World War 2
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When you look at the picture above, you may just admire the men participating in physical exercise. You may even want to join them. But the picture is of concentration camp Mauthausen. The Mauthausen main camp operated from the time of the Anschluss, when Austria was united with Nazi Germany on 8 August 1938, to…
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I have written quite extensively about the failure of the Dutch to protect their Jewish neighbors and even resist the Nazi occupiers in general. However, on February 24, 1941, the Dutch communist party called for a nationwide strike to protest against the treatment of Jews as well as the forced labor in Germany. The Communist…
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If there is one type of music I hate with a passion it is Schlager Musik. Or German sweet and sentimental ballads. Yet here I am writing about one of the main perpetrators, sorry performers. The only reason why I write about him is because he was one of my Father’s favourite singers, At my…
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Max Planck, was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.He had foreseen that the Nazi regimes racial law would have consequences for science in Germany. An immediate consequence upon passage of the law was that it produced both quantitative and qualitative losses to the…
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An estimated 17.3 million people were murdered by the German Nazi regime and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945, according to data published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). The estimates are based on the regime’s own reports as well as demographic studies of population loss during World War II. The numbers are…
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Dear Catharina Vrouwtje de Groot, today there should have been 80 candles on a birthday cake. 80 candles for you to blow out and make a wish on your 80th birthday. But you never had any candles on any of your birthday cakes. You were born on September 20,1941 in Arnhem, in the Netherlands ,…
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On may 26,1992,Israel’s President Chaim Herzog unveiled a rock from Jerusalem, at Auschwitz. The rock serves as a permanent memorial to the 1.65 million Jews who were murdered there. Visibly anguished and tearful, President Herzog said the following words during the unveiling. “In this dread place, I stand here brokenhearted. This ground on which we…
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At their annual rally held in Nuremberg on September 15, 1935 Nazi party leaders announced, after the Reichstag had adopted them, new laws that institutionalized many of the racial theories underpinning Nazi ideology. The so-called Nuremberg Laws, signed by Hitler and several other Nazi officials, were the cornerstone of the legalized persecution of Jews in…
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Initially Italy was an ally of Germany and the other axis powers. during World War 2. By 1943, Italy’s military position had become untenable. Axis forces in North Africa were finally defeated in the Tunisia Campaign in early 1943. Italy suffered major setbacks on the Eastern Front as well. The Allied invasion of Sicily brought…
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Gino Bartali won the Giro d’Italia 3 times, in 1936,1937 and 1946. He also won de Tour de France twice, the first time in 1938 and again in 1948. This alone would make him a sporting hero. Especially his 2nd Giro d’Italia win, when his younger brother, Giulio, died in a racing accident on 14…