Escape

  • Some might think the title, Escape to Suriname—A Holocaust Christmas Story, is a bit contradictory. Dutch Jews were fully integrated into Dutch culture, and many would have participated in the Sinterklaas and Christmas celebrations. This story is about more than that, and one I was not familiar with. On Christmas Eve 1942, more than a hundred,

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  • On June 20, 1942, the SS guard at the Auschwitz exit was visibly shaken. In front of him idled the car of Rudolf Höss, commandant of the notorious concentration camp. Inside were four armed SS men. One of them—a second lieutenant, or Untersturmführer—was shouting and cursing furiously. “Wake up, you buggers!” he bellowed in German.

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  • If there was a chart of The Top 10 Most Evil Nazis, I reckon Klaus Barbie would be on that list. Known as “The Butcher of Lyon,” for his reign of terror in Nazi-occupied Lyon, France, Barbie not only sent Jews to concentration camps but also brutally tortured French Jews and Resistance fighters. His torture

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  • The Sobibor revolt, which took place on October 14, 1943, stands as one of the most remarkable acts of resistance against Nazi oppression during the Holocaust. This uprising occurred in Sobibor, one of the Nazi extermination camps located in German-occupied Poland, and was organized by a group of Jewish prisoners determined to escape their imminent

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  • If there was a chart of The Top 10 Most Evil Nazis, I reckon Klaus Barbie would be on that list. Known as “The Butcher of Lyon,” for his reign of terror in Nazi-occupied Lyon, France, Barbie not only sent Jews to concentration camps but also brutally tortured French Jews and Resistance fighters. His torture

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  • The saying goes, “Music can soothe the savage beast,” but what if it is the savage beast that is using the music as a cynical form of evil and torture? In July 1942, Hans Bonarewitz attempted to escape from the Mauthausen concentration camp by trying to hide himself inside a box and was captured on

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  • There were 4 concentration camps in the Netherlands. The best known was Westerbork, the other 3 were Vught,Amersfoort and Ommen. A relatively unknown fact is that there were also an estimated 42 work/labour camps. Between January 1942 and October 1942 , the Jewish work camps in the Netherlands spread across the countrie from which unemployed

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  • The death of Mengele

    It is said to you speak not ill of the dead, but in this case I am willing to make an exception. Jospeh Mengele was beyond the shadow of doubt one of the most evil men who ever lived. Although as a Doctor he was supposed to look after people and first do no harm.

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  •     One out of every five inhabitants of the town of Aalten located in the Achterhoek, the so-called back corner in the east of the Netherlands bordering Germany, was in hiding there during the Second World War. The occupier was on constant look out for people on the run, Jews or young men trying

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  • Escape from Auschwitz

    Four Poles, Kazimierz Piechowski, Stanislaw Gustaw Jaster, Józef Lempart, and Eugeniusz Bendera, escaped on June 20, 1942 after breaking into an SS storeroom and stealing uniforms and weapons. In disguise, they drove away in a vehicle that they stole from the SS motor pool, and reached the General Government. Jaster carried a report that Witold

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