May 2017

  • Samuel Morgenstern, an Austrian businessman and a business partner of the young Hitler in his Vienna period, bought many of the young Hitler’s paintings. According to Morgenstern, Hitler came to him for the first time in the beginning of the 1910s, either in 1911 or in 1912. When Hitler came to Morgenstern’s glazier store for

    Read more →

  • Hugo’s box

    These were once the toys, clothing and medicine of Hugo Steenmeijer, the child of a Dutch father and an Indonesian mother. When Japan occupied the Dutch East Indies in 1942, his father was sent to work as a forced labourer on the Burma Railway.   The Japanese imprisoned Europeans in internment camps. The 150,000 people

    Read more →

  • The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was the bloodiest conflict western Europe had experienced since the end of World War I in 1918. It was the breeding ground for mass atrocities. About 200,000 people died as the result of systematic killings, mob violence, torture, or other brutalities. The fighting displaced millions of Spaniards. Some 500,000 refugees

    Read more →

  • The Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 17 May 1974 were a series of co-ordinated bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland. Three bombs exploded in Dublin during rush hour and a fourth exploded in Monaghan almost ninety minutes later. They killed 34 civilians including a full-term unborn child, and injured almost 300. The bombings were the deadliest

    Read more →

  • This is a little known story which took place on the 13th of May 1944. The victims were Chinese citizens, not tortured and killed by Japanese but by the Gestapo in Hamburg,Germany. It requires a lot of imagination to recollect the past history that the Schmuckstraße as the center of a lively Chinese district of

    Read more →

  • The Dutch government in exile , also known as the London Cabinet () was the government in exile of the Netherlands, headed by Queen Wilhelmina, that evacuated to London after the German invasion of the country during World War II.It was established on May 13 1940. Prior to 1940, the Netherlands was a neutral country,

    Read more →

  • Sometimes you come  across stories and you think “You could not write this”. Amazing tales of survival.Proof of how strong the will to live can be. Alistair Urquhart  8 September 1919 – 7 October 2016) was a Scottish businessman and the author of The Forgotten Highlander, an account of the three and a half years he

    Read more →

  • My heart was broken when I heard about this Hero. If the allies just would have listened to him and taken him serious so many lives including his own could have been saved. What make this even more tragic and poignant that he did not die by direct Nazi violence but by his own hand

    Read more →

  • The Dutch take their sports serious, despite what happens in the world. It is part of the Dutch psyche to not give up,keep going regardless(although looking at the recent performance of the Dutch National football team, you might be forgiven for thinking differently) Despite being occupied by the Germans the Dutch felt compelled to organize

    Read more →

  • Marie Elisabeth Jean Elmes (5 May 1908 – 9 March 2002)was an Irish businesswoman and aid worker who is credited with saving the lives of at least 200 Jewish children during the Holocaust by hiding them in the boot of her car.In 2015, she became the first and so far the only Irish citizen honoured as

    Read more →