Happy Birthday Gretha Reintje Cohen. It should have been your 84th birthday today.
An evil regime did not even allow you to reach your 6th birthday. You were murdered 10 days before your 6th birthday in Sobibor, on July 9th 1943.
No matter how sad your death is, it is even sadder to see that your whole family was murdered on the same day.
Your parents,Rebecca Cohen-Maritz and Mozes Cohen married in 1934 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
You were there first child. Such an experience for any parent. The uncertainty of what lies ahead. The costs that come with raising a child, The fears of the future and so many more things that goes through a parents mind. But there is also the joy and that sense of magic of new life.
You were born in Rotterdam on July 19,1937.
On April 13,1941 your baby brother, Salli Cohen, was born. A year or so later you and your family moved to Amsterdam.
On July 9,1943 your whole family was murdered in Sobibor. Not because you were dangerous people ,but because a political idea and regime created by the Nazis, deemed all of you not worth of life.
All that is left of your family is an unclaimed life insurance policy.
Dear Gretha, up there among the stars. I wish you a Happy Birthday.
No one of us can ever imagine how it felt to be in Auschwitz. Except for those who survived it.
Below are just some quotes from survivors
Silvia Vesela -Slovak Jewish Auschwitz Survivor
“It’s a really humiliating feeling when your personality is being taken away. I don’t know whether you can understand it. You suddenly mean nothing. We were treated like animals.”
Dario Gabbai-Auschwitz Sonderkommando
“When they opened the door…I see these people that half an hour before were going into the gas chamber, I see them all standing up, some black and blue from the gas. No place where to go. Dead. If I see my eyes, the only thing I see is standing up, women with children in their hands.”
“Could you imagine what was done with the children and the families? They didn’t know what to do, scratching the walls, crying, you know, and everything else. They…
The last few days I have seen articles about the German government commemorating those who were involved in the 20th July 1944 assassination plot.
In a way I can understand it why they are doing this, but having that said I don’t agree with it.
Yes it is true these men planned to kill Hitler but not because they didn’t believe in his policies, because all of them had signed up to Nazi ideology one way or another. They wanted to kill them because they didn’t agree with the way he was conducting the war and the consequences of that.
Some of them had actively and willingly participated in the killing of innocent lives..
None more so then Arthur Nebe. he was a key figure in the security and police apparatus of Nazi Germany and a Holocaust perpetrator.He was given command of Einsatzgruppen B between June and November 1941, an extermination…
It always amazes me how easy it was for some Europeans to give up their Jewish neighbours. I know it is easy for me to say that in retrospect because I don’t know how I would have reacted if I was put in that situation. But I have a feeling I would have least spoken out about it.
In the Netherlands, 75% of all Dutch Jews and Jews residing in the Netherlands were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. It wasn’t so much that all Dutch were complicit in this crime. One factor was the very efficient Dutch civil administration which enabled the occupiers to carry out their plans for the final solution. As I stated before, only relatively few Dutch were complicit, but many were complacent and hid the facts that were so plain to see.
In France, however, the French Vichy government were complicit. They were happy and eager to help the Nazi occupiers.
I remember a scene in the movie Mr Klein about a man profiting off the misfortune of French Jews during World War II. At one point in the film, the French police knocked at the door of the Jews—not the Gestapo. Although the film is fictional, it does give a good indication of the French attitude towards their Jewish neighbours. Mr Klein was released in 1976 and directed by Joseph Losey. Alain Delon plays the immoral art dealer, Robert Klein, who leads a life of luxury—until a copy of a Jewish newspaper brings him to the attention of the police, linking him with a mysterious doppelgänger.
On 16 July 1942, French police acting on orders of the Nazi occupiers began rounding up thousands of Jewish residents in Paris. The Jews were assembled and held at the city’s indoor Vélodrome d’Hiver, a cycling stadium in Paris’ 15th arrondissement. Many died at the velodrome, left in searing heat with almost no food, water or sanitation. The remaining Jews found themselves deported to Auschwitz. This shameful chapter in the history of France is known as la rafle du Vel d’Hiv. The French police gave the roundup the code-name Opération Vent printanier (Operation Spring Breeze).
The roundup was one of several aimed at eradicating the Jewish population in France, both in the occupied and the free zone. According to records of the Préfecture de Police, eventually, 13,152 Jews were arrested, including more than 4,000 children. They were all to be put in rail cattle cars and deported to Auschwitz for their mass murder.
More than 3,000 children remained interned and orphaned until their deportation to Auschwitz.
Many wartime French authorities and police played an active role in the deportations, but one Paris policeman, Théophile Larue, took a stand. He warned his Jewish neighbours, the Lictensztajns, of the upcoming Vél d’Hiv roundup. He arranged for the family to escape to southern France and obtain false papers. One man saved the Lictensztajns, who made a choice to uphold his position to protect all citizens, but unfortunately, not all French Policemen took that position.
Théophile Larue—saved the Lictensztajns and others
In March 1941, the Larue and his wife Madeleine offered their hospitality to Léon Osman, who thus managed to avoid being sent to the Pithiviers camp. He remained under their care until July 1942, when he escaped to the South of France. Osman was on the Gestapo list of wanted people; giving shelter to such a person was a grave offence and carried a heavy punishment.
Larue gave advanced warning on 15 July 1942, of the plans for the large-scale roundup of Jews. It was to start the next day with eight Jewish families who lived in his building, thus allowing them a chance to flee and find refuge. The Larue couple sheltered Chuma Brand and her daughter Fanny, in their apartment for a week in July 1942. Then Théophile accompanied them to the train station in his uniform so as to facilitate their flight to the unoccupied zone. In November 1942, Simon Glicensztajn, also on the Gestapo list, found refuge in the Larues’ home for a few days. Moreover, one night, Larue broke into the police-sealed apartment of Glicensztajn’s sister, Laja Tobjasz, to help remove a stock of merchandise that would provide the family with a livelihood.
Once, when Mrs Tobjasz returned to Paris from Southern France, she was arrested and taken to the prefecture. When Larue heard this, he donned his uniform, went to the prefecture and asked to speak to the prefect.
He said that Mrs Tobjasz was Catholic and the godmother of his daughter. Although sceptical, the prefect must have had a change of heart because he released her into the custody of Larue. Théophile Larue believed that it was his duty as a man of honour with respect for human values to help people in need, even at the risk of putting his family in harm’s way. As a member of the French Resistance, Officer Larue took part in the battle for the liberation of Paris. After the liberation, the Larues continued to be in touch with the families of those they rescued. On 23 September 2007, Yad Vashem recognized Théophile and Madeleine Larue as Righteous Among the Nations.
German authorities continued the deportations of Jews from French soil until August 1944. In all, some 77,000 Jews living on French territory faced deportation to concentration camps and killing centres—the overwhelming majority went to Auschwitz.
For his pivotal part in the deportation of Jews from France, Pierre Laval, formerly the French Prime Minister, was arrested and tried after the liberation of France. He was shot by firing squad on 15 October 1945.
The fate of two German officials, most involved in the Vél d’Hiv, mirrored the common fates of high-ranking SS administrators. Theodor Dannecker was arrested by American officials in Bad Tölz, Bavaria, in December 1945 and committed suicide while in custody. Helmut Knochen, sentenced by a British court to 21 years in prison for a separate offence, was sentenced to death by a French court in 1954. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. President Charles de Gaulle (France) ordered the release of Knochen in November 1962.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
A little known fact of WWII is that Japan attacked North America several time. Aside from the Pearl Harbor attack, the other attacks were relatively unsuccessful
Below a summary of some of those attacks.
On June 3–4, 1942, Japanese planes from two light carriers Ryūjō and Jun’yō struck the U.S. military base at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, Unalaska, Alaska.
Originally, the Japanese planned to attack Dutch Harbor simultaneously with its attack on Midway but it occurred a day earlier due to one-day delay. The attack only did moderate damage on Dutch Harbor, but 78 Americans were killed in the attack.
On June 6, two days after the bombing of Dutch Harbor, 500 Japanese marines landed on Kiska, one of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Upon landing, they killed two and captured eight U.S. Navy officers, then took the remaining inhabitants of the island, and seized control of American…
I could have picked any name out of millions of victims to write about today. So why did I select Margot Frank-Cohen? No particular reason other than that she would have been 100 years old today.
A few decades ago, it would have been utter nonsense to talk about someone’s 100th birthday. Hardly anyone would reach that age. However, today there are more centenarians than there have ever been. It could have been possible for Margot to be alive today, but as you can see in her wedding picture, the people around her all have a star on their clothes. We all know the colour of that star was yellow and used to identify the Jews.
The word on their stars reads, Jood, the Dutch word for Jew. Margot wasn’t Dutch. She was born in Bocholt, a city northwest of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, part of the district Borken. It is situated 4 km (2½ miles) south of the border with the Netherlands.
When she moved to the Netherlands, I don’t know. I presume it was in 1939, the same as her parents moved to Amsterdam. Or it could be the case that her parents moved because Margot already lived in the Netherlands. In 1939, when Margot was 18, she married Hein Lindeman. The marriage didn’t last long. However, the marriage produced a daughter, Sophia Juliana Senta Lindeman, born on 10 February 1940.
When you look at the dates 1939 and February 1940, things were still normal for the Jews living in the Netherlands. It was only in May 1940, after the German occupation, things started to change gradually for the Jews.
As stated earlier, the marriage between Margot and Hein didn’t last long, they divorced in 1941.
This is the astonishing bit, neither of them gave up on love. Despite the fact so many of their friends and families were already deported, both Margot and Hein re-married. Hein married Alida (Ali) Druyf in May 1942. Just four months later, Alida was murdered in Auschwitz on 28 September 1942. Hein was murdered in Sobibor on 23 April 1943.
Margot married Siegfried Frank in 1942 in Camp Westerbork. The picture at the start of the blog is from their wedding day. Margot was murdered at Auschwitz, together with her 4-year-old daughter on 6 October 1944. They were put on transport Transport XXIV/7, no. 194 on 6 September 1944, from Westerbork to the Netherlands. Then to Terezín via transport En, no. 47 on 10 October 1944, to Auschwitz.
The irony is that her husband died on the 2nd anniversary of her first marriage. He was murdered in Buchenwald on 23 April 1945, just a few days after its liberation.
Despite Margot’s young age, she had already lived a fuller life than most people. It was a full life, only to be interrupted by an evil ideology.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
The plan of the Nazis was to eradicate anyone who they deemed not worthy. This didn’t mean only killing but also ensuring that not one person, who the Nazis considered subhuman, would be born.
On July 14,1933 the Nazi regime fulfilled the long-held dreams of eugenics proponents by enacting the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring. Individuals who were subject to the law were those men and women who “suffered” from any of nine conditions listed in the law: hereditary feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, hereditary epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea (a rare and fatal degenerative disease), hereditary blindness, hereditary deafness, severe physical deformity, and chronic alcoholism.
The basic provisions of the 1933 law stated that:
§ 1.(1) Any person suffering from a hereditary disease may be rendered incapable of procreation by means of a surgical operation (sterilization), if the experience of medical science shows that it is highly probable that his descendants would suffer from some serious physical or mental hereditary defect.
(2) For the purposes of this law, any person will be considered as hereditarily diseased who is suffering from any one of the following diseases:
(3) Any person suffering from severe alcoholism may be also rendered incapable of procreation.
§ 2.Applications for sterilization can be made by the individual to be sterilized. If this person is legally incompetent, has been certified on account of mental deficiency, or is not yet 18, a legal representative has the right to make an application on this person’s behalf but needs the consent of the court of guardians to do so. In other cases of limited competency, the application needs to be approved by the legal representative. [ . . . ]
§ 3.Sterilization can also be requested by the following: 1. the state physician. 2. In the case of inmates of hospitals, nursing homes, and penal institutions, by the head thereof.
§ 4. The application is to be made to the office of the Eugenics Court; it can either be made in writing or dictated to the court. The facts upon which the application is based should be supported by a medical certificate or confirmed in some other way. The office must inform the state physician of the application.
§ 5.Responsibility for the decision rests with the Eugenics Court that has jurisdiction over the district in which the person to be sterilized officially resides.
§ 6. The Eugenics Court is to be attached to a district court [Amtsgericht]. It consists of a district court judge acting as chairman, a state physician, and another physician certified by the German Reich and particularly well trained in eugenics. [ . . . ]
§12.Once the Court has decided on sterilization, the operation must be carried out even against the will of the person to be sterilized, unless that person applied for it himself. The state physician has to attend to the necessary measures with the police authorities. Where other measures are insufficient, direct force may be used.
This law comes into effect on January 1, 1934. Berlin, July 14, 1933.
The Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler
The Reich Minister of the Interior Frick
The Reich Minister of Justice Dr. Gürtner
This law meant that a woman like Gerda D., a shop worker, one of the estimated 400,000 Germans who were forcibly sterilized. She was sterilized after a disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia. Later, Nazi authorities forbade Gerda to marry because of the sterilization. So not only was she sterilized she was also not allowed to marry. All because of a questionable diagnosis of schizophrenia.
19-year-old Gerda D. was hospitalized in the psychiatric emergency ward of a hospital in Berlin. Although the diagnosis of Gerda as schizophrenic was uncertain, she was released only after being sterilized under the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases.
The law itself was based on the American Model Eugenical Sterilization Law developed by Harry H. Laughlin.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
Education is the key to a better world and to end ignorance and racism. However if education does not include an element of critical thinking, it is open to abuse and it can be used to indoctrinate young impressionable minds, or any impressionable mind really.
This blog will refer to the education in the Third Reich, but it also comes with a warning. Nowadays there is education on the far right and far left without any critical thinking being encouraged. There is a great danger in this.
From the 1920s onwards, the Nazi Party targeted German children as a special target audience for its propaganda messages. These messages emphasized that the Party was a movement of youth: dynamic, resilient, forward-looking, and hopeful.
Millions of German youngsters were won over to Nazism in the classroom and through extracurricular activities. In January 1933, the Hitler Youth had approximately 100,000 members, but by the end of the year this figure had increased to more than 2 million. By 1937 membership in the Hitler Youth increased to 5.4 million before it became mandatory in 1939. The German authorities then prohibited or dissolved competing youth organizations.
Soon after the Enabling Act of 1933 had been passed, Jewish teachers and professors were dismissed from German schools and universities. By April 1933, there were no Jewish teachers remaining in schools attended by ‘Aryan’ students, a racial term used by the Nazis to describe the Germanic peoples.
All teachers had to join the Nazi Teachers’ Association, which vetted them for political and racial suitability. By 1939, 97 per cent of teachers belonged to it. Teachers had to go to summer school so they could teach Nazi ideas effectively. Pupils were encouraged to inform the authorities if teachers did not teach and support Nazi ideas.
In the educational system, Jewish children regularly experienced ridicule, from both their peers and teachers. For example, Jewish children would be sent to the back of the classroom to reiterate to the non-Jewish German children the notion that they were inferior to them. Additionally, “teachers would begin to pick out Jewish students in classrooms to use as examples during biology lessons about racial impurity. Jewish children would be told to stand at the front of the class, whilst teachers pointed to their eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hair, comparing these to characteristics on Nazi propaganda sheets”. Eventually, the Jewish children were completely segregated from the non-Jewish German children in schools.
The lines on the blackboard ,on the picture above translate to “The Jew is our greatest enemy! Beware of the Jew” While 2 Jewish students stand next to the black board.
Textbooks were rewritten, especially in history and biology, to promote Germany’s ‘greatness’, Aryan ‘supremacy’ and anti-Semitism. Children’s Stories and Textbooks were used as Propaganda tools. Young people were even encouraged to act as propagandists for the Third Reich.
Additionally, after-school activities and weekend trips were regularly sponsored by the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls. These activities often acted as recruitment meetings for the participating school children. The Hitler Youth combined sports and physical outdoor activities with Nazi ideologies. Likewise, the League of German Girls emphasized collective athletics such as rhythmic gymnastics, which “German health authorities deemed less strenuous to the female body and better geared to preparing them for motherhood”. This was also used for public display. Authorities wanted these sports and activities to encourage “young men and women to abandon their individuality in favor of the goals of the Aryan collective”.
The Nazis tried to create a global ‘brand’ for the NSDAP. For this they would also children from the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls. They would even go as far as China. The picture below was taken in China in 1935.
The Nazis started in 1933 to introduce their education curriculum. Six years before they started WWII. Six years of creating young willing followers of the Nazi ideology. All of this did not start on the battlefield but in the classrooms. Creating a feeling or sense of belonging to a cause is a powerful and seductive tool.
As I said at the start of the blog, education is key to fight ignorance and racism. But if not done in a proper way and without any critical thinking incorporated in the curriculum, it will do the opposite and create ignorance and racism.
There is a trend in education at the moment where something doesn’t suit a certain narrative it gets cancelled or ridiculed. Especially in reference to history. This is the way the Nazis got a hook into education.
So this is a warning to all educators, unless you are eager to let something like the holocaust again, allow your students to absorb all aspects of history, good and bad. Don’t cancel things that don’t suit you but look at the bigger picture.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
My smile will last forever.
History of Sorts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.