Category Archives: History

Below is the transcript of a Dutch court case, The defendant is only referred to as Mrs C. That is how the Dutch legal system still works nowadays, the name of a defendant is only indicated by the first letter of the surname.

The transcript dates 7 September 1947. Mrs C. is accused of treason and collaboration.

I don’t know what sentence she got but I presume she receive the death penalty.

Indictment, Accusation and Conviction of Mrs C. from Blasiusstraat in Amsterdam, who was involved with others in betraying Jewish families, including the family of Michel Gompers and Bertha Vogel.

“The accused Mrs C. was accused that, being Dutch, during the hostile occupation of the Empire in Europe:

A: Has generally shown National Socialist affiliation by joining the Dutch People’s Service in or around 1944; NSB window posters in the windows of her home, as well as attending NSB…

Ik weet niet welke straf Mevrouw C. uit Amsterdam kreeg, ik ga er vanuit dat ze de doodstraf kreeg.

Het gaat ook over een van de zovele zelfmoorden tijdens de Shoah, waar zo weinig over gesprokem word.

-Aanklacht, Beschuldiging en Veroordeling van Mevrouw C. uit de Blasiusstraat in Amsterdam, die zich met anderen bezig hield met het verraden van Joodse gezinnen, waaronder het gezin van Michel Gompers en Bertha Vogel.-

“De aangeklaagde Mevrouw C. werd er van beschuldigd dat zij, Nederlandse zijnde, tijdens de vijandelijke bezetting van het Rijk in Europa:

A: In het algemeen blijk heeft gegeven van nationaalsocialistische gezindheid door in of omstreeks 1944 te zijn toegetreden als lid van de Nederlandse Volksdienst; NSB raambiljetten voor de ramen van haar woning te hebben gehad alsmede NSB vergaderingen te hebben bezocht en de bladen Volk en Vaderland en De Daad te hebben gelezen.

B: In of omstreeks 1943 M…

Joosje Asser is de dochter van Eli Asser, tekstschrijver en journalist en meer. Joosje’s moeder was Eefje Croiset.

Met series als ‘Het schaep met de vijf pooten’ en ‘Citroentje met suiker’ hield Eli Asser jarenlang miljoenen Nederlanders aan de televisie gekluisterd. Ook was hij bekend van liedjes zoals,£Het zal je kind maar wezen£ op muziek gezet door Harry Bannink.

Half april 1942 kreeg Asser een oproep om geïnterneerd te worden in een van de Nederlandse werkkampen. Aan deze Arbeitseinsatz wist hij te ontsnappen door legaal te gaan werken als leerling-verpleger in de Joodse psychiatrische inrichting Het Apeldoornsche Bosch,waar alle niet-Joodse medewerkers op last van de Duitse bezetter ontslagen waren. Enkele maanden later kreeg ook zijn vriendin Eefje Croiset er een baan, als schoonmaakster. Op 20 januari 1943, op de avond vóór patiënten en personeelsleden door de bezetter werden gedeporteerd, vluchtte Asser samen met Croiset terug naar Amsterdam. Beiden zaten de…

I can’t think of any place on earth that was more evil than Auschwitz, although other camps that had perhaps more cruelty, But it is the scale of the cruelty, torture and murder that makes Auschwitz pure evil, a literal hell on earth. The picture above is of Yisrael and Zelig Jacob, the younger brothers of Lili Jacob. They were both murdered in Auschwitz.

Below is a photograph of Jewish women and children deported from Hungary, separated from the men, line up for selection. Auschwitz camp, Poland, May 1944. Their reality was death.

However, some who had a completely different reality. They could enjoy themselves after a day’s work. They could relax in Solahütte a little-known resort in Poland for the Nazi German guards, administrators, and auxiliary personnel of the Auschwitz/Birkenau/Buna facilities during the Holocaust. Although postcards of the era sent by German staff sometimes bore the mysterious pre-printed return…

It is often believed that the allied forces were not aware of the mass killings. The fact is they were aware but chose to ignore it.

Jan Karski was a Polish soldier, resistance-fighter, and diplomat during World War II. In late 1942, Karski was smuggled in and out of the Warsaw ghetto and Izbica, a transit ghetto for Jews being sent to the Belzec killing center. In both places, he witnessed the horrific conditions imposed by the Germans that had caused tens of thousands of Jews to die of starvation and disease. In Izbica, disguised as a guard, he saw thousands of Jews being crammed into cattle cars. Karski learned that the train was taking them to be murdered.

Karski then managed to travel across German-occupied Europe to London, where he delivered a report to the Polish government-in-exile and to senior British authorities, including Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. He described…

Theresienstadt, also known as Terezín, was a town in northern Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic), it was used from 1941 to 1945 by the Nazis as a walled ghetto and concentration camp, and was also used as a transit camp for western Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.

In 1943 the Nazis sent some 500 Danish Jews, who had managed to escape to Sweden. While Europeans elsewhere often quickly lost interest in their deported Jewish fellow citizens, the Danes persisted in demanding that the Germans account for these Danish citizens and allow the Red Cross to visit the ghetto.

To dispel rumours about the extermination camps, the Nazis permitted the visit, but they arranged an elaborate hoax. They deported many camp residents to Auschwitz to minimize the appearance of overcrowding and erected fake stores and cafés to give the appearance of a life of comfort and…

(originally posted March 22, 2020)

I did do a blog on Marcel Marceau about 2 years ago but he would have been 100 today. Therefore I thought it to be appropriate to do another tribute to this silent Hero.

He survived the Nazi occupation, and saved many children in WWII. He was regarded for his peerless style pantomime, moving audiences without uttering a single word, and was known to the World as a “master of silence.”

Marcel Marceau was born Marcel Mangel in Strasbourg, France, to a Jewish family. His father, Charles Mangel, was a kosher butcher originally from Będzin, Poland. His mother, Anne Werzberg, came from Yabluniv, present-day Ukraine.

At the beginning of the Second World War, he had to hide his Jewish origin and changed his name to Marceau, when his Jewish family was forced to flee their home. His father was deported to Auschwitz, where he was…

I am a member of several history websites and I get daily notifications abut events that happened in history this day. Today I got the notification that on this day in 1945 Anne Frank died in Bergen Belsen

I don’t know how they got to that conclusion because the exact date Anne and Margot Frank death is not known. But this is that forgotten tragedy of their deaths their family like Otto Frank and the girls’ Aunt Leni Frank Elias did not have a date where they could remember the death of the 2 girls, and maybe light a candle for them. Nor would they have a date where they could say a specific prayer.

Luckily Leni Frank-Elias moved to Basel. in Switzerland in the 1930s together with her husband and her sons Stephan and Bernhard(Bernd)aka Buddy.

Anne Frank clearly was very fond of her cousin Bernhard

Buddy (Bernd), was…

Sophie is the girl on the left in the above picture. It would have been her 90th birthday today. She was born on March 16, 1932 in Amersfoort. She was transferred via Kamp Vught to Camp Westerbork on 23 May 1943. There were another 1172 people on that transport. 1171 Jewish Dutch citizens and one other, possibly a Roma or resistance fighter.

This is the age breakdown of that transport.

From Westerbork,Sophie and her family were deported to Sobibor on 8 June 1943 – with transport number 68. It was transport 68 from Westerbork but it was Transport 15 to Sobibor.
On June 8, 1943, the 15th train left from Westerbork to Sobibor. On this train, there were 3017 persons. It was the train of the notorious Children’s Transport. The lives of all 3017 men, women and children aboard this 15th transport, ended in Sobibor on the 11th of June…

Just to get you all ready for St Patrick’s day, I have compiled some of what I think is the best Irish music.