History
General history issues, although a lot will be about WW2
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On 4 May 1945, the German Admiral Von Friedeburg at Lüneburg surrendered to British Field Marshal Montgomery on behalf of the German troops in Northwest Germany, the Netherlands, Schleswig-Holstein, and Denmark. On 5 May, Canadian General Charles Foulkes summoned the German Supreme Commander Johannes Blaskowitz to Hotel De Wereld in Wageningen to discuss the effect…
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You will never know how it feels to fall in love and wake up every morning next to the love of your life. You will never know the anxiety of school exams. You will never know that nervousness of a first working day. You will never know how it feels like to have your teenage…
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(Update from the November 2016 blog) One aspect of history I find particularly difficult to grasp is the collaboration of some Jews with the Nazis. On the one hand, I understand that self-preservation is a powerful human instinct—survival at any cost can drive people to make unimaginable choices. Yet, conversely, it’s hard to reconcile how…
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One of the difficulties I have in telling or writing stories about the Holocaust is the sheer volume of victims. I believe the best way of keeping the memories alive is to personalize the stories. Rather then talk about millions ,talk about individuals and show that they were human beings like every one else. To…
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I cannot decide which is worse, the crimes of Auke Bert Pattist or his remorselessness. Also, the fact that some people saw him as a hero—depresses me. Auke Bert Pattist was born in 1920. In 1943 he voluntarily entered the Waffen-SS. As an officer, he would be involved in arresting and ill-treating a large number…
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I am always amazed why so many evil men got away with murder. Especially the physicians who were supposed to, “first do no harm.” Hans Eisele was an SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer and Nazi physician in various camps, including Mauthausen and Buchenwald. There he mistreated and murdered prisoners, for example, by operating on them without anaesthesia and by…
History of Sorts 
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