August 2023
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Sweet angel Rudolf, you would have had 85 candles on your birthday cake today. How I wish I could have helped you blow them out. That would have been 85 candles—one for each year of your life. You weren’t given the opportunity to see five candles on your cake all those years ago. Rudolf de
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There are just a few days in music history that are forever carved in my mind. August 16,1977 -the day Elvis died, February 6, 2011-the day that Gary Moore died. January 15,2018-marked by the death of Dolores O’Riordan and October 6,2020 -the day we lost Eddie van Halen. The music of all those musicians touched
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Oswald Kaduk was born on 26 August 1906. I think a line from an Iron Maiden song applies to him, “All the evil seem to live forever.” He died on 31 May 1997. He was a German SS member and served as Rapportführer at Auschwitz. He was on trial during the second Auschwitz trial. Kaduk
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The photograph above is of Gezina de Leeuwe-de Jong with her four children. I presume the photo was taken by her husband and the father of the children, Louis de Leeuw. I reckon that’s why he is not in the picture. He was a son of Barend de Leeuwe and Sientje van Minden. He married
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The photographs in this post are categorized as artefacts. I don‘t really like that description because the definition of an artefact is—an object made by a human being, typically one of cultural or historical interest. These objects may have been made by a human being, but more than that—they were personal belongings. The narrative of
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The painting above is from 1353, and it shows the citizens of Tournai burying victims of the Black Death, also known as the bubonic plague. However, the black death is now what I mean when I refer to the Medieval Holocaust, but it is directly linked to it. Jews in Europe have been persecuted since
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I saw a robin yesterday. The saying goes, “When robins appear, loved ones are near,” alluding to the belief that the robin is a messenger. Not a messenger from the living but from the dead. In that belief, the robin doesn’t bring a sad message—but a message of hope and encouragement. Then I wondered was
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After setting up this blog a few years ago, I am amazed that I still come across stories of heroes I had never heard of before. Ernst Sillim was born in 1923, the first of five children. Shortly before that, his father, Albert, a stockbroker, and his mother, Annie, moved from Amsterdam to a house
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I want to clarify Fascism vs Nazism upfront. Both are movements that are intensely sinister and steeped in hatred. However, there are precise differences. While Nazism believes in the superiority of the Aryan Race and the inferiority of the Jews and other groups. Fascism places everything below the state or nation, whether it is an
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I have mixed feelings about the story of Marcel Pinte. I didn’t think that any child, especially a child as young as six, should ever be used in a war situation. However, I have also never lived in a wartime situation. Marcel was born on 12 April 1938 in Valenciennes, France. He was the youngest
History of Sorts 