January 2017

  • It is not often you come across a feelgood Holocaust story but this is one of them. On 27 September 1942, the Jewish boy Joop Levy went into hiding with his parents. They were taken in by the Ebbers family on their farm in the village of Lintelo in the Achterhoek, a region in the eastern

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  • Wannsee Conference

      Today marks the 78th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference. On January 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking Nazi Party and German government officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss and coordinate the implementation of what they called the “Final Solution” of the Jewish Question.   The conference was held like

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  • The bombing of Sandhurst Road School occurred during an air raid on Wednesday, 20 January 1943 when the school on Minard Road, Catford, south east London was seriously damaged. A German fighter-bomber dropped a single 500 kg (1,100 lb) bomb on the school at 12.30 pm, killing 38 children (32 killed at the school and 6 more

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  • NEVER FORGET

      This is not going to be a political blog but there is no denying that the world in 2020 slowly starts to resemble the world in the 1920/1930s. The one difference is it is not too late to do something about it. Below are just some reminders of what could happen if we don’t

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  • High Noon

    I contribute this movie to have triggered my long lasting love affair with the silver screen.I vividly remember watching this movie on one of the German TV Channels. Although even at a young age I found it annoying that the Germans just couldn’t resist dubbing any non German movie, I forget how often I have

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  • I have read a lot about this remarkable man and hero and I was reluctant to write an article about him, because I just didn’t think I would do him justice. However since it is the 72nd anniversary of his disappearance I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at some elements of

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  • During WWII Hollywood did not sit still, it actively contributed to the US propaganda machine. These propaganda movies were not done by unknown or obscure movie makers. They were done by some of the biggest studios in Tinseltown.One of the more surprising was no other then Walt Disney. Education for Death: The Making of the

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  • Operation Blackcock was a World War II military operation carried out by the 7th Armoured Division, the 43rd Wessex Division, and the 52nd Lowland Division, from the British 2nd Army, to clear the Roer Triangle formed by the towns of Roermond, Sittard and Heinsberg, near the Roer River, on the border between the Netherlands  and Germany, from January

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  •   Aura II (formerly known as SS Halland, Bore II, SS Seagull and SS Aura) was a Finnish escort vessel, and a former presidential yacht, operated by the Finnish Navy between 1939 and 1940. The ship participated in the Winter War. The ship was originally constructed as the passenger vessel SS Halland. She was renamed

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