Holocaust

  • Gershon Willinger’s Story

    I came across Gershon Willinger’s name on the Joods Monument website. It is his 80 birthday today, When I saw his name and his birthday, I also saw that the date and the place of his death were not known. I figured this was going to be an awful tragic and depressing story. I decided…

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  • A Murdered Family

    The baby in the picture is Jonas David Kloot, he would have celebrated his 80th birthday today. He would have been blowing out 80 birthday candles on his birthday cake. But he didn’t even get to blow out his first birthday candle. Jonas was born on 15 September 1942 in Amsterdam. Less than nine months…

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  • The Dutch Railways

    The Netherlands have been in the grip of a series of Railway strikes, the last few weeks. The staff is not pleased with their new work agreements, hence the strikes. Of course it is their good right to do so, However I couldn’t help but wonder ‘Why didn’t they go on strike between 1941 and…

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  • Anyone who has seen the movie “Schindler’s List,” will know about Amon Göth, whom Ralph Fiennes played. Göth was the son of a prosperous publisher in Vienna. In 1931, he became a member of the Austrian Nazi Party at the age of 23. He was granted full party membership on May 31, 1931. His decision…

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  • The Roman Catholic church, especially the Vatican, still has many questions to answer about the Holocaust. However, some Catholic clergymen, even a few high-placed ones, did not keep their mouths shut and defied the Nazis. Cardinal Johannes de Jong was one of those men. He was ordained to the priesthood on 15 August 1908 and…

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  • The Weerbaarheidsafdeling (WA; “Resilience Department”) was the paramilitary arm of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB), the fascist political party that collaborated with the Nazi ocdupiers of the Netherlands during World War II. The organization, roughly equivalent to the German SA, was founded in 1932 by Anton Mussert, co-founder of the NSB in…

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  • Charlotte was born in Paris, a child of two survivors of the Holocaust, my parents did everything they could to provide a good education for their three children. I love my career in public relations, my family and friends and travel. Charlotte enjoys helping to brand individuals, organizations and companies of all sizes. Her expertise…

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  • Englandspiel Tragedy

    The Englandspiel was a counter-espionage operation set up by the Germans that lasted from March 1942 to April 1944. Secret agents of the SOE who had been dropped over the Netherlands were often arrested immediately upon landing and forced to maintain radio contact with England. Despite hidden warnings in their broadcast messages, British intelligence continued…

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  • The best way to describe this story is a microcosm of the Holocaust history. But before I go into the story, I have to explain the wider background, to put it into context. Although I am fully Dutch, I was seen as a child of a mixed marriage, The Netherlands is a small country, however,…

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  • Joseph is just one of the 6 million Jews who was murdered during the Holocaust. He was murdered today 80 years ago in Auschwitz. He was born in Amsterdam, 20 February 1921. Joseph Charles Rosenberg Polak (Jop) lived with his parents at 163 Pieter Cornelisz Hooftstraat in Amsterdam. He wanted to study medicine, following in…

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