dirkdeklein
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Steel serpents carved through dawn’s first light,A journey veiled in darkest night,Crammed boxcars held the silent screams,Of shattered lives and broken dreams. On iron trails, their hopes erased,Through countrysides, the engines raced,Families torn from all they knew,A past that dwindled from their view. No windows showed the path ahead,The air was thick with fear and…
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“Southern trees bear strange fruitBlood on the leaves and blood at the rootBlack bodies swinging in the southern breezeStrange fruit hanging from the poplar tree.” The lines above are from the song “Strange Fruit,” a beautiful song about a horrific event. It’s very hard to listen to it, but equally, it’s impossible not to listen…
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Introduction John Morrison Birch (1918–1945) occupies an unusual place in American history. A Baptist missionary turned U.S. Army intelligence officer in China during World War II, his life bridged the spheres of religion, geopolitics, and war. Though he died at just 27 years old, Birch became a symbolic figure in early Cold War discourse when…
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Forgotten History-The Hardaga & the Kabiljo families:Holocaust and Bosnian Muslim Genocide survivors
(originally posted in April 2016) There really isn’t such a thing as a happy Holocaust story but I think this is probably could be seen as a ‘happy’ story. It doesn’t only portray extreme bravery but also that deep down, good people are the same, regardless of what religious differences they have. Especially in the…
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Aside from their murderous practices, the SS also had several businesses. On January 23, 1939 Oswald Pohl .the head of “SS Main Economic and Administrative Office” founded the “German Research Institute for Nutrition and Food Provision Ltd.” The shareholders were the SS concern “German Earth and Stone Works Ltd.” and a member of the SS…
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No matter how you twist or turn it, when you are complicit to a crime, you are just as guilty as the perpetrator, and perhaps even more guilty because you were an enabler of that crime. Hermann Stieve was Director of the Berlin Institute of Anatomy from 1935 to 1952, which was from the early…
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The role of Finland during World War 2 is a strange one. They were part of the axis powers, not so much because they were great fans of the Nazi regime, but because they saw a powerful ally in Germany to fight the soviets. There were about 2000 Jews in Finland during World War 2,…
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The Dutch word ‘Moffen’ is a slur or derogatory term for Germans, pretty much in the same way as Krauts in the English language. Where the word ‘moffen(or mof singular)’comes from is not clear but it had been around since the 16th century. It more or less disappeared from the Dutch vocabulary for about 100…
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++++ Contains some nudity+++++ We watched the 2001 World War II drama “Enemy at the Gates” a few nights ago. There was one scene where the characters played by Rachel Weisz and Jude Law had sex whilst surrounded by other soldiers, in the sleeping quarters. This made me wonder how often something would happen for…
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The athlete Meryll Frost is credited with the phrase, “Behind every great man there’s a great woman,” but that is not what he actually said. What he really said was, “They say behind every great man there’s a woman. While I’m not a great man, there’s a great woman behind me.” In this blog, I…
History of Sorts 
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