating aviation tragedies of the Second World War—not because it was the result of enemy action, but because a catastrophic accident brought the dangers of wartime aviation directly into the heart of a peaceful Lancashire village. On Wednesday, 23 August 1944, an American B-24 Liberator bomber…
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On 15 November 1943, Himmler ordered that Romani and “part-Romanies” were to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.” Between 1933 and 1945, Roma and Sinti in Europe were targets of Nazi persecution. The Nazi regime, building on long-held prejudices, viewed Roma as “a-socials” (outside “normal” society) and as…
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After setting up this blog a few years ago, I am amazed that I still come across stories of heroes I had never heard of before. Ernst Sillim was born in 1923, the first of five children. Shortly before that, his father, Albert, a stockbroker, and his mother, Annie, moved from Amsterdam to a house…
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Captain Brian Brownscombe was murdered by a Nazi officer after being taken prisoner.Brian “Basher” Brownscombe was a son of Herbert Henry and Edith May Brownscombe of Watchet, Somerset.He served with 181 Airlanding Field Ambulance. The medical officer had been awarded the George Cross after keeping a wounded soldier afloat for five hours, following the disastrous Sicily…
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Jews began to live in Kielce in an approved legal status in the mid 1800s. They had a decent life except for violent pogroms, the last in 1918. A few Jews left to prestate Israel, and a few went to the USA, but most stayed because they had hope the situation would resolve. No Gentile…