Auschwitz

  • A Sparrow in Auschwitz

    In Auschwitz, where shadows fall like heavy stones,And darkness reigns in the heart of despair,Amidst the echoes of silent groans,A solitary sparrow dared to share. Through barbed wire and sorrow, it flew,A fragile beacon of hope untamed,Its wings of freedom, a whispered clue,In a world where humanity was maimed. In the midst of anguish, it…

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  • Oswald Kaduk was born on 26 August 1906. I think a line from an Iron Maiden song applies to him, “All the evil seem to live forever.” He died on 31 May 1997. He was a German SS member and served as Rapportführer at Auschwitz. He was on trial during the second Auschwitz trial. Kaduk…

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  • Sometimes people are evil because they are ignorant. Other times people are evil because they can be, and the regime they follow has given them a carte blanche to do whatever they want. Dr Clauberg probably qualifies for both groups. Dr Clauberg was a German gynaecologist who conducted medical experiments on human subjects (mainly Jewish)…

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  • From Zero to 102

    I was reluctant to use the title, From Zero to 102 as the title, I didn’t want it to look like a review for a car. However, I couldn’t think of a more suitable title either. The 0 and the 102 are the ages of two victims of the Holocaust. This is how evil the…

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  • I See More Than Shoes

    Where some see shoes, I see a father desperately comforting his daughter, telling her everything will be fine when he knows it won’t be okay ever again. Where some see shoes, I see missed opportunities to get to know the people wearing them. Where some see shoes, I see the sad face of a little…

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  • Music is not just a series of notes strung together, it is also a tool that can be used for good and bad. Music evokes deep emotions, a bit of music often remains with you in your mind for the rest of your life. The Nazis used music in the concentration camps, not to make…

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  • Max Hirsch was one of the 937 passengers aboard the St. Louis, the cruise ship that left the port of Hamburg on May 13, 1939, with Cuba as its final destination. The vast majority of the passengers were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Across the Atlantic Ocean, they hoped to find a safe haven. However,…

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  • Geleen is a small former mining town in the province of Limburg, in the southeast of the Netherlands. It is not a particularly famous place, although it is where the first professional football was played in the Netherlands, and it used to host one of the world’s biggest rock festivals, “PinkPop.” It is also where…

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  • On March 26 and 28, two transports of Slovakian Jews were registered as prisoners in the women’s camp, where they were subjected to forced labor. These were the first transports organized by Adolf Eichmann’s department IV B4 (the Jewish office) within the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA). On March 30, the first RSHA transport from…

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  • Heroes don’t always wear capes or dressed in uniforms. Sometimes, they are just ordinary people. I say ordinary, but they are often anything but ordinary, as with Fredy Hirsch. I first heard of Fredy a few years ago. As a birthday gift, I recently received the book The Librarian of Auschwitz. While the story centres…

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