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The Netherlands is the country with the relatively highest number of Jewish victims in Western Europe. Of the 140,000 Jews, 107,000 were deported. Five thousand people returned from the camps, and approximately 20,000 survived in other ways, most of them in hiding. The persecution and murder of the Jews during the Second World War is…
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(originally posted September 16, 2021) This may sound like a joke, but it was deadly serious. Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague, choreomania, St John’s Dance and, historically, St. Vitus’s Dance) was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically,…
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An often underappreciated phenomenon of the Second World War is the so-called medical resistance (artsenverzet): a rare and remarkably successful example of organized, effective, non-violent, and sustained resistance against Nazi occupation carried out by nearly an entire professional group. Within the broader context of the predominantly non-violent Dutch resistance movement, Medisch Contact (Medical Contact) emerged…
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Beneath the whispering coastal pine,Where sand and sorrow softly twine,They stood with courage, hearts held high,Though freedom’s cost was to defy. No trumpet sounded, no fanfare played,Just silent steps through dune and glade,Where tyrants feared the truth they bore,And stilled their voices evermore. But wind remembers, trees still weep,The dunes their vigil gently keep—And in…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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.…
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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…
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History of Sorts 