Poland

  • 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.…

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  • Amon Göth—Pure Evil

    Amon Göeth was sentenced to death and was hanged on 13 September 1946 at the Montelupich Prison in Kraków, not far from the site of the Płaszów camp, the camp he had been in charge of until two years, to the date, prior to his execution. On 13 September 1944, he was relieved of his…

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  • The title of the post is not entirely accurate. However, it was what the Nazis envisaged, that all women would have sex to have as many children as possible. I am always surprised that Germany had so many scientists and not one of them could figure out that maybe not all women would find the…

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  • War can bring out the worst in people, but also the best. The latter applies to Dr Eugene Lazowski, who saved thousands of Jews from inevitable extermination and did this in a very creative manner. Eugene Lazowski, born Eugeniusz Sławomir Łazowski (1913, Częstochowa, Poland – December 16, 2006, Eugene, Oregon, United States). In a time…

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  • The Stroop Report is one of the most damning and significant pieces of documentary evidence from the Holocaust, meticulously detailing the Nazi suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. Compiled by SS General Jürgen Stroop, the report serves not only as a military account but also as a grim testament to the brutality and…

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  • Holocaust in Poetry

    As I’ve said before: a picture tells a thousand words, but never the full story. That’s one of the reasons I choose to limit the use of graphic images. Words can leave a deeper impact—they require time, attention, and reflection. A picture allows you to quickly decide whether or not to engage, but a story…

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  • Henio Zytomirski was a 9-year-old boy who was gassed at Majdanek Concentration Camp in Poland on November 9, 1942. In 2005, a project called “Letters to Henio” was started in Lubin, Poland. Each year on April 19, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Poland, pupils and citizens of Lublin are asked to send letters addressed to Henio…

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  • Geleen is a small former mining town in the province of Limburg, in the southeast of the Netherlands. It is not a particularly famous place, although it is where the first professional football was played in the Netherlands, and it used to host one of the world’s biggest rock festivals, “PinkPop.” It is also where…

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  • This blog is not intended to pass judgment. However, when writing about the Holocaust, it’s important not to shy away from its more controversial aspects. As I mentioned at the beginning, my goal is not to judge anyone—because the truth is, I cannot say with certainty how I would have acted in a similar situation.…

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  • Rutka Laskier’s Teenage Account of the Holocaust Rutka Laskier was just 14 years old when she was murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. In the months leading up to her death, much like Anne Frank in Amsterdam, Rutka kept a diary documenting her deepest thoughts, fears, and the horrors she witnessed. When the Nazis…

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