Holocaust
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It is important to tell the stories of those who collaborated with the Nazis. Regardless of what some governments want you to believe, there were collaborators in all occupied countries. Some were even more evil than the occupiers. However, it is equally important to honour those who helped their fellow citizens, often at risk of…
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A small boy named Jacques Maurice Duizend was just a baby—a toddler. His last name is also a number, Thousand. That is the number of years the failed Austrian artist had envisaged his ‘Reich’ to last. To achieve that two-year-old children like Jacques Maurice Duizend had to be murdered. Jacques Maurice Duizend was born in…
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The Holocaust was the biggest crime ever to be committed in history. The crimes were: the destruction of property, theft, fraud and an industrialized scale of mass murder. There was only one appropriate punishment for those involved—I don’t have to say what that punishment is—because everyone knows. Yet, so few received any punishment. Below is…
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Nelly Vega was a Dutch from Amsterdam minding her own business. She was a little girl doing her homework in front of a painting with some cows, a bridge and a field. A little Dutch girl. Little did she know she would become an enemy of the state. There were men, and perhaps women, who…
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On this day, Father’s Day, I can’t help but wonder about Otto Frank, seen above in conversation with Millie Perkins, the leading actress in the 1958 film about Anne. How did Mr Frank celebrate Father’s Day? I know he remarried and had a stepdaughter. However, I am sure he adored his stepdaughter—Eva Schloss—there weren’t any…
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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.…
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Primo Levi is one of the most famous Holocaust survivors. He wrote in 1986, “It happened, and thus it can happen again.” For some survivors, this was a reality soon after being liberated. Howard Cwick was an American Jewish soldier who liberated Buchenwald.The shame he and other liberators felt came from not liberating the camp…
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Caroline Stella Os was born in Rotterdam on 8 October 1940. Her life ended when she was murdered at Westerbork, by the Nazis, on 8 June 1943. She reached the tender age of two years old. How can I write about a girl who only lived for 32 months? What can I write about a…
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Since 2017, I have been writing and researching the evils thrust upon Europe and beyond by the NSDAP or in short Nazis, but I had never visited a concentration camp until last Sunday—4 June 2023. I will not just write about Dachau but include the place I visited the day before—Das NS-Dokumentationszentrum München—the National Socialists…
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I came across an excerpt from the book Wiswassebeesjes by author Dieta Kalk. I can’t think of a proper translation for the word, but that doesn’t really matter. In the book the writer, recalls the removal of the Wallage family from Aprikozenweg 21 in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, a day after seeing the Star of David.…
History of Sorts 