the Netherlands
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I came across Gershon Willinger’s name on the Joods Monument website. It is his 80 birthday today, When I saw his name and his birthday, I also saw that the date and the place of his death were not known. I figured this was going to be an awful tragic and depressing story. I decided…
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A Dutch child for each knee.Private Murray T. Poznac of Newark, New Jersey, U.S. Signal Corps photographer with the First Allied Airborne Army in the Netherlands, holds a little Dutch boy and a little Dutch girl on his knees after Allied forces liberated Nijmegen, the Netherlands, September 20, 1944. American airborne troops and soldiers of…
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The baby in the picture is Jonas David Kloot, he would have celebrated his 80th birthday today. He would have been blowing out 80 birthday candles on his birthday cake. But he didn’t even get to blow out his first birthday candle. Jonas was born on 15 September 1942 in Amsterdam. Less than nine months…
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The Netherlands have been in the grip of a series of Railway strikes, the last few weeks. The staff is not pleased with their new work agreements, hence the strikes. Of course it is their good right to do so, However I couldn’t help but wonder ‘Why didn’t they go on strike between 1941 and…
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They say that music soothes the savage beast, But it can also bring joy and transport you back to a better time in your life. Benny Behr must have known this because he tried to keep up the spirits by playing music. Benny was Jewish and married to a non-Jewish woman, Wien Bouwina Sijtina Havinga.…
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The Roman Catholic church, especially the Vatican, still has many questions to answer about the Holocaust. However, some Catholic clergymen, even a few high-placed ones, did not keep their mouths shut and defied the Nazis. Cardinal Johannes de Jong was one of those men. He was ordained to the priesthood on 15 August 1908 and…
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The Weerbaarheidsafdeling (WA; “Resilience Department”) was the paramilitary arm of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB), the fascist political party that collaborated with the Nazi ocdupiers of the Netherlands during World War II. The organization, roughly equivalent to the German SA, was founded in 1932 by Anton Mussert, co-founder of the NSB in…
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The Englandspiel was a counter-espionage operation set up by the Germans that lasted from March 1942 to April 1944. Secret agents of the SOE who had been dropped over the Netherlands were often arrested immediately upon landing and forced to maintain radio contact with England. Despite hidden warnings in their broadcast messages, British intelligence continued…
History of Sorts 