the Netherlands

  • On 27 January 1945, the Russians entered the gates of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp complex and liberated the remaining prisoners. Let me show you what led up to the day before—26 January 1945. On 20 January, shortly after the evacuation, the remaining SS functionaries blew up crematoria and gas chambers II and III. The next…

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  • I Dreamed That…

    I dreamed that I’d be a ballet dancer one day. I dreamed that I’d help people as a nurse. I dreamed that, one day I’d be a Doctor I dreamed that I would get married, and have a most lavish wedding day. I dreamed that people would come to see me act on stage. I…

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  • The National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (abbreviation: NSB) was a Dutch political party that existed from 1931 to 1945. The NSB adhered to the ideology of National Socialism, presented itself not as a party but as a movement based on an anti-democratic attitude, and functioned as a collaboration party during the German occupation of…

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  • Before I start the main story, I must tell you about the wider context. About 75% of all Jews in the Netherlands were murdered during the Holocaust. The Netherlands as a country, received understandably a lot of criticism for this and to a great extent, it was justified. However, it is not as a black-and-white…

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  • Henriëtte Delia (Jetje) Hamburger was part of the so-called Gruppe Unbekannte Kinde, unknown children, a group of more than fifty children whom the Nazis had failed to identify. She and her brother—were betrayed at their hiding place in Amsterdam. Jetje Hamburger was born on December 24, 1943 in Eindhoven. Her parents were no longer together. Her…

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  • There are very few positive Holocaust stories—but this is one of them. When Abel and Thea Herzberg return from Germany after the Second World War, they only have two things with them: a biscuit tin in which they kept meagre leftovers of food in recent months and the diary that Abel kept about the period…

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  • The Great Bank Robbery

    Although I have literally written hundreds of posts on World War II and the Holocaust, I hadn’t heard about the great bank robbery. The bank robbery at Almelo 1944, is a bank robbery was committed by the Dutch resistance on November 15, in which 46.1 million guilders (value in 2023: €354 million) was taken. It…

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  • The fact that so many were murdered during the Holocaust is hard to fathom, and it is often compounded by personal stories. None so sad as that of Heinz Felix Geiringer. It is not clear if he died just before the end of the war in Europe or shortly after the end. Several databases list…

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  • Holocaust in Limburg

    Before I go into the main story about the holocaust in Limber, I have to explain the geographical situation of Limburg. There are two provinces called Limburg. One is in Belgium, the other in the Netherlands. The Dutch Limburg is the most Southern province of the Netherlands. To the West, it borders Belgium, and to…

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  • I was going to write a post about the 100th Anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, was an initially failed coup d’état by the Nazi Party. We all know that eventually, they did seize control of Germany. Instead of writing about Hitler and…

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