Holocaust
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As so often before Varian Fry is the prove that one man can make a difference. Varian Mackey Fry (October 15, 1907 – September 13, 1967) was an American journalist. Fry ran a rescue network in Vichy France that helped approximately 2,000 to 4,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.…
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Today marks the 79th anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup. During the so-called “Vel d’Hiv” raid, which took place on July 16 and 17, 1942, the victims were held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver, a cycling stadium in Paris’s 15th arrondissement. 8,160 Jews, including more than 4,000 children, were locked up in the stadium in terrible…
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“A mentally unstable, violent fanatic and alcoholic, who had the habit of erupting into violence under the influence of drugs” is how he was described by one of his contemporaries. Oskar Dirlewanger (26 September 1895 – 7 June 1945 (certificate of death), a German military officer, was the founder and commander of the infamous Nazi SS…
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Karl Plagge knew that he was courting death at every turn by protecting Jews from the SS, but he couldn’t care less. An engineer by profession, Plagge joined the Nazi Party but later left after he became disgusted with the group’s racist ideology. After the war broke out, he was assigned to head an army…
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Men don’t have the monopoly on doing evil acts, throughout history there have been many women who acted in barbaric ways. Often their acts would be more evil then that of their male counterparts as was the case with Irma Grese, the proof that evil is not bound to gender but personality. Irma Ida Ilse…
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Not everyone who served in the German army were evil,nor were all of them Nazi’s. Many were drafted into the army because they had no other choice, often it was even a matter of life and death. This blog is about Heinz Drossel, one of the German soldiers who did not only risk his life…
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It is a popular misconception that the concentration camps were a Nazi invention, but in fact the British had already established concentration camps in South Africa during the 2nd Boer war. It could be argued that the Indian reservations in the US were also concentration camps. But of course the sort of camps which were…
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Nicolette Bruining was a truly remarkable woman and her legacy still lives on to this day, although in ways not necessarily how she had envisaged. Nicolette Adriana Bruining (27 August 1886 – 12 April 1963) was a Dutch theologian and founding president of the Liberal Protestant Radio Broadcasting Corporation (Dutch: Vrijzinnig Protestantse Radio Omroep)…
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Most people will know Anne Frank’s diary , but of course Anne wasn’t the only person who kept a diary during those dark, uncertain days. Below are some excerpts from random diaries of citizens and also soldiers from both sides of the divide. Starting off with a bit of Anne Frank’s Diary. “It’s a wonder…
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On the twenty-ninth of May, 1942, Radio Prague announced that Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, lay dying at the Bulovka hospital in Prague from wounds sustained in a daring ambush by Czech partisans as his car passed through the city outskirts at Holesovice, on the Rude Armady VII Kobylisky not far from the…
History of Sorts 
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