Geleen
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It is important to tell the stories of those who collaborated with the Nazis. Regardless of what some governments want you to believe, there were collaborators in all occupied countries. Some were even more evil than the occupiers. However, it is equally important to honour those who helped their fellow citizens, often at risk of…
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Today 80 years ago my hometown, Geleen, was bombed by the RAF by mistake. Originally the target was the German city of Aachen. 84 were killed. This is the story of that day: England, 5 October 1942: The weather at 9:15 am: rain and low clouds; at 12:15 p.m.: clearings extending South; 4:10 pm: further…
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The best way to describe this story is a microcosm of the Holocaust history. But before I go into the story, I have to explain the wider background, to put it into context. Although I am fully Dutch, I was seen as a child of a mixed marriage, The Netherlands is a small country, however,…
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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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Geleen is a small former mining town in the province of Limburg, in the south east of the Netherlands. It is not a particular famous place, although it is the place where the first professional football was played in the Netherlands, and it used to host one of the world’s biggest rock festivals’PinkPop’ It is…
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I am always intrigued in the history of how things come to be. Like who was the first to discover could be turned into a hot beverage. However, as the title suggest this is not a blog about coffee but about my other guilty pleasure, Chocolate. The history of chocolate is a bit more mysterious…
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It is just a photo of a soldier with his family. One could easily dismiss this photograph as someone’s memory. A father who loved to smoke, a mother all dressed up and two well-dressed children—a boy and a girl. This photo could have easily been a picture of my grandfather with his family. Like the…
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The title of the blog is ‘The Steinbach Family’ but is really a blog about the Romani people. The reason why I picked the Steinba,ch family name is twofold. Firstly the picture at the start of the blog is of Settela Steinbach. It is one of the most iconic pictures of the Holocaust. Initially she…
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I came across this document which made me glad on one hand, but on the other hand it was also disturbing. But before I go into the details I have to give some background information first. The south of the Netherlands was mostly liberated by October 1944. At that time the Netherlands was made up…
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Although I have not lived there since 1997, I still call the place where I was born home. Geleen is a town in the Province of Limburg, in the south east of the Netherlands. A former mining town and since 2001 it has been part of the bigger municipality of Sittard-Geleen. It fused with the…
History of Sorts 