May 2019

  • Painting for Mengele.

    When you look at some bizarre connections in History, you cannot escape the fact that life sometimes has a ironic way of weaving a tapestry of coincidences. One of Hitler’s favourite movies was the Walt Disney classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” released in 1937. One of the main animators of the movie was…

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  • On May 5,2019 on the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands. One of the heroes who contributed to this liberation passed away aged 103. Like me he was Dutch and like me he had a love for Ireland and we both ended up making this emerald isle our home. But where I am…

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  • Perhaps the Dutch government were naive to believe that they would able to stay neutral like they did in WWI. Perhaps they thought they had nothing to fear from the Germans. However when Germany invaded Norway and Denmark in April 1940, it became clear that neutrality was no protection. Frantically the Dutch started to prepare…

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  • A scary thought crossed my mind this week. What some Social Media outlets are doing nowadays, is basically the digital version of book burning. Regardless how valuable a post might be, or even how inoffensive it is when the moderators don’t like it , it will get banned,or digitally burned so to speak. On May…

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  •   I have many weaknesses ,one of them is that I have a very low tolerance or even no tolerance for people who have a warped sense of entitlement. I know I shouldn’t be intolerant and just rise above it , but I find that very hard at times. Especially when it comes to the…

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  • One last song

    I want to sing one last song , maybe “Hoedje van Papier” (hat made out of paper) my Dad sings that for me everyday and I know all the words. I want to draw one more picture. Perhaps of a butterfly who sits still on a tulip in the garden. I want to have one…

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  • There is not much I can add to the narrative of the Pearl Harbor attack. So much haS already been written about it. But something we didn’t get to hear a lot of, was the reactions of the ordinary US citizen after the attack. Following are some recordings of interviews of a few civilians either…

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  • I am not saying I agree with Executive Order 9066, in fact I strongly disagree with it. It was a breach of basic human rights.However it is also very easy for people nowadays to judge about things retrospectively and for people who never found themselves in the unprecedented times like WWII. Executive Order 9066 was…

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  • The Numbers

    Below are the estimated numbers of the Holocaust victims. The keyword is estimated because an exact number is not known. I believe the actual number is higher when you take in consideration the numbers of victims who died on the transports, not all of them will have been recorded. Women who were late in their…

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  • The last week the football world was shocked by the set up of this so called European Super League, consisting of Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea ,Tottenham Hotspurs, AC Milan, Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Inter Milan, and instigator Juventus. I don’t see why so many were surprised about this development. This was…

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