Holocaust
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People are often surprised to learn I am not Jewish, and a few have even questioned my decision to write about the Holocaust as a non-Jew. While Jewish people were the primary targets and largest group of victims, Nazi persecution extended to millions of others as well. My connection to this history is personal: members…
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While the title refers to this period as a prelude, the Holocaust was already underway by 1933. However, the Action T4 program marked the beginning of systematic mass murder. The T4 Euthanasia Program, also known as Aktion T4, represents one of the most chilling manifestations of Nazi ideology and is often considered a precursor to…
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This blog is not to pass judgment; it is meant to illustrate how evil the Nazis, and particularly Mengele, were. They forced doctors to do things they would usually not even contemplate, and it put them in impossible positions. Berthold Epstein: Berthold Epstein (1890–1962) was a remarkable Czech pediatrician whose life was marked by groundbreaking…
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On August 4,1944 Anne Frank, her family and all the others hiding in the annex in the office building in Amsterdam are arrested. Anne was 15 at the time, the same age my niece is now. However my daughter is free to meet her friends, go to the shop, compete in competitions and even free…
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The Mechelen Transit Camp, located in a former army barracks known as Kazerne Dossin, was established by the Nazis in 1942. Its primary function was to serve as a holding and sorting facility for Jews and Roma before their deportation to extermination camps, primarily Auschwitz-Birkenau. Over the course of two years, Mechelen became a site…
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On this day in 1919, Primo Levi was born. He was an Italian-Jewish chemist, partisan, writer, and Holocaust survivor. He has written many books and essays. He died on 11 April 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall from a third-story apartment landing. His death was initially ruled a suicide, but after some careful consideration,…
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On July 29, 1942, Transport #12 (designated by French records as Convoi 12) departed from the Le Bourget-Drancy railway hub just outside Paris. Bound for the extermination network of Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland, the sealed train carried 1,001 Jewish men, women, and children. When World War II came to an end in 1945, only five…
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Parole der Woche (“Slogan of the Week” or “Word of the Week”) was a wall newspaper published by the propaganda department of the Nazi Party from 1937 to 1943. On July 1, 1942, it posted the image seen above. The text says, “Whoever wears this sign is an enemy of our people.” Something I always…
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+++++++++++++++WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES++++++++++++++++ The heroes who are often forgotten are those who arrived in the concentration camps with a camera. They took pictures of horrors which nobody should have to witness but yet these were also the pictures that everyone had to witness, because they bore evidence of the evil crimes committed by a…
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“Le Dernier Métro” (The Last Metro) is a 1980 French film directed by François Truffaut. It is a poignant drama set in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II. The film captures the struggles of a Jewish theater owner and his wife as they attempt to keep their theater running amidst the horrors of occupation and…
