Auschwitz
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I came across an excerpt from the book Wiswassebeesjes by author Dieta Kalk. I can’t think of a proper translation for the word, but that doesn’t really matter. In the book the writer, recalls the removal of the Wallage family from Aprikozenweg 21 in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, a day after seeing the Star of David.…
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(Re-post from May 29 2025) Yesterday, I received an email from a Mengele admirer. His name is Eric Sissu. I don’t know him personally, but I imagine he’s the type who sits in his parents’ basement, in his dirty underwear, fantasizing about Josef Mengele while doing little else with his time. He probably wrote that…
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We are only a few weeks away from the 2026 FIFA World Cup. This milestone inspired me to look back at players who never had the chance to compete in major football tournaments, either as players or coaches. Before diving into their individual stories, consider the context of the photograph above: a game of football…
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On 7 July 1942, Heinrich Himmler, in cooperation with three others, including a physician, inaugurated experimenting on women in Auschwitz and investigated extending this experimentation on men. Himmler convened a conference in Berlin to discuss the prospects for using concentration camp prisoners as objects of medical experiments. The other attendees were the head of the…
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History rarely writes scripts as pure or as devastating as the life and death of Captain Witold Pilecki. In the grand, tragic theater of twentieth-century Europe, his name stands as a solitary monument to human courage—and an indictment of totalitarian cruelty. Pilecki is famously remembered as the Polish cavalry officer who intentionally got himself captured…
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The involvement of the Dutch railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen, or NS) in the Holocaust is a deeply tragic chapter in Dutch history. During World War II, the NS played a significant role in the deportation of Jews and other persecuted groups to Nazi concentration and extermination camps. Context and Occupation The Netherlands was occupied by Nazi…
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Somebody once told me, “Evil acts can only be committed by men.” I disputed that notion. History has many examples of women who are just as evil—if not even more evil than men. Anyone who knows me knows how important eye health is to me. In 2011, I lost my right eye, and in 2015,…
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I saw a robin yesterday. The saying goes, “When robins appear, loved ones are near,” alluding to the belief that the robin is a messenger. Not a messenger from the living but from the dead. In that belief, the robin doesn’t bring a sad message—but a message of hope and encouragement. Then I wondered was…
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The photograph above is of a selection in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It looks horrendous enough when you look at it, but if you analyze it, the horrors become so real. Firstly, it is clear that the line on the left will not see the end of that day. They are doomed to go into the gas chambers.…
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On May 20, 1940, the first group of prisoners arrived at Auschwitz: approximately 30 German inmates classified by the SS as “professional criminals.” They had been selected from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. Less than a month later, on June 14, 728 Polish prisoners were deported by German authorities from a prison in Tarnów,…
History of Sorts 