June 2022
-
Like in Germany itself, the Holocaust in the Netherlands didn’t happen overnight it was a gradual process. Less than two months after the Nazi invasion of the Nethera]lands, Jewish employees of the Dutch Air Raid Defence Service were dismissed. It was the first in a long line of anti-Jewish measures. Jews were gradually isolated from…
-
I don’t know why I decided to do a blog specifically about the women victims of the Holocaust, but I just felt compelled to do one. I am married to a beautiful wife, and we have a beautiful daughter. I have two older sisters, and of course, like everyone else I also have a mother,…
-
75 years ago today Anne Frank’s diary was published. It became one of the biggest selling books of all times. These are just some of the entries of her diary. October 9th 1942: “Today I have nothing but dismal and depressing news to report. Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in…
-
Originally posted on The informant: Researchers believe they have discovered the origins of the Black Death, more than 600 years after it killed tens of millions in Europe, Asia and north Africa. The mid-14th Century health catastrophe is one of the most significant disease episodes in human history.? But despite years of research, scientists had…
-
For anyone who is not from Geleen or the province of Limburg ,in the south East of the Netherlands, the name Geleen will mean very little. Yo may have visited the town perhaps while it was still hosting the annual Rock festival of PinkPop. Maybe you even visited the former mining town during one of…
-
Honestly, I am not a cat person. I have always preferred dogs. There is an expression, “A dog thinks you are God, a cat thinks he is.” I knew about the efforts of dogs, horses, elephants, and other animals during World War II, but never heard about the heroics of cats during World War II,…
-
The title is about Jacques Swaluw but it really is about just more than Jacques. Jacques was born in Rotterdam on the 19th of June 1942. Esther Swaluw was the daughter of Isaäc Swaluw and Maria Melkman. On 2 December 1913, she married Izak van Been in Rotterdam, a son of Abraham van Been and…
-
So many people think that the Holocaust only lasted as along as WWII. But they could not be further away from the truth. It could be argued that the foundation of the Holocaust goes back to 1879, when Wilhelm Marr becomes the first proponent of racial anti-Semitism, blaming Jews for the failure of the German…
-
The girl in the playpen is Renee Sara Gottschalk, born in the Central Refugee Camp Westerbork on 21 June 1941. The two girls in the dark dresses are the daughters of chief physician F. Spanier. The lady on the right is Rosa Strauss; Renee Sara’s mother. Her father was Erich Gottschalk. Renee and her mother…
History of Sorts 