World War 2
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Martin Haas was born Martijn Haas, at the end of 1936 in Breda, a small city in the south of the Netherlands. Just before the war started, about two hundred Jews lived in Breda. Martin survived because his parents kept him safe in hiding. His parents and 2 of his siblings did not survive. His…
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Although the title is Ashes in Auschwitz, it is more about the aftermath of the Holocaust, and I use it more as a metaphor. It is not that well-known that Auschwitz had about 40 sub-camps connected. This piece is about those who were left behind and had to, and sometimes still do, deal with the aftermath…
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It’s difficult, if not impossible, to categorize any particular day as the eviliest day during World War II, but I think 20 April 1945 would be a good contender. On that day, Allied bombers in Italy began a three-day attack on the bridges over the rivers Adige and Brenta to cut off German lines of…
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Today marks the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I think that not enough is actually told about the revolt. Those who resisted knew they didn’t really stand a chance. Yet they fought valiantly. The ŻOB(Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa-Jewish Combat Organization) fighters were armed with only pistols, grenades, many of which were homemade, and a…
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During the winter of 1944/45 approximately 20,000 citizens died in the so-called Hunger Winter, the Dutch famine. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm towns. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived thanks to soup kitchens. As the war was wrapping up in April of 1945, in an effort to alleviate…
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“As long as a name is mentioned, someone is not forgotten,” meaning if you mention the name of one person, that person is remembered. I know it sounds quite obvious, but when you think about it for a minute, it is the essential first step to ensure that the Holocaust will not happen again. I…
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David Eduard Izaks would have celebrated his 90th birthday today. He was born on 14 April 1933 in Woerden, the Netherlands. He was the youngest son of Eliazar Izaks and Henriëtte Izaks-Glaser. He had two brothers, Gerson and Salomon Albert, and a sister, Saartje Henriëtte. The family lived at 83 Voorstraat in Woerden. In 1941,…
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I had planned to write a post on the victims of Buchenwald that died shortly after liberation, I was sidetracked by stumbling across the story of Albert Leonard Wittenberg. Albert was born on 14 April 1909, in Paramaribo, Surinam. Surinam was a Dutch colony in South America. Like many of his fellow countrymen and women,…
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Who is Berthold Mendel Judenfreund? He was just a farm labourer, not a man of violence or a criminal, just a farm labourer. On April 10, 1943, 25 years before I was born, the Nazis murdered him at Auschwitz. What makes his story so sad is that he could have survived. His nephew said the…
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A baby shoe and a date— Not a birth date, The date she died. Today 8 April 2023, is the day I cried. Why? I don’t know. I did not know the baby, nor did I know the parents. On 27 March 1944, this baby was murdered. Today I cry. I did not know her,…
History of Sorts 