the Netherlands
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One thing that always surprises me in any war, particularly World War II, is that so many aspects of normal life still happened. The Dutch celebrate Sinterklaas (St Nicholas aka Santa Claus) on December 5, but he usually arrives in the country in mid-November. This is one of the celebrations which continued during World War…
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Sometimes I feel like just giving up posting about the Holocaust, but I know I can’t. It is not always the images that upset me, more often it is that lack of images that gets to me. There are no images because the victims were just too young and were born in captivity, so there…
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I remember when I was getting married, one of the aspects that needed to be perfect was photography. It was going to be a special day and the photographs needed to reflect that. But what do you do when your every move is watched and you are seen as an enemy of the state? You…
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Dear Felix Max, You were born 29,220 days ago. Approximately 701,280 hours or 42,076,800 minutes, or even 2,524,608,000 seconds ago. These numbers are so hard to comprehend, just as hard to fathom that you were murdered only 550 days after you were born. The only consolation here is that you had one extra day of…
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Edith Roseij Beek was born on April 12, 1934, in Oss, the Netherlands. She was the youngest of the two children of Arnold Beek and Clara Betsy de Jong. Brother Johan Rene Simon was born in 1930 in Oss. On November 19, 1943, she was murdered in Auschwitz, at age of nine. When she was…
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I had heard the story of the ‘Zookeeper’s wife’ about the lady who saved hundreds of Polish Jews by hiding them in in the Warsaw Zoo. However I had not been aware that Artis Zoo in Amsterdam also had hidden Dutch Jews and resistance fighters. ARTIS was founded under the name Natura Artis Magistra by…
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This is just a snapshot of the history of the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands during World War II. It is an article which was published in “Het Joodsche Weekblad” The Jewish Weekly that was set up by the Jewish Council. The article was published on August 7, 1942. “The German authorities announce: As…
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This story has torn my heart open. I can’t tell you too much about Johannes van der Hoek all I can tell you is that he was born on 6 November 1942, in Westerbork. He must have been placed on a transport to Auschwitz, straight after his birth because, he was murdered there on 9…
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I believe that one of the most evil crimes committed by the Nazi regime was the crime of false hope. In Westerbork, the illusion was created that all wasn’t that bad. Everything was arranged to give prisoners the impression that they would be sent to working camps in Eastern Europe. Life there would be heavy,…
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The picture above is a wedding picture of Betje van Bergen-de Levie and her husband Philip Hartog van Bergen. I wish I could tell you that they celebrated many anniversaries. But they didn’t even get a chance to celebrate the 1st major anniversary which is celebrated in the Netherlands, the Twelve and a half year…
History of Sorts 