Poland

  • Two definitions of a Hero are: 1. A person admired for achievements and noble qualities. 2. one who shows great courage. Both definitions apply to Józef Cebula and Sophie Scholl. The reason why I am remembering these two people is because of today’s date May 9. Sophie Scholl was born on May 9, 1921, and…

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  • You Will Never

    You will never know how it feels to fall in love and wake up every morning next to the love of your life. You will never know the anxiety of school exams. You will never know that nervousness of a first working day. You will never know how it feels like to have your teenage…

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  • (Re-post from April 27.2025) Witold Pilecki stands as one of the most courageous and selfless figures of the 20th century. A Polish cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader, Pilecki did what few could even imagine: he voluntarily infiltrated the Auschwitz concentration camp to gather intelligence and organize resistance from within. His mission was unparalleled…

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  • Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

    The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest ghetto established by the Nazis in Poland. Hundreds of thousands of Jews found themselves confined in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. The uprising began on April 19, 1943, when the Nazis attempted to liquidate the ghetto by deporting its remaining inhabitants to concentration camps. Instead of passively submitting to their…

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  • Gustav Mahler is one of the most famous classical music composers and conductors of all time. Yet, his music was considered as degenerate by the Nazi regime, and was therefore banned in Germany and all the occupies territories. It was not because Mahler was a bad composer but because he was Jewish. However the Nazis…

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  • The Nazis in Auschwitz were determined to document all prisoners. They also kept records of their experiments and war crimes. That is how arrogant they were, they didn’t think that they would be held accountable and that all these records would be used against them. The Politische Abteilung Erkennungsdienst -“Political Department Identification Service”-in Auschwitz was…

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  • A good while ago I read “The Librarian of Auschwitz “. I will not do a book review, although it is a very good and well written book, but I will go into some aspects of the book which brought the Holocaust quite near to me in a way I did not expect. However before…

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  • Belzec Death Camp

    The death camp at Bełżec was located in southeastern Poland, within the Lublin District, near the remote village of Bełżec, on the Lublin–Lwów railway line. In early 1940, the Germans established several labour camps in and around Bełżec to house workers constructing the so-called “Otto Line,” a series of fortifications along the border with the…

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  • Krakow

    Tomorrow will mark the 83rd anniversary of the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto. Rather than posting photographs, I thought it would be better to read the testimonies of two who survived. On March 13-14, 1943, the SS and police carried out the operation, shooting some 2,000 Jews in the ghetto. The SS transferred another 2,000…

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  • Hans Jack Tannenberg, a boy with a teddy bear. That is basically one of the few things I know about him. I probably could find out more if I would do some more research. But, I decided not to because I shouldn’t have to. This boy should have become a man, a father ,a grandfather…

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