I usually include a photograph when I write about the youngest victims of the Nazi regime. But I could not find a picture of poor little Mirjam Rosalie de Leeuw. In a way I am happy about that, I have looked into too many eyes of the innocent souls that were brutally murdered ,and regardless how tough I think I am, it does take a toll.
The story of Mirjam Rosalie de Leeuw is particularly sad because she could have been saved. Mirjam was given up by her parents as a foundling aged 1, to save her from the Nazis. However when her parents were arrested they felt the desire to be reunited with their daughter. I know that some people may ask themselves ” Why, did they want to be reunited?” I can totally understand why, they were more then likely first sent to Westerbork, where things weren’t ‘too…
Queen Wilhelmina was Queen of the Netherlands from 1890 until her abdication in 1948. She reigned for nearly 58 years, longer than any other Dutch monarch. Her reign saw both World War I, although the Netherlands was neutral during World War I and World War II, as well as the Dutch economic crisis of 1933.
It is during World War II, where in my opinion and that of others, she didn’t do as much as she should or could have done.
On May 4, 2020, King Willem-Alexander gave a speech where he too criticised the role of his great-grandmother.
Speech by His Majesty King Willem-Alexander, National Remembrance Day, 4 May 2020 Speech | 04-05-2020
“It feels strange to be standing in an almost empty Dam Square. But I know that you all feel part of this National Remembrance Day and that we are standing here together.
During these exceptional months, we have all had to give up some of our freedom. This country hasn’t experienced anything like this since the Second World War. Now, we are choosing our path. For our lives and our health.
Back then, the choice was made for us. By an occupier with a merciless ideology that caused the deaths of millions of people. How did that total lack of freedom feel?
There is one testimony I shall never forget. It was given here in Amsterdam, in the Westerkerk, almost six years ago. A short, clear-eyed man – standing proud at 93 years old – recounted his journey to Sobibor, in June 1943.
His name was Jules Schelvis. There he stood, fragile but unbroken, in a full but utterly silent church. He spoke about the transportation of 62 people in a single railway wagon. About the barrel on the bare floor. About the rain that spattered in through the gaps. About the hunger, the exhaustion, the filth.
‘You began to look like a pauper,’ he said. And you could hear the heartbreak in his voice. He recalled the soldiers ripping the watches off prisoners’ wrists on arrival. And how he lost his wife Rachel in the ensuing chaos. He never saw her again.
‘What normal human being could have imagined this? How could the world allow us, honest citizens of the Netherlands, to be treated like vermin?’ His question lingered among the pillars of the church. I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t.
What I also remember is his account of what happened before his journey. Following a Nazi raid, he and his wife and many hundreds of others were taken to Muiderpoort station. I can still hear him saying: ‘Hundreds of onlookers watched as the overcrowded trams went by under heavy guard, and they didn’t once protest.’
Straight through this city. Straight through this country. Right before the eyes of their fellow countrymen. It all seemed so gradual. And with each new step, it went further. No longer being allowed to go swimming in public pools. Being excluded as a member of an orchestra. No longer being allowed to ride your bike. No longer being allowed to go to college. Being put out on the street. Then arrested and taken away.
Sobibor began in the Vondelpark. With a sign saying: ‘No Jews Allowed’. Certainly, there were many people who protested. Men and women who took action and bravely went against the tide and risked their safety for the sake of others.
I also think of all the civilians and military personnel who fought for our freedom.
Of all the young soldiers who lost their lives on the Grebbelinie in those days of May.
The military personnel who served our Kingdom in the Dutch Indies and paid for it with their lives.
The resistance fighters who were executed by firing squad on the Waalsdorpervlakte or suffered inhuman treatment in labour and concentration camps.
The military personnel who were killed or severely wounded in peacekeeping operations.
True heroes who were prepared to die for our freedom and our values.
There is also another reality. Fellow human beings, fellow citizens in need, who felt abandoned and unheard. Who felt they should have received more support, if only by words. Also from London, and from my great-grandmother, despite her unwavering and fierce opposition. This is something that will always stay with me.
The impact of war lingers on for many generations. Even now, 75 years after our liberation, it remains with us. The least we can do is: not look away. Not justify it. Not erase it. Not brush it aside. Not normalise something that is anything but normal. And nurture and defend our democracy and the rule of law. Because only that can protect us from tyranny and chaos.
Jules Schelvis went through hell and yet managed to make something of his life as a free person. Much more than that. ‘I kept my faith in humanity,’ he said. If he could do that, then so can we. We can do it, and we will do it together. In freedom.”
However, there were little acts of resistance or rather attempts, by the exiled Queen, to boost the morale of the Dutch civilians, from her residence in London.
Two (orange) packs of cigarettes, with the V-sign on the cover and the text ‘The Netherlands will rise again’. On the night of 30 to 31 August 1941, tens of thousands of orange packages are dropped over the Netherlands. Queen Wilhelmina’s birthday was on August 31. On the other side of the pack is the letter W of Wilhelmina.
I know this was meant well, the goal was to boost morale. But on the other hand, it also could have caused harm, anyone caught with these by the Nazis would be severely punished, They could even face the death penalty.
Portrait of Queen Wilhelmina, published in the illegal press on her 61st birthday, August 31, 1941. The original portrait in pencil was made by Cor Visser. Dutch ‘war artist’ living in England.
The King mentioned Jules Schelvis.
He was a Dutch Jewish historian, writer, printer, and Holocaust survivor. Schelvis was the sole survivor among the 3,005 people on the 14th transport from Westerbork to the Sobibor Extermination Camp, having been selected to work at the nearby Dorohucza labour camp. He is known for his memoirs and historical research about Sobibor, for which he earned an honorary doctorate from the University of Amsterdam, Officier in the Order of Orange-Nassau, and Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.
Below is one of his testimonies.
“The Jews of the Bahnhofskommando were very heavy-handed getting us off the train onto the platform. They let on they were Jewish by speaking Yiddish, the language of the Eastern European Jews. The SS men standing behind them were shouting “Schneller, Schneller,” (faster, faster), and lashed out at people once they were lined up on the platform. Yet the first impression of the camp itself aroused no suspicion, because the barracks looked rather like little Tyrolean cottages, with their curtains and geraniums on the window sills.
But this was no time to dawdle. We made our way outside as quickly as possible. Rachel and I, and the rest of our family, fortunately, had no difficulty in swiftly making our way onto the platform, which had been built up of sand and earth. Behind us, we could hear the agonised cries of those who could not get up quickly enough, as their legs had stiffened as a result of sitting in an awkward position for too long, severely affecting their circulation. But no one cared. One of the first things that occurred to me was how lucky we were to be all together and that the secret of our destination would now finally be revealed. The events so far did not hold out much promise though, and we understood this was only the beginning.
It was obvious we had arrived at our final destination: a place to work, as they had told us in the Netherlands. A place where the many who had gone before us should now also be working. Our presence must be of quite some importance, why else would the Germans have bothered to bring us all the way here, travelling for three days and nights, covering a distance of two thousand kilometres?
Yet the Germans were using whips, lashing out at us and driving us on from behind. My father-in-law, walking beside me, was struck for no reason. He shrank back in pain only for a moment, not wanting anyone to see. Rachel and I firmly gripped each other’s hand, desperate not to get separated in this hellish situation. We were driven along a path lined with barbed wire towards some large barracks and dared not look around to see what was happening behind us.
We wondered what had happened to the baby in our wagon, and to the people unable to walk; and what about the sick and the handicapped? We were given no time to dwell on these things and, besides, we were too preoccupied with ourselves. ‘What shall I do with my gold watch?’ Rachel said. ‘They will take it from me in a minute.’ I replied, “Bury it because it could be worth a lot of money later.” As she was walking, she noticed a little hole in the sand and quickly threw the watch down, using her foot to cover it up. ‘Remember,’ she said, ‘where I’ve buried it. We can try digging it up later when we have a little more time.’
Like cattle, we were herded through a shed that had doors on either side, both wide open. We were ordered to throw down all our luggage and keep moving. Our bread and backpacks, with our name, date of birth and the word ‘Holland’ written on them, ended up on top of the huge piles, as did my guitar, which I had naively brought and carefully guarded all the way. Quickly glancing around, I saw how it ended up underneath more luggage. It dawned on me then that there was worse to come. Robbed of everything we had once spent so much care and time acquiring, we left the shed through the door opposite.
I was so taken aback and distracted by having had all our possessions taken from us, that although I had seen an SS man at some point, I never noticed, until it was too late, that the women had been sent in a different direction. Suddenly Rachel was no longer walking beside me. It happened so quickly that I had not been able to kiss her or call out to her. Trying to look around to see if I could spot her somewhere, an SS man snapped at me to look straight ahead and keep my ‘Maul (gob) shut.’
Along with the men around me, I was driven on at a slightly slower pace to a point just past an opening in a fence, where yet another SS man was posted. He looked the younger men up and down fleetingly, seeming to have no interest in the older ones. With a quick nudge of his whip, he motioned some of them to line up separately by the edge of the field. Directly in front of me, my brother-in-law Ab was directed to join this growing group. My father-in-law, David, and Herman, my thirteen-year-old brothers-in-law, were completely ignored. My father-in-law was too old, Herman too young. Glancing at me for just a moment, he let me pass as well. He needed to select only eighty healthy-looking men.
Those who had not been selected had to move along into the field and sit down. That Friday 4 June 1943, the Sobibor sun beat down on our heads. It was midday and very hot already. There we were, defenceless, powerless, exhausted, at the mercy of the Germans, and completely isolated from the rest of the world. No one could help us out here. The SS held us captive and were free to do as they pleased.
The rows of men out on the field were getting bigger as those from the other wagons joined us. While we were waiting, I had a little time to collect my thoughts. Our harsh treatment seemed to conflict with the image of the Tyrolean cottage-like barracks with their bright little curtains and geraniums on the windowsills. They had had such a friendly and calming effect on me after all the tensions of the preceding days. The camp had seemed devoid of any other people, apart from the Germans and the Jews who had ‘welcomed’ us on the platform.
As I sat there, I noticed a few Dutch prisoners had approached from the other side of the barbed wire fence and were trying to make contact with us. I recognised Moos van Kleef, the owner of the fish shop on the corner of the Weesperstraat. My arms gestured a question: how are things here, what can we expect? To assuage us, he yelled out to us that it was all right here, no reason to be concerned. I heard him say: ‘We have a job here, everything is new or has to be built.’ My mind was ticking over faster. I thought: this must be the new camp for which they will require some sort of order service (police). That must be why they need those young men. My intuition told me I would want to be a part of that group. Not so much for the order service, but to be with my brother-in-law whom I could still see in the distance.
The field had become quite crowded and I had already come to terms with the idea of working in the camp when I saw the same SS man approaching. With his hands behind his back, he ambled past the rows of men quite smugly, seeming quite pleased with himself. As he came closer, I suddenly remembered the order service. He had almost passed when I jumped up and put up my hand. I asked permission to ask him a question. Glancing back at me quite affably, he hesitated briefly and then nodded his approval. I requested in my best German, to join the other group. He stared into the distance, tapping his whip against his boot a few times. He turned around and asked: ‘How old are you?’ I replied: ‘Twenty-two, Herr Officer.’ Healthy? ‘Jawohl, Herr Officer.’ I had no idea what his rank was. ‘Can you speak German?’ Jawohl, Herr Officer.’
Not altogether disinterested, he searched me with his eyes for a moment, apparently lost in thought. Then nodding his head in the direction of the group, he said: ‘Na Los.’ I quickly ran towards it. The young men, relieved at finally being able to release some of the tension built up over the past few days, were chatting to an almost amiable SS man there. To my joy, my best friend Leo de Vries was also among them. The German looked surprised when I joined them because he believed the eighty-strong group to be complete. A little incredulously he asked: ‘They sent you as well? So now we have eighty-one; one too many, because to my knowledge there should only be eighty.’
After standing around and exchanging thoughts for a while, we were cut off abruptly by the SS man, who, suddenly in quite a different tone of voice, told us to shut up. He continued: ‘My colleague has selected you to work at another camp not far from here. You will return to Sobibor every evening so you can meet and enjoy yourselves with your family and friends.’ Pointing towards the field, he carried on: ‘They are going to have a bath now. This is why the men have been separated from the women because they obviously cannot bathe together. All the others who arrived today will stay here.
As he spoke, I also saw the SS man addressing the men out on the field, though I could not hear his exact words. Obviously, they were being told to undress, because I saw them starting to take off their clothes. By the time ‘our’ SS man had lined us up in rows of five, all those out on the field had already removed their shoes and vests. Urged on by his loud Eins-Zwei-drei-vier cadence, he tried to get us to march smartly and step towards the camp exit. He could not imagine how miserable we were after being scrunched up for days inside the cattle wagons. On our way to the train, I must have passed the spot where Rachel had buried her watch. I could not remember it. But I thought I might remember again in a few hours time, when, on my return, I would be headed in the same direction as when we arrived.
Two wagons and an engine stood ready for departure. All traces of turmoil had been erased from the platform, as though it had never happened. The train arrived in Trawniki on the very same day, 4 June 1943. The group had to walk the remaining five kilometres from there to Dorohucza. Unlike other people, I never did see the narrow gauge railway at Sobibor, and neither did I see any people being thrown into rail carts. A possible explanation could lie in the fact that we were the first to enter the camp, so the sick and elderly would not have made their way onto the platform by then, and the tipper trucks were not yet required. They must have been there, ready for use, but without people screaming inside them, I probably did not notice.”
I was actually doing research on a Sobibor victim called Ben Ali Libi which was the stage name of Michel Velleman , a Dutch Jewis magician who died in Sobibor on July 2nd 1943, But although there is a lot of mention of Ben Ali Libi there is actually little information. However I will do a piece on him in the near future. One name that did come up a lot during my research was the name of Jules Schelvis, I believe the last Dutch Jewish survivor of Sobibor.He died last month on April 3.
Jules Schelvis (7 January 1921 – 3 April 2016) was a Dutch historian, writer, Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter. He lost his wife and most of his family during The Holocaust. Schelvis was a plaintiff and expert witness during the trial of John Demjanjuk.
Jules was the second child of Jewish parents. His parents were not…
The title of this blog is also the title of a book written by Willy Peter Reese.
He was born on born January 22, 1921 in Duisburg. It is not clear when he died but it estimated he more then likely died between June 22 and 27, 1944 near Wizebsk in the Soviet Union.
Willy Peter Reese was a German writer. During the Second World War , as a Wehrmacht soldier on the Eastern Front, he kept records of his experiences, which he edited into a manuscript. It was published in 2003 with the title “A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944”
In the book he describes the things he sees on the battlefields and the crimes which are committed. He is clearly disgusted by it, but even more so because he is a participant in these horrific deeds because he was a soldier.
Jewish nursery school in Lithuania. Almost no Jewish children survived in Lithuania.
Renowned cantors unite to give their voices to Baltic Truth premiere
This is a blog by my friend Grant Gochin who has been working tirelessly to expose the lies of the Lithuanian government about Lithuania’s part in the Holocaust.
There were very few survivors from Lithuania. In the villages, there were almost none. We know what happened in some locations because we have testimonies from some survivors.
Yakov Zak testified about the Lithuanian Holocaust: “The rabbi of Kelmė, Kalmen Benushevits, who had escaped to Vaiguva at the outbreak of the war, had been brought together with the Jews from Vaiguva. He had been forced to kneel next to the pit the entire day. He had quietly whispered a prayer, watching while the Jews were shot. After all the Jews were shot, he was shot as well.”
And
“The mystic religious melodies of the yeshiva students, their rabbis and leaders were eternally silenced. The town was ruined down to the foundations; the Jewish community of Kelmė was ruined forever. Peasants also related that while the yeshiva students were being taken to be shot, they did not weep. Like stone statues, they moved slowly, with their eyes raised to the sky, murmuring prayers.”
What is little known and seldom discussed is the particular cruelty and contempt that Lithuanians displayed towards observant Jews during the Holocaust. Frequently, Jews were tied by their beards to horses and dragged to their deaths as a form of public entertainment. They were beheaded, and publicly tortured. Everywhere, Torah scrolls and religious books and objects were destroyed and burnt.
My own cousin, Sheyne Beder of Birzai Lithuania, testified: One day, shortly after Dr. Levin was shot the Lithuanian murderers carried out the popular rabbi of Birzai, Rabbi Bernshteyn. He was taken to the Shirvenas Lake. There the rabbi was forced to duck underwater several times. Then the murders explained to the rabbi that he, Bernshteyn, was guilty of all the sins that Jews had committed against the world, and that he was responsible for the sins of all the Jews of Birzai. They set his beard on fire, burned his body with irons and finally shot him”.
For Lithuanians, the blood sport of torturing Jewish clergy was particularly entertaining. After starving and torturing the Jews, Lithuanians would take pleasure in murdering children in front of their parents and raping daughters in front of their fathers. By humiliating and destroying clergy in front of their congregations, spirituality and entire belief systems were upended, leaving only the human shell of the Jews left to murder.
Dvoyre Lazarsky of Ariogala Lithuania and Frida Praz of Vaiguva Lithuania, testified: “The rabbi of Raseiniai, Rabbi Katz, was not in the camp. He sat in his home and studied day and night. With a broken heart, he observed the annihilation of his congregation. But he could not help them. The heavens, to which he shouted and pleaded for mercy from the depths of his heart, remained mute. Lithuanian partisans once came to the old man’s house. They found him sitting and studying. They ordered him to get dressed and go along with them. He categorically refused to go along and announced that he knew where they were taking him, and that he was ready to be shot in his home. The murderers spared him two times, and went away. The third time, two partisans came and forced the rabbi to leave his house. Dvoyre personally saw the rabbi being taken away in the direction of Jurbarkas, to Zhuvelishkiai. The rabbi went slowly, marking his steps, his head bowed down low to the ground. The murderers took the rabbi to Zhuvelishkiai, and there they shot him”.
The government of Lithuania states “No partisan ever murdered a Jew”. The Lithuanian government has an entire government agency dedicated to Holocaust fraud. They constantly report how many Lithuanians were benevolent to Jews. A testimony from Elke Flaks, born in the town of Krazhiai is an example of Lithuanian benevolence: “When they arrived at the pit, Rabbi Kremerman held his youngest child in his arm. In his other hand he held a book, and he recited something for the children. The murderer permitted the rabbi and the children to say their confession before death, and ordered them to undress”.ADVERTISEMENT Lithuania had the highest murder rate of Jews in all of Europe. It was safer to be a Jew in Nazi Germany, than it was to be a Jew in Lithuania. The participation of local Lithuanians in the Holocaust was massive, in some places, estimates indicate that 50% of the population participated. Not a single Holocaust perpetrator has ever been punished by the Government of Lithuania. Deliberately.
Khonon Reif, born in the town of Tirkshliai testified: “The last Jew brought to the marketplace was the town rabbi, Kalmen Magid. The bandits made the men line up in rows. The director of the Lithuanian gymnasium, Miltsius, placed the rabbi in front of all the Jews, cut off his beard with a pair of scissors and cut a crucifix into the hair on his head. Rabbi Kalmen Magid stood with his head bowed, weeping. All the Jews wept with him. The Lithuanian population of the town and from the surrounding countryside had assembled to watch this show, and they enjoyed it thoroughly. When they were finished with the rabbi, the murderers pulled out the town doctor, Khayim Lipman. He was from Kaunas. His parents and brother were sent to Russia as bourgeois in the spring of 1941. The Lithuanian murderer ordered the doctor to point out the Communists among the Jews. Dr. Lipman responded that there were no Communists among the Jews of Vekshniai. The Lithuanian murderers began to entertain the Lithuanian public. They forced the Jews to dance around the rabbi and clap their hands, and to fall down and get back up. If any Jew collapsed, the Lithuanians doused him with cold water and forced him to get back up and dance again.
Reif also testified: “Finally the Lithuanian murderers forced the rabbi to get onto a horse, and then they forced the assistant rabbi, Rabbi Bloch, to pour a bucket of water on Rabbi Magid’s head. On a nearby hill next to the study house stood the entire Lithuanian 11 intelligentsia” of the town, dressed in their holiday clothes, along with simple peasants. All of them watched as their Jewish neighbors were tormented, and they enthusiastically clapped as if they were watching a circus.
The German ordered all the Jews to line up, and each one had to pass by him. The German asked the happy Lithuanian “intellectuals” as each Jew passed him by: “Communist?”ADVERTISEMENT The Lithuanians answered each time, “Yes, Communist!” At this, the German would strike the Jew with his whip. The Lithuanians would begin to applaud. The show at the marketplace and then at the synagogue yard lasted for more than three hours.
Khane Pelts testified: “In one group were the town rabbi, Rabbi Yitshok Bloch, his brother Reb Zalmen Bloch, Rabbi Azriel Rabinovitz, Rabbi Pinchas Elfand and several other pious Jews with long beards. Together with them were many students of the yeshiva. It was told that at the grave Rabbi Zalmen Bloch gave a speech to the Jews, telling them that they should die proudly for the glory of God’s name, repenting for the sins which the Jewish people had committed over the course of many years. Yitshok (Iske) Bloch (not a relative) also made a final speech. He was a Revisionist. He said to the murderers: “You are sprinkling the trees with our blood, and the floors will be washed with your blood in revenge.” Iske Bloch was sliced into pieces with knives. The rabbis’ beards were torn out along with pieces of flesh, and then they were shot”.
Malke Gilis testified about the daughter of a Rabbi: “Mrs. Elfant, born in Yelok, daughter of the rabbi in Yelok. As Mery Shlomovitz relates, Mrs. Heni Bloch (nee Blekhman) had begun to give birth at the pit. The Lithuanian murderers threw the unfortunate mother into the pit while she was still alive. The little, half-born child was dragged along after its mother as she was thrown into the pit. The Lithuanian murderers were doubled over with laughter at this tragic scene. Mery saw this incident with her own eyes, while she was standing not far from the pit”.
Yente Alter (nee Gershovitz) testified: “All day long on Thursday, June 26, 1941 the men continued to be tormented in various murderous ways. The town rabbi Shmuel Fundler and Shmuel Gershovitz had half their beards shaved off by the Germans, who chased them around the yard together with the rest of the men. The torture of the men became a daily program for the German murderers and their loyal assistants, the Lithuanian partisans.
She also testified: “There were lootings virtually every day. Any Lithuanian who wanted to, looted openly and freely. During the work the partisans tormented, bullied and mocked the Jews and their religion. They had a weakness for teasing, mocking and tormenting religious Jews. Once at work in the courtyard and park of the Polish Count Oginsky, Rabbi Shmuel Fundler was forced to get into harness instead of a horse. The rabbi could not withstand this, and suffered a heart attack. He lay dead on the spot. This was July 2 or 3 1941”.
No government has ever created and implemented such a sophisticated Holocaust revision program, as Lithuania. They are the only government in the world ever to go to court in order to defend the good reputation of someone who was a mass murderer of Jews.
Lithuania had a miniscule Jewish survival rate of 3.6%, the lowest in the world. Only 0.04% of Lithuanians have been proven to rescue Jews. Due to the intense pleasure Lithuanians derived from murdering Jewish clergy, almost none survived.
Every aspect of Jewish life became a target for dehumanization by creative Lithuanian perpetrators, and their Nazi enablers. Mass rape of young Jewish virgins was common. Rape is an act of violence and humiliation. In one well known case, it was combined with the destruction of personal identity and religion. Every component of their victims identity was stripped from them prior to their murder. JewishGen describes the events as follows:
People still talk about one particular grave in which 74 high school girls were shot. This is what happened: The Nazis and their local collaborators selected these girls from the school, used them for their own pleasure and than brought them to the mass grave sites to be killed. But then for a brief moment a miracle happened. A priest arrived and told the girls that he would convert them to Christianity, and thereby save them from being shot. Was this a sincere gesture on the part of the priest to save the girls? Or was it merely the commander’s cruel deception of the priest and the girls? These are still unanswered questions. It soon became clear to the girls that no such miracle had occurred when they saw the murderers making the preparations to execute them. And when the girls began to resist, they began shooting. One of the girls was able to grab hold of a half drunken murderer and began choking him. She was immediately fended off by another one of them who split her head open with his rifle. In this way everyone was killed on the spot and tossed into a mass grave. They say that this particular girl who put up a fight was tall and strong. Her name was Rochale Tsin. This is how all the girls were killed. Today they lie in the first grave by the entrance at the Koshan Memorial.
Jews were also incarcerated in their beautiful shuls, starved there for weeks, then often set on fire. Lithuanians did this to dehumanize us and to inspire doubt in our God, and destroy our souls, before murdering our bodies. It was a Chilllul Hashem of the worst kind, a desecration of God’s name and presence that ended 600 years of flourishing Jewish life.
Continuing Lithuanian Holocaust revisionism and their heroization of the murderers, is dehumanization of Jews. It is Holocaust triumphalism. Does this not compel us to demand justice?
On September 14, 2022, Cantor Dudu Fisher (of Lithuanian descent) will join with Cantor Daniel Singer (also of Lithuanian descent) to present the documentary, Baltic Truth. The documentary will address the massive fraudulent cover up of Lithuanian Holocaust crimes by the current government of Lithuania. Fisher and Singer are among two of the greatest Litvak Cantors in history. They will implore the heavens, as did Rabbi Katz, for mercy, from the depths of their souls. They will commemorate and memorialize our Jewish brothers and sisters, who were murdered with such delight and enthusiasm by their Lithuanian neighbors.
Reif also testified: “Rabbi Kalmen Magid ordered everyone to recite the Jewish confessional prayer, and did the same himself. Everyone sat hopelessly, recited Psalms and wept. In the second barn the women tore the hair out of their heads, kissed their small children, wept bitterly and wildly, and took leave of one another.
Cantors Fisher and Singer will recite the Confessional Prayer ordered by Rabbi Magid, since we are all that remain to give voice to our brethren.
In a way I hate saying Happy Birthday ,because is supposed to be Ina’s 80yj birthday today. But she didn’t even get to celebrate her 2nd. She was born in Amsterdam on August 30,1942. She was murdered on October 22nd,in Auschwitz.
The reason why I do say Happy Birthday is because she deserves to be remembered, all of her previous 79 birthdays also need to be remembered. She was just a baby when she was murdered, not an ounce of evil in her, just pure love.
Ina was also the nickname I had for one of my sisters, when I was a kid.
Ina and her mother were caught on 29 September 1943 during a raid in The Hague. And then transported via Westerbork to Auschwitz where they were immediately gassed.
Ina’s half brother was Stanley, but he never met his older sister.
“And then it goes wrong…. My father Ies Winnik is arrested. ‘Mitkommen’, the Nazi screams. They take him to the headquarters of the Security Service.
There he is harshly interrogated. Where did you put the fur coats, Jew?’, asks the Security Service at the head office. He stands firm and is dragged to his cell. At the last interrogation he stands alone in his underpants in front of the interrogator’s desk.
It is warm and the balcony doors are open. The secretary signals with her eyes to my father and the balcony. This is my last chance,’ he thinks and jumps over the balcony and flees….
Stanley, in the film clip below, talks about the places his half-sister Ina went before she was murdered by the Nazis.
The video is in Dutch but you can select English Subtitles in the CC(Close Caption)section at the bottom right hand corner.
Most of you will think I am talking about the USA as you read this title. However, you’d be wrong. The America in the title is a parish village in the Dutch province of Limburg, known historically for its peat extraction.
The Germans laughed when they read this name in May 1940.
In the village of America in the Peel, on the farm ‘De Zwarte Plak’ of the Poels family, more than 300 Allied Airmen, 60 fled French Prisoners of War, 30 Jews, and many other fugitives were given temporary shelter. Much support was obtained from the neighbours, the Smedts and Geurts family. After the liberation, Allied soldiers came and went to the farm to see the famous hiding place with their own eyes.
In 1942 and 1943, De Zwarte Plak developed into a reception centre for Allied airmen and people in hiding. In August 1943 a conversation started with pilot helpers from Deurne to come to cooperation. During the winter of 1943-1944, the residents of De Zwarte Plak became more and more closely involved in the activities of the RVV Resistance Group Deurne due to the help provided to pilots. One or more Deurnese RVV’ers regularly settled on the Antoniushoeve.
The RVV group Deurne, later Knokploeg Bakel (resistance groups) and from September 1944 part of the Internal Forces, had its own shelter on De Zwarte Plak, a storage place for pistols and an air raid shelter under the horse stable of the Smedts family that was used, among other things, to house prisoners. to be temporarily accommodated.
Four men from the resistance group, with Cor Noordermeer as commander, were already present at Tinus Geurts when later, on the intercession of Bert Poels, Nico van Oosterhout and Johan Vosmeer were added. They were housed on the farm at The Geurts. This group had previously gone into hiding in Bakel, they were all wanted by the Nazis. It became too dangerous in Bakel, they were afraid of betrayal. Their connection to De Zwarte Plak was Bert Poels, whose concern was hiding and transporting Allied pilots.
The resistance group built its own air-raid shelter. That cellar had been excavated in a hillside against a ditch side. This ditch was 2.5 meters deep, but always dry because of the high terrain. The basement was four by six meters in size with a plank floor, walls, and a ceiling of corrugated iron. The entrance was virtually invisible and accessible via a low section in the ditch, twenty meters away, by walking into the ditch to a hatch, the air-raid shelter was accessible on the ground floor on the right. When leaving, sand was shovelled onto the hatch. The air-raid shelter contained three or four iron bunk beds from the pre-war Dutch army.
A milk churn had been dug into the moor behind Thei Geurts’ farm, and halfway to the vigilante’s shelter. It was a storage place for pistols and ammunition. The milk churn was so deep that after the lid had been placed on it, a suitable thick heather sod could be placed on top. That way the hiding place was invisible. When the sod dried out, a new one was stabbed somewhere further along. This milk churn had remained buried in the moor after the war and was found around 1950 when the moor was reclaimed, which was then converted to a depth of one meter.
A weapons instructor had adapted one of the longer underground bomb shelters (about 20 meters long) for target practice. This air-raid shelter was covered with earth that provided soundproofing. The rear was free of panelling and served as a bullet catcher.
Near the farm of Thei Geurts was a phosphorus storage place. Behind the vegetable garden, a hole had been dug where phosphorus was stored. The phosphorus went into the hole and was covered with soil. This phosphorus came from Allied bombers. These aircraft had been shot down by German anti-aircraft defences on their way to the Ruhr area above the Peel. Before they crashed, they dropped their phosphorus bombs first. The bombs fell deep into the peat bog and were dug up by the resistance. The phosphorus was bottled and thrown at German freight trains at night. Phosphorus was also strewn in the dark over large piles of straw at the railway stations. When it got light, the straw caught fire.
After Mad Tuesday (September 5, 1944) there were more and more signs that circumstances would change quickly. Signs that De Zwarte Plak would also be in the front line. As a result, all residents had to leave on September 30. The remaining KP members from Deurne left for Deurne again. On October 13, only the Thei Geurts family and some relatives were back at their farm. The rest of the entire area south of the railroad was empty. Three or four weeks later, the Thei Geurts family was brought to Sevenum by the Germans.
Maria Smedts, who transported the Jewish neighbours, was also responsible for feeding all those who had found shelter in “De Zwarte Plak.”
These are just a few of the Jewish people who took shelter in De Zwarte Plak, unfortunately I don’t know their names.
What amazes me most is that America is only 40 minutes from where I was born, and I had never heard of these brave people until today.
Herta Bothe was a German concentration camp guard during World War II. She was imprisoned for war crimes after the defeat of Nazi Germany and was subsequently released from prison early on 22 December 1951 as an act of leniency by the British government. She was 6ft 3in, which must have been quite intimidating for the prisoners.
In September 1942, Bothe became the SS-Aufseherin camp guard at the Nazi German Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. The former nurse took a four-week training course and was sent as an overseer to the Stutthof camp near Danzig (now Gdańsk). There she became known as the “Sadist of Stutthof” due to her merciless beatings of female prisoners. On other accounts he was also known as the “Sadist of Bergen-Belsen.”
At the age of 24, she accompanied a death march of women from central Poland to Bergen-Belsen. At the Belsen trial, she claimed that she had stuck prisoners with her hand as a means of discipline but never used an instrument to do so, nor did she claim to have killed anyone. She was sentenced to ten years in prison and is still alive today. In a rare interview she said:
“Did I make a mistake? No. The mistake was that it was a concentration camp, but I had to go to it, otherwise, I would have been put into it myself. That was my mistake.”
That was an excuse former guards often gave. But it was not true. Records show that some new recruits did leave Ravensbrück as soon as they realised what the job involved. They were allowed to go and did not suffer negative consequences.
The Allied soldiers forced her to place the corpses of dead prisoners into mass graves adjacent to the main camp. She recalled in an interview some sixty years later that, while carrying the corpses, they were not allowed to wear gloves, and she was terrified of contracting typhus. She said the dead bodies were so rotten that the arms and legs tore away when they were moved. She also recalled the emaciated bodies were still heavy enough to cause her considerable back pain. Bothe was arrested and taken to a prison at Celle.
At the Belsen Trial, she was characterized as a “ruthless overseer” and sentenced to ten years in prison for using a pistol on prisoners. Bothe admitted to striking inmates with her hands for camp violations like stealing but maintained that she never beat anyone “with a stick or a rod” and added that she never “killed anyone.” Her contention of innocence was deemed questionable as one Bergen-Belsen survivor claimed to have witnessed Bothe beat a Hungarian Jew named Éva to death with a wooden block while another teenager stated that he saw her shoot two prisoners for reasons he could not understand. Nevertheless, she was released early from prison on 22 December 1951 as an act of leniency by the British government.
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Grogol was a civilian camp, located just outside Batavia (now called Jakarta, Indonesia), about three kilometres Northwest of Tjideng, on the railway to Tangerang. Grogol started as a lunatic asylum and it was converted to a Japanese internment camp for civilians during World War II. Grogol was used for internment from 1 July 1943 til 18 April 1945.
This blog contains images of wooden labels that were used at the camp.
The picture above is a wooden board entitled Arrival at Grogol, with a magnifying glass burned-in scene of boys arriving by bus and unloading their luggage from Camp Tjimahi, where they had just left their mothers. The board was made after the Japanese permitted all the boys in December 1942 to send a package with Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) to their mother detained at the women’s camps.
Above is a narrow strip of wood labelled with 41881 and Japanese/Chinese(?) characters burnt into the wood. Someone made a hanging loop for it that still has a safety pin and a curved metal pin with a disc attached. The label belongs to R.A. the Lord (02.01.32) during the period Karmat, Tjodeng, Grogol.
The board pictured above is of text that reads, Arrival in Grogol, 29 August 2604, J.G. Post, P.O.W. 1-551 and below is a picture of the reverse side of the wood is an image burnt into the wood that represents a bus with people inside and luggage atop as well as, a soldier stands with his rifle on the left, while on the right, a figure walks to the right with a bag in hand.
In this ‘woke’ era it surprises me that the musical “The Greatest Showman” didn’t get cancelled. Even more amazingly it was a huge success, even though it probably was one of the biggest history revisions ever to hit the cinema and later on TV and streaming services.
Joice Heth was one of the ‘performers’ of the P.T Barnum show.
Often buried deep within the Barnum mythology is the shocking story of how P.T Barnum got his start, leasing an elderly Black slave who he’d exhibit as President George Washington’s 161-year-old nursemaid.
Heth was offered to Barnum for $1000. With slavery illegal in the North, Barnum instead negotiated to “lease” Heth for a year, paying for his half with a loan, and recruiting a business partner, Levi Lyman, for the rest.
Barnum and his partner Levi Lyman drew the curious to see Joice Heth using posters and advertisements . The advertisements…
Jules Schelvis (7 January 1921 – 3 April 2016) was a Dutch historian, writer, Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter. He lost his wife and most of his family during The Holocaust. Schelvis was a plaintiff and expert witness during the trial of John Demjanjuk.
History of Sorts 
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