dirkdeklein
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Anne Frank would have turned 88 today so on her birthday what better time to reflect on her life. I will focus more on her younger years prior to her diary. So much has already been written about Anne, I doubt there will be anything new in this blog, it is nevertheless important to remember…
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In the late summer of 1942, the Marine Corps decided to experiment with the use of dogs in war, which may have been a new departure for the Corps, but not a new idea in warfare. Since ancient times, dogs have served fighting men in various ways. The Romans, for instance, used heavy mastiffs with…
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During the Holocaust, concentration camp prisoners received tattoos only at one location, the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. The Auschwitz camp complex consisted of Auschwitz I (Main Camp), Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau), and Auschwitz III (Monowitz and the subcamps). Incoming prisoners were assigned a camp serial number which was sewn to their prison uniforms. Only those prisoners…
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The above image is from the 10 October 1846 issue of the Pictorial Times. It has the title “Cahirciveen, the retreat of the Liberator.” It accompanies an article discussing the plight of the Irish people who are suffering from hunger after the failure of their potato crops. Words of the time—written by a British, not an…
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Geleen is a city in the southern part of the province of Limburg in the Netherlands. With 33,960 inhabitants, it is part of the municipality of Sittard-Geleen. Geleen is situated along the river Geleenbeek, a right tributary to the river Meuse. The Latin name for Geleenbeek is Glana, meaning “clear river”. At the start of…
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The 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich was a division of the Nazi Waffen-SS during World War II. It was one of the thirty-eight divisions fielded by the Waffen-SS. Das Reich served during the invasion of France and took part in several major battles on the Eastern Front, including in the Battle of Prokhorovka against…
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July 22nd, 1937, was Esther Steinberg’s big day. Her wedding to Vogtseck Gluck, a goldsmith from Antwerp, was a smart affair at the Greenville Synagogue just a short walk from her home on the South Circular Road in Dublin. The men, pillars of Dublin’s Jewish community, wore top hats, while the ladies were decked in…
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The Medway raid of 9-14/19-24 June 1667 saw a Dutch fleet sail into the Thames and attack the British fleet in its anchorage in the Medway, causing a panic in London and winning a victory that helped bring the Second Anglo-Dutch War to an end. At the end of the summer of 1666 the British…
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For many the joy of being freed from the brutal Nazi regime was short lived. After the concentration camps were liberated the deaths didn’t stop straight away. British forces liberated concentration camps in northern Germany, including Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. They entered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Celle, in mid-April 1945. Some 60,000 prisoners, most in…
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Checkpoint Charlie was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991). East German leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and maneuvered to get the Soviet Union’s permission to construct the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stop Eastern Bloc emigration and…
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