History
General history issues, although a lot will be about WW2
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The one thing I always fear when I do these blogs about World War II and the Holocaust is what I will discover about my family. Thus far, there is no indication that any of them collaborated with the Nazis, but I have a big family, and even now, in 2023, there is still new…
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A bit of history that was forgotten in the West, I believe. In the early hours of 26 February 1936, a group of young radical Japanese army officers led approximately 1,400 troops, under their command, on an attack at the Prime Minister’s residence and other buildings in Tokyo, killing Home Minister Saito Makoto, Finance Minister…
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The news of the 22 February 1941 raid of 427 Amsterdam Jews made a deep impression on the Amsterdam population. Out of solidarity with fellow-Jewish citizens and resentment of the Nazis’ actions in the capitol, a general strike, was announced for 25 February 1941. The call, which came from several members of the illegally operating…
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The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Monday, 6 January 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people “everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy: “In the future days, which we seek…
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The title is Holocaust Tattoos, but it was only in Auschwitz that the new arrivals selected for work would receive a tattoo. As a rule, they were tattooed on their left forearm to display, in dark blue/ black ink, the camp serial number assigned to them. The Nazis recorded more than 400,000 serial numbers at Auschwitz.…
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Hitler had a vision for an empire that would last a thousand years. It only lasted 12, but in those 12 years, he and his Nazi party did more damage than any empire before. On 30 January 1933, Von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor. “It is like a dream. The Wilhelmstraße is ours,” Joseph Goebbels, the…
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Starting in May 1942, wearing a yellow fabric star in the Netherlands, called the “Star of David,” was made compulsory by the Nazis. This measure made it easy to identify Jewish people and was designed to stigmatize and dehumanize them. This was not a new idea; since medieval times many other societies had forced their…
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I had a chat a few days ago with a friend. We were talking about the Holocaust, and we both agreed that the Germans, specifically the German Nazis, were the main instigators and culprits of the world’s biggest crime. Without them, there may not have been a Holocaust or at least not on the scale.…
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I love the Netherlands. I was born and raised there and proud to call myself a Dutchman. Like all other countries in this world, it has pages in history that are not so glorious. I believe that the best way for any country to deal with the darker days of its history is not to…
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“Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,” is a famous line which was used by a character in William Congreve’s 1697 play The Mourning Bride. And sometimes music does soothe the savage beast, but during the Holocaust, some of these ‘beasts’ were so evil that nothing could soothe them. However, music did play an…
History of Sorts 