History

  • Renia Spiegel was born on 18 June 1924, in Uhryńkowce, then in Poland and now in Western Ukraine, to Polish-Jewish parents Bernard Spiegel and Róża Maria Leszczyńska. Like many other teenage girls, Renia kept a diary. She started hers at age 15, on 31 January 1939, nine months before German and Slovak troops invaded Poland.

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  • There is one myth about Audrey Hepburn I have to dispel: she was not British-Belgian. In Belgium, as in many other European countries, you don’t automatically obtain citizenship just because you’re born there. You typically inherit the nationality of your parents, usually that of the father or, in some cases, the mother. Audrey was born

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  • On Sunday, 19 February 2023, I had the privilege of interviewing Michael Jacobs. Michael is a confrontational speaker. We discussed the rise of Anti-Semitism, and intolerance in general. I don’t think anti-semitism ever went away, it just laid dormant for a few decades. We are now at the point where the same mistakes of 1920/30s

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  • Concentration camp Vught, also known as concentration camp Herzogenbusch , was the only purpose built concentration camp in the Netherland. The other 2 major camps, Westerbork and Amersfoort, were already built before the war as a refugee center and army barracks. The construction of Camp Vught began in May 1942. The camp consisted of 36

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  • This Is…

    This is Margot Jany, eight-years-old when she was murdered in Auschwitz-Birenk. This is Ernest Frydman, age nine from Paris, France deported and murdered in Auschwitz on August 1942. This is Mina and Joseph Kiszelewski, murdered in the gas chamber on August 26, 1942, at ages nine and six. This is Bernard Gutman, age eight, from

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  • I can never understand people who are ashamed or embarrassed of where they are from or where they were born. You should always be proud of your roots. Even if you live somewhere else you should never lose your pride of your birth place. It is perfectly possible to be proud of the place you

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  • To be honest the ‘global’ in the title might be a slight exaggeration but it was a freaky weather event nonetheless in fact the freakiest weather event. Imagine bundling up to get the newspaper on an early morning at 7:30 a.m. with the temperature at a frigid -4 degrees.(−20°C). Just two minutes later as you

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  • Harold Shipman-Dr Death

    Born in England in 1946, serial killer Harold Shipman attended Leeds School of Medicine and began working as a physician in 1970. Between then and his arrest in 1998, he killed at least 100 and possibly as many as 260 of his patients, injecting them with lethal doses of painkillers. He was  jailed for life,

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  • Some people really have lived a life. Charles Herbet Lightoller survived three major dramatice events and lived to tell the tale. Charles Herbert Lightoller (30 March 1874 – 8 December 1952) was the second mate (second officer) on board the RMS Titanic and the most senior officer to survive the Titanic disaster. As an officer in charge

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  • This post is a bit of a detour from my usual World War II history blog, but I felt I needed a break from the harrowing stories of the war—especially those surrounding the Holocaust. I spent the longest part of my career working for Philips, between 1987 and 1997. I was part of the FSM

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