dirkdeklein

  • Desperation and Survival

    I have often wondered how the Sonderkommandos coped with their  work. Sonderkommandos were  forced labour units made up of  Nazi death camp prisoners. usually Jews.They were forced to help with the disposal of gas chamber victims among other duties. Sometimes even removing family members. It is not like they had a choice, it was either work…

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  • Vienna in 1913 was a vibrant cultural city. It was one of Europe’s power houses.Needless to say it attracted people from all over the continent and indeed the world. Not was it only known for its musical heritage it was also known for its many fine coffee houses. today Viennese coffee is still enjoyed by…

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  • The Fighting Girlfriend

    Your husband goes off to war and gets killed in battle. What do you do? Well like any other wife you would sell all your belongings and with the money earned from that sale, you go an acquire a tank, to take revenge. It sounds like a great plot for a revenge movie directed by…

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  • We all know the story “War of the Worlds” be it either the book, movies or the musical version. A tag line of the story is “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, they say.” Turns out that we beat the Martians to it. On July 1976. only 7 years…

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  • Mein Kampf—The Sequel

    (Originally posted July 19, 2018) This may surprise some of you, but I have actually read Mein Kampf. Well, at least part of it. I gave up halfway through because it was boring. I recognized it for what it was: the ramblings of a delusional failed artist. Mein Kampf was published on July 18, 1925,…

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  • Mack the Knife is one of my favourite Jazz songs,  I love the Bobby Darin and Louis Armstrong versions equally. It just doesn’t get cooler than that song, sung by these two performers, although Sammy Davis Jr, also did a pretty cool rendition. Even though I have admired this song for decades. it is only…

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  • Do you sleep at night?

    Do you sleep at night, knowing what you did to me? Does your conscience bother you? Do you have a soul? And if you do how could you do what you did? Do you have children of your own? Or do you have nieces or nephews? Would you kill them? We both know you wouldn’t…

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  • A destructive beauty.

    On July 16,1945,at 5:29 a.m the world witnessed a beautiful yet devastating event. When I say world I really mean only a select few. What they witnessed was the first ever nuclear test, designated the ‘Trinity Test’ it was part of the Manhattan Project. The bomb that was detonated was ‘the gadget’. Although we all…

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  • I came across the above picture a few years ago and the information I got with it is that the children in the picture were orphans, staying with the nuns in Castle Hoensbroek, in Limburg .the south east of the Netherlands However all the children had been placed under guardianship. They originally came from a…

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  • When we think of the first TV screening of Batman we automatically think of the 1966 TV series when Adam West took on the role as the caped crusader. However it was the actor Lewis Wilson who first portrayed the Batman on the TV screens. This day 75 years ago, July 16 1943, the Batman…

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