Holocaust

  • From Zero to 102

    I was reluctant to use the title, From Zero to 102 as the title, I didn’t want it to look like a review for a car. However, I couldn’t think of a more suitable title either. The 0 and the 102 are the ages of two victims of the Holocaust. This is how evil the…

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  • Edward R. Murrow was born on 25 April 1908. Although he is in uniform in the picture above, he was a journalist and broadcaster. I am not going to do a piece on his life as such. I will only go into one report. He was one of the first reporters to go into Buchenwald…

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  • These are students and teachers of the Jewish Lyceum in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, July 1942. More than 75% of the Dutch Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. There are about 60+ people in this photograph of which most or all were murdered. Most of them are young people. Girls who never again received a Valentine’s card. Boys…

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  • Olympic gymnast Judikje Simons, together with her husband Bernard Themans, cared for Jewish orphans in Utrecht. The Jewish couple ran the Central Israelite Orphanage on Nieuwegracht in Utrecht. In March 1943, Judikje and Bernard, along with their daughter and son, the Dutch orphans, and the orphanage staff, were deported to Sobibor. RefugeesAs “father and mother”…

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  • I See More Than Shoes

    Where some see shoes, I see a father desperately comforting his daughter, telling her everything will be fine when he knows it won’t be okay ever again. Where some see shoes, I see missed opportunities to get to know the people wearing them. Where some see shoes, I see the sad face of a little…

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  • The liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 4, 1945, marked a significant moment in the final months of World War II. Located near the German town of Gotha, Ohrdruf was a subcamp of the larger Buchenwald concentration camp. The camp’s discovery by the advancing United States Army not only revealed the atrocities committed…

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  • Music is not just a series of notes strung together, it is also a tool that can be used for good and bad. Music evokes deep emotions, a bit of music often remains with you in your mind for the rest of your life. The Nazis used music in the concentration camps, not to make…

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  • Max Hirsch was one of the 937 passengers aboard the St. Louis, the cruise ship that left the port of Hamburg on May 13, 1939, with Cuba as its final destination. The vast majority of the passengers were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Across the Atlantic Ocean, they hoped to find a safe haven. However,…

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  • Below, you will find part of the testimony of Hans Friedrich, a 1st SS Infantry Brigade member. His words are shocking. “Try to imagine there is a ditch, with people on one side, and behind them soldiers. That was us, and we were shooting. And those who were hit fell down into the ditch. They…

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  • The Law Concerning Jewish Tenants (“Gesetz über die Mietverhältnisse mit Juden”) of 30 April 1939 was a significant piece of Nazi legislation that furthered the regime’s systematic persecution of Jewish citizens in Germany. This law was part of a broader campaign to isolate, disenfranchise, and ultimately remove Jews from German society. By targeting Jewish housing…

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