Auschwitz
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Sometimes I come across photographs which are so vivid that they seem like they are not photos—but realistic. And then, knowing what the fate is of those in the picture, I feel like just giving them a hug and telling them everything will be fine. I also know that couldn’t be further from the truth.…
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Eva and Bram, born in 1932 and 1934, were the children of Hartog Beem and Retje Kannewasser in Leeuwarden. At the end of 1942, and at least until May 1943, Eva and Bram were still in-hiding in the Veluwe, at ‘De Zwarte Boer’ near Elspeet. The children were arrested in February 1944 and 6 March…
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Eduard and Alexander Hornemann are two of the 20 Bullenhuser Damm children who were murdered on 20 April 1945. I have written about the Bullenhuser Damm children before, but I just want to focus on the two brothers now. The reason being, at another time it could have been my boys whose names would have…
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For anyone who is not from Geleen or the province of Limburg ,in the south East of the Netherlands, the name Geleen will mean very little. Yo may have visited the town perhaps while it was still hosting the annual Rock festival of PinkPop. Maybe you even visited the former mining town during one of…
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The girl in the playpen is Renee Sara Gottschalk, born in the Central Refugee Camp Westerbork on 21 June 1941. The two girls in the dark dresses are the daughters of chief physician F. Spanier. The lady on the right is Rosa Strauss; Renee Sara’s mother. Her father was Erich Gottschalk. Renee and her mother…
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It is stories like Gideon’s that make me want to give up doing blogs on the Holocaust, but paradoxically, it also encourages me to continue with it. The reason why I want to stop is apparent. Every time when I see a picture of a beautiful innocent infant, knowing that child was murdered by an…
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A Stolpersteinplural Stolpersteine; literally means “stumbling stone”, metaphorically a “stumbling stone” is a sett-size, ten-centimetre (3.9 in) concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. Created by the artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, Stolpersteine is brass-topped cobblestones embedded in the pavement outside a…
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The Jehovah Witnesses are often forgotten as Holocaust victims. An estimated 1,000 German Jehovah’s Witnesses died or were murdered in concentration camps and prisons during the Nazi era, as did 400 Witnesses from other countries, including about 90 Austrians and 130 Dutch Jehovah Witnesses. On 29 May 1940, the Vereeniging of Bible researchers (The name…
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Edith Hofmann was born in Prague in 1927; in 1941 she was 14 years old and sent with her family to the Łódź Ghetto in Poland. Her parents died within their first year there. When the Łódź Ghetto was liquidated in 1944, Birkin was sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp where she spent the rest of…
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May 16 is a date which links two events in relation to the Holocaust, even though they are 15 years apart. Hana Bradyová was born on 16 May 1931 in Prague, the daughter of Markéta (née Dubsky) and Karel Bradyová. Her family lived in Nové Město na Moravě in the Vysočina Region of Czechoslovakia. Most…
