World War 2
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I was on Irish National radio this afternoon, discussing the sale of Nazi uniforms as Halloween costumes in Ireland. It was on Joe Duffy’s Liveline show. I enjoyed being on it, but the show was a bit manipulated. I received a call from one of the researchers at 10 a.m. this morning. He asked me…
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Annelies Marie Frank aka Anne Frank, born 12 June 1929 – murdered February or March 1945, in Bergen Belsen. She was a German-Dutch teenager of Jewish heritage, kept a diary. One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously with the 1947 publication of The Diary of a Young Girl…
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Ernst Friedrich Christoph “Fritz” Sauckel was a Nazi politician, Gauleiter of Gau Thuringia from 1927 and the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment (Arbeitseinsatz) from March 1942 until the end of World War 2. He was one the 24 persons accused in the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. He…
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It is strange sometimes how one thing can draw your attention to another. I did a piece recently on the German national anthem, that led me to look at the Dutch national anthem. “Wilhelmus van Nassouwe”, usually known just as “Wilhelmus” is the national anthem of the Netherlands. It dates back to at least 1572,…
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Denazification was the process of removing Nazi ideology and influence from all forms of public life in Germany after World War 2. This process does not seem to have happened on the German National Anthem, I think this was a great mistake. A national Anthem is not just a bit of music, it instills a…
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No one can deny that the Nazis committed unspeakable atrocities during World War 2,against civilians. But the Nazis were not the only ones. On October 21, 1944, the Soviet Red Army was steamrolling the German army on the Eastern Front, reaching the town of Nemmersdorf, at the time it was a German rural town in…
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The saying goes “Behind Every Great Man There Is A Great Woman” but of course it can also be said that behind every great woman there is a great man. The Anne Frank foundation said about Miep Gies’s husband. “Jan was not a person to stand in the limelight, not even amid all the publicity…
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The title of this blog is also the title of a book written by Willy Peter Reese. He was born on born January 22, 1921 in Duisburg. It is not clear when he died but it estimated he more then likely died between June 22 and 27, 1944 near Wizebsk in the Soviet Union. Willy…
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I usually include a photograph when I write about the youngest victims of the Nazi regime. But I could not find a picture of poor little Mirjam Rosalie de Leeuw. In a way I am happy about that, I have looked into too many eyes of the innocent souls that were brutally murdered ,and regardless…
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Below is a list of names of random people. They only had 3 things in common. They lived in the Netherlands at the time of arrest. They were Jewish. They were al murdered today 80 years ago in Mauthausen, only for the reason that they were Jewish. Fritz Rothstein Born in Breslau, 10 August 1921…