World War 2
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No matter how you twist or turn it, when you are complicit to a crime, you are just as guilty as the perpetrator, and perhaps even more guilty because you were an enabler of that crime. Hermann Stieve was Director of the Berlin Institute of Anatomy from 1935 to 1952, which was from the early…
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Forgotten History-The Hardaga & the Kabiljo families:Holocaust and Bosnian Muslim Genocide survivors
(originally posted in April 2016) There really isn’t such a thing as a happy Holocaust story but I think this is probably could be seen as a ‘happy’ story. It doesn’t only portray extreme bravery but also that deep down, good people are the same, regardless of what religious differences they have. Especially in the…
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On 15 November 1943, Himmler ordered that Romani and “part-Romanies” were to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.” Between 1933 and 1945, Roma and Sinti in Europe were targets of Nazi persecution. The Nazi regime, building on long-held prejudices, viewed Roma as “a-socials” (outside “normal” society) and as…
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After setting up this blog a few years ago, I am amazed that I still come across stories of heroes I had never heard of before. Ernst Sillim was born in 1923, the first of five children. Shortly before that, his father, Albert, a stockbroker, and his mother, Annie, moved from Amsterdam to a house…
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Churchill’s speech commonly known as “The Few” was delivered in the House of Commons on 20 August 1940, during the Battle of Britain. It is formally associated with his speech on “The First Year of the War.” The famous line about “the Few” referred principally to the RAF fighter pilots, although Churchill also deliberately paid…
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Suicide: A Difficult but Important Topic in the Context of the Holocaust Suicide can be a controversial topic, but in the context of the Holocaust, I believe it’s an important subject to address. I’ve said before that I don’t believe the often-cited number of six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust is entirely accurate. I…
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Not every Dutch Jewish person who died during the Second World War was a victim of the Holocaust. Some Jewish Dutchmen died as combatants while serving alongside Allied forces and fighting against Nazi Germany. Their deaths occurred on the battlefield, rather than as a result of Nazi persecution and extermination policies. On 19 August 1944,the…
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Before I go into the main story, I just want to point out the most disturbing aspect of the picture above. At the very front is a lady carrying a baby. We know now what her fate would have been. It is a disturbing sight on an old photograph, so just imagine how disturbing this…
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Victor L. Wegard was a war crimes investigator on the personal staff of Gen. George S. Patton, in North Africa and Sicily. He participated in the liberation of the Flossenberg concentration camp, collected evidence against suspected war criminals and worked on a team assigned to defend alleged war criminals during the Dachau war crimes trials…
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Kamp Amersfoort, officially known as Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Amersfoort, was one of the main Nazi transit and penal camps in the Netherlands during the Second World War. Situated near the city of Amersfoort, it operated between 1941 and 1945 and held more than 35,000 prisoners. Although not as large or infamous as Westerbork or Vught, Kamp…
History of Sorts 