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A Stolpersteinplural Stolpersteine; literally means “stumbling stone”, metaphorically a “stumbling stone” is a sett-size, ten-centimetre (3.9 in) concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. Created by the artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, Stolpersteine is brass-topped cobblestones embedded in the pavement outside a…
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USS Mount Hood (AE-11) was the lead ship of her class of ammunition ships for the United States Navy in World War II. She was the first ship named after Mount Hood, a volcano in the Cascade Range in Oregon. On 10 November 1944, shortly after 18 men had departed for shore leave, the rest…
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When you see a photograph of a Wehrmacht officer in the context of the Holocaust, it’s natural to assume he was complicit in the atrocities of that time. Yet, in the case of Lieutenant Albert Battel, that assumption couldn’t be more wrong. Battel defied expectations and risked his life to oppose Nazi crimes—revealing an extraordinary…
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On the night of November 9–10, 1938, a wave of orchestrated violence swept across Germany and Austria. Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were burned and looted; families were beaten and humiliated; and tens of thousands were sent to concentration camps. The shattered glass that littered the streets the next morning gave the pogrom its haunting…
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The one thing I always fear when I do these blogs about World War II and the Holocaust is what I will discover about my family. Thus far, there is no indication that any of them collaborated with the Nazis, but I have a big family, and even now, in 2026, there is still new…
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On November 8, 1937, one of the most notorious antisemitic propaganda exhibitions of Nazi Germany opened its doors at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Entitled Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), the exhibition was designed to do far more than present the Nazi regime’s distorted interpretation of Jewish history. It was an elaborate exercise in…
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I love the Netherlands. I was born and raised there and proud to call myself a Dutchman. Like all other countries in this world, it has pages in history that are not so glorious. I believe that the best way for any country to deal with the darker days of its history is not to…
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(courtesy of John Davis) This is an excerpt from John Davis’ book, Rainy Street Stories. It tells the story of a survivor he met at Flossenburg, who had survived Auschwitz, Ravensbruch, and finally, Flossenburg. Z-1557While vacationing many years ago, my wife Jane and I decided to visit Flossenburg, West Germany. This charming little town is…
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This is a story which must have been repeated many times in Nazi Germany, German men married to Jewish women and the anxiety and fear they must have gone through, However there is also a uniqueness to the Machemer’s family situation. And in a bizarre way this is also directly connected to me. Helmut Machemer…
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On November 8, 1939, Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Munich. The attempt took place in the Bürgerbräukeller, a popular beer hall where he annually commemorated the anniversary of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, an early failed coup that Hitler had led in an attempt to seize power in Germany. The bomb was…
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