Holocaust
-
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…
-
I have written about Titus Brandsma before, but I thought the fact that I am going to visit Dachau in a few months time, I thought it would be a good time for another post on the Dutch Catholic Friar. He also has a connection to Ireland, where I live now. Titus Brandsma was born…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
There were, of course, millions of families murdered during the Holocaust. The reason why I am focusing on only two families today is that they were young families. Both families had a child who would have had their 80th birthday today. I am only giving the details of their births and their deaths, The only…
-
(courtesy of John Davis) This is an excerpt from John Davis’ book, Rainy Street Stories. It tells the story of a survivor he met at Flossenburg, who had survived Auschwitz, Ravensbruch, and finally, Flossenburg. Z-1557While vacationing many years ago, my wife Jane and I decided to visit Flossenburg, West Germany. This charming little town is…
-
This post is about just a few of the 1.5 million children murdered during the Holocaust. These children have three things in common, today would have been their birthday, they were all Jewish and they were all murdered. Pictures above: Betje de Vries-van de Kar was born in Amsterdam on 28 December 1923 and was…
-
A diary is the most personal possession someone might have. It is a journal of their wishes, fears and often their secrets. It is therefore extremely important when a diary becomes public it is treated with the utmost dignity and respect, especially those that were written during the darkest era of mankind. Diary of Susi…
-
Yesterday, a court in Germany convicted 97-year-old Irmgard Furchner and she received a two-year suspended sentence. Most of you will have heard of it. What you possibly didn’t hear is that after the war she married Heinz Furchtsam, a SS officer who also had worked in Stutthof. For reasons unknown to me, he changed his…
-
“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 