August 2020

  • Hiroshima

    Originally posted on History of Sorts: 8.15 AM 6 August 1945 is the date that changed the lives for everyone in Hiroshima. This is the time when the first ever atom bomb’Little Boy’, was dropped. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later…

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  • Originally posted on History of Sorts: David Olère  was a  Jewish Polish-born French painter and sculptor best known for his explicit drawings and paintings based on his experiences as a Jewish Sonderkommando inmate at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. He began to draw at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the last days of the camp, when the SS became less…

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  • Originally posted on History of Sorts: Stefan Baretzki was an Auschwitz guard of Bukovina German origin. He was conscripted into the Waffen-SS and stationed at Auschwitz  from 1942 until 1945. Baretzki was sentenced to life imprisonment and eight years in August 1965, at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. Because he only finished primary education, the court…

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  • I know it is easy to call people like Rudolf Höss and others who worked in Auschwitz monsters, and to en extent I can understand that, I have done so in the past. However when you call them monsters you take the risk of given them an excuse for their acts, because we only expect

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  • Originally posted on History of Sorts: ? I am amazed that people are still surprised at the actions of the IOC, This year it was widely expected that Russia would be banned from the Rio Olympics due to doping scandal surrounding their athletes and the cover up of the Russian Olympic Committee. The only thing the…

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  • Originally posted on History of Sorts: I probably could do a whole essay on how Guus van der Wijk and Mina de Vries met, and at some stage I probably will, but for now it suffices to say they were extremely brave people, in fact in my eyes they are heroes. Despite the knowledge that…

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  • Originally posted on History of Sorts: It is often asked “Why did the people not stand up against the Nazi regime?” I have even asked this question, especially when it came to me fellow Dutchmen. But it is easy to judge in hindsight. I wonder how many who asked that question would have stood up…

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  • Originally posted on History of Sorts: I am not a great fan of statistics because without the full story behind them, they can be manipulated and often they are. However sometimes they can be useful to indicate a scale, In this the scale of death and destruction during the Holocaust. Between July 15,1942 and 13…

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