Holocaust
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Gesina Groen would have been 85 today. But she was murdered on her 1st birthday. She was born on July 26,1941 in Amsterdam and murdered in Auschwitz July 26,1942, together with her mother. There are no pictures of Gesina, just a picture of the house she lived in. The address is Nieuwe Keizersgracht 70, Amsterdam,…
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Eighty-four years ago today, Edie (Elias) van Biene and Sara (Sonja) Rood were married in The Hague. Just a few days ago, I celebrated my own 31st wedding anniversary. It was a hot day, and I still vividly remember our first dance, the kiss, and our first night of passionate sex as a married couple—each…
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Medical Doctors generally work closely together with Pharmacists. During the Holocaust this was not much different. Victor Capesius was born to a doctor of German descent in 1907, in a part of Romania which then belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied in Romania and Vienna where, in 1933, he completed his doctorate in pharmacy.…
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(originally posted on November 1, 2021, My friend Norman Stone pointed the story out to me, sadly Norman passed away last year) Hate is never good, it clouds judgement and mind. I am not only saying this to those who read this but more so to myself. I have written so many pieces about World…
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Most people will have heard about the Kindertansport-Children-Transport—a unique humanitarian rescue programme, which ran between November 1938 and September 1939. Approximately 10,000 children, the majority of whom were Jewish, were sent from their homes and families in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Great Britain. But there were two other Kindertransports. In Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch, better known…
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According to the Joods Monument (Jewish Monument) website, 210 Dutch Jews were murdered on this day 84 years ago in Auschwitz. I could write a piece on each person, but I decided to stick with only one of the victims because it symbolises the pure evil of the Nazi regime. The photograph above is of…
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The Grossaktion Warsaw, also known as the Warsaw Ghetto Grossaktion, stands as one of the most harrowing episodes of the Holocaust. Initiated by Nazi Germany during World War II, this operation aimed at the mass deportation and extermination of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. The event not only underscores the brutality of the Nazi regime…
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This house was an orphanage for Jewish girls from 1861 to 1943.In 1889 the orphanage was extended to include the neighbouring house.On 10 February 1943, the girls and their attendants weredeported to the extermination camp Sobibor. They were supposed to have been deported before, but due to a scarlet fever outbreak on 4 July 1942,…
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In June 1940, following the fall of France, Nazi Germany turned its attention to the Channel Islands—British territories located in the English Channel. While most islanders across the archipelago chose to remain, the residents of Alderney, fearing an imminent occupation, made the fateful decision to evacuate. This unfortunate decision, while tragic for civilians, unwittingly aided…