Westerbork

  • Law abiding citizen

    I don’t know what it is but the last few days I have discovered several accounts of victims of the Holocaust which are very near to me. Not so much that I was related to these people or that I knew them, but I knew the locality and the addresses where they lived. In fact…

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  • This must be one of the most amazing events I came across, but amidst all the killing, torture, deportations and other horrors in Camp Westerbork, they actually found time to set up a football competition. Initiated in the Spring of 1943, the competition had several teams of Jewish inmates and was a welcome distraction. It…

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  • This blog will be based on facts and some presumptions, but the presumptions are more then likely correct. I was going over the history of the deported Jews from my birthplace Geleen, south east of the Netherlands. when I noticed the name of the Cohen family. There is not a lot I know or could…

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  • Ironically Camp Westerbork had been set up in 1939 to house Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands. Following the German invasion of the Netherlands, the Nazis took over the camp and turned it into a deportation camp. From this camp, there was a deportation of 101,000 Dutch Jews and about 5,000 German…

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  • This metal train sign ‘Westerbork-Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Westerbork’ indicated a return trip that nobody would ever make.   On 15 and 16 July 1942, the first two cargo trains packed with more than 2,000 Jews left the Westerbork Transit Camp headed for the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland. Most of the people aboard these transports were killed the same day they…

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  • Today marks the 73rd anniversary of Anne Frank’s arrest. I will not go to deep into Anne Frank’s story because so much is already written about her by people who know an awful lot about her then I do. I want to focus on that fateful day and the aftermath. On a warm summer’s day…

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  • Nicolette Bruining was a truly remarkable woman and her legacy still lives on to this day, although in ways not necessarily how she had envisaged.   Nicolette Adriana Bruining (27 August 1886 – 12 April 1963) was a Dutch theologian and founding president of the Liberal Protestant Radio Broadcasting Corporation (Dutch: Vrijzinnig Protestantse Radio Omroep)…

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