Czechoslovakia
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On 30 September 1938, the leaders of Great Britain, France, Italy and Nazi Germany signed the Munich Agreement, handing the Sudetenland—the predominantly German-speaking border regions of Czechoslovakia—to Adolf Hitler’s Germany. The Czechoslovaks themselves were not parties to the agreement. It was presented as a settlement intended to prevent another European war. British Prime Minister Neville…
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The Lidice massacre was one of the most brutal reprisals carried out by Nazi forces during World War II. It took place on June 10, 1942, in the village of Lidice, which was then part of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now the Czech Republic. The massacre was a direct retaliation for the assassination…
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On May 29, 1942, Radio Prague announced that Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, lay dying in Prague’s Bulovka Hospital from wounds sustained in a daring ambush carried out by Czech resistance fighters. Days earlier, as Heydrich’s open-topped Mercedes wound through the outskirts of Prague near Holešovice along the road then known as Rudé…
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To be honest, I’m not entirely convinced of his nobility, he had many flaws. Nonetheless, his actions were remarkable, especially considering his family background. When people hear the name Göring, it usually conjures images of Hermann Göring, the notorious Nazi leader and one of Adolf Hitler’s closest confidants. Yet few know about his younger brother,…
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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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Heroes don’t always wear capes, or are dressed in uniforms, sometimes they are just ordinary people. I say ordinary but more often than not they are anything but ordinary, as was the case with Fredy Hirsch. I first heard of Fredy a few years ago. I got the book, The Librarian of Auschwitz, as a…
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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…
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When Westerbork was built in 1939 as a refugee center for Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria, it also included a hospital. The hospital grounds were originally known as Centraal Vluchtelingenkamp Westerbork, a camp for refugees arriving mainly from the neighboring country, Germany. It was those refugees themselves who in 1939 built Barrack No.12 and…
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All stories of children murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust are enormously sad on many levels. The story of Helga Renate Sara Zons is particularly heartbreaking. There are no pictures of her, just a death certificate to remember her. The certificate was issued ten years after the Nazis murdered her. What makes it very…
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Following is the transcript of the report from the World Jewish Congress on the annihilation of Jews in Europe which was issued on December 1,1942. I just want to make it clear that these are not my word. Bizarrely we live in a time where I feel compelled I have to mention this, because despite…
