History

General history issues, although a lot will be about WW2

  • The Longest Day is still one of my favourite movies. The epic cinematic event about D-Day and the direct aftermath. It was one of the first ensemble cast movies, basically anyone who was anyone in Hollywood was part of the movie. Because it was shot less then 2 decades after D-Day and the end of…

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  • When I was a young boy, Count Dracula scared the crap out of me. Having an older brother pretending to be the blood sucking Count didn’t help either. The fear was so real that to this day I still have a phobia for Bats. Little did I know then I would end up living in…

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  • Adolf Hitler is infamous for his evil deeds and politics , but a lesser-known chapter of his life is his early pursuit of a career in art. Before he became the architect of one of history’s darkest periods, Hitler aspired to be a professional painter. His time as an artist, though ultimately unsuccessful, played a…

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  • Be a friend. You don’t need money:Just a disposition sunny;Just the wish to help anotherGet along some way or other; Just a kindly hand extendedOut to one who’s unbefriended;Just the will to give or lend,This will make you someone’s friend. Be a friend. You don’t need glory.Friendship is a simple story.Pass by trifling errors blindly,Gaze…

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  • Pip: History of Sorts is the kind of site that looks at a photograph of a selection ramp and refuses to let you scroll past — dirkdeklein has been doing that work, post after post, this week. Mara: The posts cover a lot of ground: the machinery of the camps themselves, the perpetrators and collaborators…

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  • Selection

    The photograph above is of a selection in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It looks horrendous enough when you look at it, but if you analyze it, the horrors become so real. Firstly, it is clear that the line on the left will not see the end of that day. They are doomed to go into the gas chambers.…

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  • On 17 July 2014, all 298 passengers of flight MH17 were killed. 12 years on, and still no one is brought to justice. The contrary is true, some of those responsible, and this includes those who are complacent and are vetoing part of the investigation, and of course, the war in Ukraine. Each passing day…

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  • Words from Diaries

    A diary is like a chronicle, a chronological summary of someone’s life, or at least part of it. Nowadays people use social media to document their daily life. Unlike social media, diaries are meant to be secret. That’s why the words from Holocaust diaries which were published after World War II, should be treated with…

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  • In 1972, Jerry Lewis directed, wrote and starred in the movie, “The Day the Clown Cried.” The storyline:“Helmut Doork, a once great and famous clown, is fired from the circus. Getting drunk at a local bar, he pokes fun at Hitler in front of some Gestapo agents, who arrest and send him to a prison…

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  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a landmark 1900 children’s fantasy novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. The first installment in the Oz series, the novel follows Dorothy Gale, a young farm girl from Kansas who is swept away by a cyclone along with her dog, Toto, and transported…

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