World War 2
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The number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust is estimated at six million. I have often argued that this number is higher. I have no data to back this up, but if you read the testimony of Hans Levy, you can’t help but wonder. Did they include the number of suicides in that number of…
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These are just some of my favourite World War II movies, in no particular order. Tora Tora ToraThe photo above is a still from the 1970 movie Tora Tora Tora. The 1970 war epic received widespread praise from both critics and film fans for its detailed depiction of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. Universally considered…
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Jerry Himmelfarb was a GI from Buffalo, New York. He wrote this letter to his Rabbi about his experiences. It is one of the most powerful testimonies I have ever read. Jerry, serving with the U.S. Army in Germany, wrote to Rev. Harry H. Kaufman, Cantor of Temple Beth El, telling of what the J.D.C.…
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According to the Joods Monument (Jewish Monument) website, 210 Dutch Jews were murdered on this day 80 years ago in Auschwitz. I could write a piece on each person, but I decided to stick with only one of the victims because it symbolises the pure evil of the Nazi regime. The photograph above is of…
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Martin Niemöller was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem “First they came…” Although he was an opponent of the Nazi regime. In the 1920s and early 1930s, he sympathized with many Nazi ideas…
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All of those men who liberated the camps throughout Europe never lost the memories of what they witnessed. Below are just some of their accounts. The Dachau concentration camp was liberated on April 29, 1945. Hilbert Margol (pictured above) and his twin brother, Howard. Two Jewish American soldiers were there and documented the tragedy. Hilbert…
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This is one of those amazing stories of resilience and perseverance. Odette Sansom, aka Odette Churchill and Odette Hallowes, code name Lise, was an agent for the United Kingdom’s clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during World War II. She was born on 28 April 1912 in Amiens, France. She met an Englishman, Roy…
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A young lady who survived the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, August 1945 RMS Queen Elizabeth returning with 15,000 Soldiers to New York at the end of World War II, 1945. The Ship was not overcrowded, the soldiers simply ran onto the deck as they arrived. A soldier sharing his lunch with a goat in Saipan,…
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This house was an orphanage for Jewish girls from 1861 to 1943.In 1889 the orphanage was extended to include the neighbouring house.On 10 February 1943, the girls and their attendants weredeported to the extermination camp Sobibor. They were supposed to have been deported before, but due to a scarlet fever outbreak on 4 July 1942,…
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Mordechai Santilhano was a Dutch-Jewish performing artist. He was born on 11 January 1905. He was murdered in or near Auschwitz on 12 October 1944. He used the artist name Max Santiel or simply Oom Max-Uncle Max. I could say quite a lot about him, but I have decided to leave his own words to…
History of Sorts 