dirkdeklein
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The Ku Klux Klan has survived for more than 150 years. Its ideology of hatred and white supremacy continued to attract new members through the Holocaust, the civil rights movement, and the election of America’s first black president. It seems unbelievable that hatred could live on for that long, that anyone in the modern world…
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Of all the enemies Allied soldiers confronted during World War II, malaria proved to be among the most stubborn. The mosquito-borne disease was a constant scourge for soldiers stationed in the Pacific and Mediterranean theaters. General MacArthur’s retreat to the malarial Philippine peninsula of Bataan in early 1942 led directly to his sickly army’s surrender to the Japanese a…
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To most of you the names of these 2 towns will mean virtually nothing but it is where my roots are. I was born and raised in Geleen. Sittard-Geleen is a municipality in the southeastern Netherlands. It was formed in 2001 from the former municipalities Sittard, Geleen and Born. The Netherlands was a neutral country, during WWI this neutrality had not been breached,…
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On August 28 1941, more than 23,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by the Nazi’s in occupied Ukraine. The Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre was a World War II mass shooting of Jews carried out in the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa, by mobile killing squads of Nazi German Order Police Battalion 320 along with Jeckeln’s Einsatzgruppen, the Hungarian soldiers, and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. The killings were conducted on August…
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Execution by elephant was a common method of capital punishment in South and Southeast Asia, particularly in India, where Asian elephants were used to crush, dismember, or torture captives in public executions. The animals were trained and versatile, able to kill victims immediately or to torture them slowly over a prolonged period. Most commonly employed by royalty, the elephants were used to signify both the ruler’s absolute…
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Ireland remained officially neutral during World War II. However, on 26 August 1940, the German Luftwaffe bombed Campile in broad daylight. On August 26 1940, the tiny village of Campile in County Wexford was bombed by the German Luftwaffe, killing three local women and giving Ireland—until then largely insulated from the terror of World War II—its first experience of…
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I am not saying I am a great lover of art but the fact that I am from a nation that has produced some of the greatest artist in history, probably means there is a bit or “artist” DNA in me. During WWII many Jewish artists were butchered by the Nazi regime. What the Nazi’s…
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One of the most extraordinary episodes in Irish history saw a French naval flotilla sail to the Northern coast of Mayo in 1798 to help Ireland in its long fight to break with Britain. The 1789 French Revolution had been a huge source of inspiration for Irish nationalists and in the wake of the second…
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Lange Jan(Long John) was the name of the 135 meter(442ft) tall chimney of the former coal mine “Oranje Nassau 1” in Heerlen in the province of Limburg in the south east of the Netherlands. It had been erected in 1937/1938 and had been dominating Heerlen’s skyline. To put it in perspective the Big Ben tower…
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The naval Battle of Texel or Battle of Kijkduin took place on 21 August 1673 between the Dutch and the combined English and French fleets and was the last major battle of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, which was itself part of the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), during which Louis XIV of France invaded the Republic and sought to establish control over the Spanish Netherlands. English involvement came about because of the Treaty of Dover,…
History of Sorts 
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