Holocaust

  • Hartheim Euthanasia Centre

    The first mass murder gassings by the Nazi regime did not happen in the concentration camps. The first gassing of human beings in Germany was in January 1940 at the Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre. However, the Hartheim Euthanasia Centre, the main centre, carried out the T4 Program—the mass murder of the physically and mentally disabled. It…

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  • This metal train sign ‘Westerbork-Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Westerbork’ indicated a return trip that nobody would ever make.   On 15 and 16 July 1942, the first two cargo trains packed with more than 2,000 Jews left the Westerbork Transit Camp headed for the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland. Most of the people aboard these transports were killed the same day they…

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  • Last Farewells

      The everyday life of the Jewish Gold family, who lived in the village of Jutphaas near Utrecht, came to an abrupt end in April 1943: Father, Mother and their son Lothar were picked up from their home and eventually deported. They always had close contact with the neighbours across the street, the Steenaart family.…

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  • The Henneike Column was a Group of more than 50 people, under the leadership of Willem Christiaan Heinrich Henneicke, which was specialised in hunting down Jews. Jewish people that were trying to hide or were violating one of the many anti-Jewish regulations could fall in the hands of one of the members of this Column.…

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  •   One of the Christmas presents I got  from Santa ,a few years ago  was a book by Robert Harris called “Fatherland” It is an alternate history detective story novel Set in a universe where Nazi Germany won World War II, the story’s lead protagonist is an SS officer investigating the murder of Joseph Bühler.…

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  • BMW is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. It stands for wealth and desirability, however it’s history is not as desirable as one would expect. Günther Quandt (28 July 1881 – 30 December 1954) was a German industrialist who founded an industrial empire that today includes BMW and Altana (chemicals). Eight of…

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  • The Riegner Telegram was a telegraph message sent on 8 August 1942 from Gerhart Riegner, then Secretary of World Jewish Congress (Geneva), to its New York and London offices. The cable confirmed the alarming reports that had reached the West previously about the German intention to mass murder the European Jews. Riegner was office manager…

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  • It’s at times of great inhumanity that you can find the greatest examples of humanity, if you look closely enough. Jan Żabiński (8 April 1897 – 26 July 1974, Warsaw) and Antonina Żabińska  (1908–1971) were a married couple from Warsaw,recognized by the State of Israel as the Polish Righteous Among the Nations for their heroic…

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  • The Auschwitz Album The Auschwitz Album is a unique photographic record of the Holocaust of the Second World War. A collection of photographs taken inside a Nazi German death camp, it is the only surviving pictorial evidence (with the exception of four surreptitious photographs taken by Sonderkommandos) of the extermination process from inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau…

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  • Ilse Weber (January 11, 1903 – October 6, 1944) née Herlinger, was born in Witkowitz near Mährisch-Ostrau. A Jewish poet, she wrote in German, most notably songs and theater pieces for Jewish children. She married Willi Weber in 1930. She was transported to Auschwitz with the children of Theresienstadt and killed in the gas chambers, along…

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