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  • On July 1st 1942 the Nazis took control of Concentration camp Westerbork. Jacques Schol, a Dutchman, was commander of the camp from July 16 1940 and until January 1943. He was known for his brutality against Jewish inmates, kicking inmates to death. Westerbork served as a temporary collection point for Jews in the Netherlands prior…

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  • Originally posted on History of Sorts: On this day in 1939 Adolf Hitler signed an order to begin the systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and disabled people, the so called T4 program. https://dirkdeklein.net/2016/04/08/forgotten-history-the-t-4-holocaust-victimsthe-killing-of-the-disabled/ The T4 program, which was was basically the gassing of people who were deemed mentally ill, was the first wave of mass extermination by the…

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  • Art competitions were held as part of the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. Medals were awarded in five categories (architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture), for works inspired by sport-related themes. The Irish artist Jack Butler Yeats(brother of W.B Yeats) won the silver medal for his painting the “Liffey swim”, as seen above. The…

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  • Originally posted on History of Sorts: One afternoon a day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a guy calling himself Dan Cooper (the media mistakenly called him D.B. Cooper) boarded Northwest Airlines flight #305 in Portland bound for Seattle. He was wearing a dark suit and a black tie and was described as a business-executive type. While…

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  • Late in the morning of 4 August 1944, Dutch police entered the Secret Annexe and arrested the Frank family, the van Pels family, Fritz Pfeffer, Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler (who worked at Opetka). Otto Frank was the managing director of Opetka, and they had helped to hide the residents. On 8 August 1944, after several days…

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  • Originally posted on History of Sorts: The Nitimei Maru, a Japanese troop ship with around 1,000 Dutch prisoners of war and 1562 Japanese soldiers aboard, departed from Singapore on 29 December 1942. The prisoners of war were being taken to work on the Burma Railway. The Nitimei Maru was just one of many ‘hell ships’, given this…

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