the Netherlands
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Nowadays we take it for granted that we can conduct in peaceful protest, as a means to highlight our grievances. However in Nazi occupied Amsterdam during World War 2 any form of protest could be and would be considered an act of resistance which could lead to being jailed and even death. On August 5,1940…
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On this day in 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. January 27 is now observed by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rather than trying to comprehend the millions who were murdered by the Nazis’ hateful ideology and regime, I want to focus on just one of them. Ralph Ronald Belinfante would have turned…
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Westerbork may not have been an extermination camp, but that didn’t mean it was less evil. In a way, it may have been eviler because it created an illusion that life wasn’t that bad and gave the people a false hope that their endurance of camp life would be temporary. The 261 couples married at…
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(Repost from March 12 2023) I recently interviewed Eddy Boas and his son Phil. Here are some of the subjects we touched on. Eddy Boas is a Holocaust survivor and author of the book I’m Not a Victim— I Am a Survivor. He was born in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 1940. Eddy was just…
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I look at the picture of Jacob de Mesquita and I ask myself “How was this possible?” How was it possible that this baby was selected to be send to the gas chambers? Was there not one person among the Auschwitz staff members who thought that this was wrong? Was there no one who saw…
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The above photograph is of a plaque that hangs over a house in The Hague. It was the residence of Mies Wahlbeehm, where she hid a great number of Jews. The one thing that captured my attention was the words at the top of the plaque, “De herrinering aan de doden is voor hen een…
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Anyone familiar with my blog knows that the murder of children during the Holocaust touches me deeply. I know one of the excuses for murdering children was to avoid that they would take revenge. It always puzzled me. The only reason why you’d want to kill someone to avoid revenge is because—you knew what you…
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If there is one thing that Anne Frank’s diary teaches us ,it’s the importance of context. If you take her diary out of context it probably is quite a boring book. But if you leave it in the context and the time it was written in it becomes a powerful story of daily life and…
History of Sorts 