Auschwitz
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A truly remarkable story of love and survival. In the late 1930s, Anka Bergman was a lively law student living in the Czechoslovakian capital, Prague. “I wanted company and boyfriends and to enjoy myself. I didn’t know that Hitler was coming, but I filled my time with only cinemas and theatres and concerts and parties,”…
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Oskar Gröning was a German SS Unterscharführer stationed at Auschwitz. His responsibilities included counting and sorting the money taken from prisoners, as well as being in charge of the personal property of arriving prisoners. On a few occasions, he witnessed the procedures of mass killing in the camp. On April 20, 2015, when he was…
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During the Holocaust, several Nazi concentration camps had orchestras composed of prisoners. These orchestras were used for propaganda, forced to play during appalling situations such as executions, roll calls, and as prisoners were marched to forced labor or gas chambers. Below are some of the most notable orchestras formed in concentration camps. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Women’s…
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People are often surprised to learn I am not Jewish, and a few have even questioned my decision to write about the Holocaust as a non-Jew. While Jewish people were the primary targets and largest group of victims, Nazi persecution extended to millions of others as well. My connection to this history is personal: members…
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This blog is not to pass judgment; it is meant to illustrate how evil the Nazis, and particularly Mengele, were. They forced doctors to do things they would usually not even contemplate, and it put them in impossible positions. Berthold Epstein: Berthold Epstein (1890–1962) was a remarkable Czech pediatrician whose life was marked by groundbreaking…
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The Mechelen Transit Camp, located in a former army barracks known as Kazerne Dossin, was established by the Nazis in 1942. Its primary function was to serve as a holding and sorting facility for Jews and Roma before their deportation to extermination camps, primarily Auschwitz-Birkenau. Over the course of two years, Mechelen became a site…
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On this day in 1919, Primo Levi was born. He was an Italian-Jewish chemist, partisan, writer, and Holocaust survivor. He has written many books and essays. He died on 11 April 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall from a third-story apartment landing. His death was initially ruled a suicide, but after some careful consideration,…
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I have done blogs on the New Apostolic Church during WW2 before, and I am doing research for further blogs. However, this time I want to focus on one member in particular. Many of you know I am a New Apostolic Christian and for many years I have sang in the choir. One of my…
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Gesina Groen would have been 85 today. But she was murdered on her 1st birthday. She was born on July 26,1941 in Amsterdam and murdered in Auschwitz July 26,1942, together with her mother. There are no pictures of Gesina, just a picture of the house she lived in. The address is Nieuwe Keizersgracht 70, Amsterdam,…
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Eighty-four years ago today, Edie (Elias) van Biene and Sara (Sonja) Rood were married in The Hague. Just a few days ago, I celebrated my own 31st wedding anniversary. It was a hot day, and I still vividly remember our first dance, the kiss, and our first night of passionate sex as a married couple—each…
