Holocaust

  • Today, Father’s Day, I felt compelled to write something about all the Fathers who lived and were murdered during the Holocaust, but there were too many to mention, So I decided to honor them all via a poem. So many were murdered, only a few survived, but they all had something in common, none of…

    Read more →

  • Holocaust and Football

    We are in the middle of the FIFA Worldcup , and I thought it would be a good idea to look at some European footballers who were murdered during the Holocaust. György Szeder, born György Silberstein, this left winger used a different name to disguise his Jewish identity. He was just 19 when he joined…

    Read more →

  • On June 20, 1942, the SS guard at the Auschwitz exit was visibly shaken. In front of him idled the car of Rudolf Höss, commandant of the notorious concentration camp. Inside were four armed SS men. One of them—a second lieutenant, or Untersturmführer—was shouting and cursing furiously. “Wake up, you buggers!” he bellowed in German.…

    Read more →

  • Delphine Anja Jennifer Drielsma Delphine was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on 19 June 1939. and murdered in Auschwitz, Poland, on 24 September 1942. She reached the age of three. A 3-year-old enemy of the state. Which state, though? In a world where shadows linger, cold and gray,A tender soul was taken far away,Innocence wrapped…

    Read more →

  • So many people think that the Holocaust only lasted as along as WWII. But they could not be further away from the truth. It could be argued that the foundation of the Holocaust goes back to 1879, when Wilhelm Marr becomes the first proponent of racial anti-Semitism, blaming Jews for the failure of the German…

    Read more →

  • There is one myth about Audrey Hepburn I have to dispel: she was not British-Belgian. In Belgium, as in many other European countries, you don’t automatically obtain citizenship just because you’re born there. You typically inherit the nationality of your parents, usually that of the father or, in some cases, the mother. Audrey was born…

    Read more →

  • The meeting between Adolf Hitler and Hajj Amin al-Husayni on November 28, 1941, in Berlin represents a significant, though often overlooked, episode in the broader context of World War II and the Middle Eastern political landscape of the time. Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was a key Palestinian nationalist leader, and his…

    Read more →

  • Kapos

    I just want to make it crystal clear at the start that this blog is not meant to judge, nor is it meant for anyone else to use as a tool to pass judgment. The honest truth is that if I had been in that situation, I could easily have been a Kapo myself. Kapos…

    Read more →

  • Nico Peeters was born on 12 April 1893 in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and lived in The Hague. He grew up with his brothers and sister in a family with deaf parents. He was an entrepreneur and resistance member. Nico owned a cigar factory with his brother Ben. The Peeters family was idealistic and active in the resistance.…

    Read more →

  • This is a Substack from my good friend Grant Gochin. On June 11, the Government of Lithuania used Holocaust Museum LA’s reopening to claim “Lithuania’s place” in Holocaust memory. The museum had been warned, in writing, about exactly this. It welcomed Lithuania anyway. The reopening deserves praise. After a major expansion, the survivor-founded institution opened…

    Read more →