France
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On July 29, 1942, Transport #12 (designated by French records as Convoi 12) departed from the Le Bourget-Drancy railway hub just outside Paris. Bound for the extermination network of Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland, the sealed train carried 1,001 Jewish men, women, and children. When World War II came to an end in 1945, only five…
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It always amazes me how easy it was for some Europeans to give up their Jewish neighbours. I know it’s easy for me to say that in retrospect, because I don’t know how I would have reacted if put in that situation. But I have a feeling I would have spoken out about it the…
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I am open to correction for this, but I am pretty sure that Bastille Day is foremost the public holiday in France. The French National Day is the anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, which was a central event of the French Revolution. For obvious reasons, it wasn’t celebrated during…
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There are very few items of fashion that please both women and men. The Bikini would be one of them, women like to wear them and men like to look at them, although nowadays some men wear them too, why? I do not know. The bikini was born at a Paris poolside photo shoot on…
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WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES The 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich surrounded the tiny hamlet of Oradour-sur-Glane in the Limousin region of South Central France on 10 June 1944. The division then massacred 642 French civilians in the village. Some believe that the troops were seeking retribution for the kidnap of a German…
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What a sense of relief it must have been when the French people found out that the allied troops had finally arrived on June 6 1944. Unfortunately though D-Day wasn’t the end of the war it was only the start of the end and many innocent lives were still lost between that day and the…
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It is often said that the “Holocaust by bullets” is the forgotten Holocaust, and I agree. However, in my opinion, it is not the only forgotten aspect of the Holocaust. I believe the deportations themselves also belong in that category. While we know a great deal about what happened after the transports arrived at the…
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Dagobert Stibbe was born in Amsterdam, 13 October 1918. He was murdered in Auschwitz, 23 June 1943. He was a student at the Technische Hogeschool(Technical University)Delft. He tried to escape to Switzerland, but this failed. He was caught on 2 June 1943 just 15 meters away from French-Swiss border. He was sent to the transit…
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Josephine Baker is mainly remembered for her erotic and provocative dances, vaudeville routines, and appearances in films. However her efforts to fight the tyranny of Fascism have received very little attention. She was born as Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother, Carrie, was adopted in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1886 by Richard…
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The Ardenne Abbey massacre took place during the Battle of Normandy at Ardenne Abbey, a Premonstratensian monastery in Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe near Caen, France. In June 1944, members of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend executed 20 Canadian soldiers in the abbey gardens over a period of days and weeks. The killings formed part of the wider…
History of Sorts 