World War 2
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The majority of the Jews in the Netherlands were killed during the Holocaust, The estimates vary from 100,000 to 104,000. It would be too easy to say that this was because the Dutch were willing participants in the Nazi ideology, because for the majority this wasn’t the case. The large number and percentage of Jewish…
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Stefan Baretzki was an Auschwitz guard of Bukovina-German origin. He was conscripted into the Waffen-SS and stationed at Auschwitz from 1942 until 1945. Baretzki was sentenced to life imprisonment and eight years in August 1965 at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. Because he only finished primary education, the court described him as a “simpleton” and “less…
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I don’t know how often I have seen this picture but it is today it finally broke my heart. I sat down and looked at it for a few minutes. Where before I only saw an woman, probably an elderly woman and 3 children walking towards the gas chambers. What is so utterly disturbing about…
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The picture is of clothes that once belonged to prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp, it was taken shortly after the camp was liberated. When you look a it it looks like a launderette has dumped its load in a courtyard. But this picture tells so much more. Each of those pieces of material and…
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Rabbi Chaim Nussbaum was born in Lithuania but grew up in Scheveningen in the Netherlands. His story in World War 2 is remarkable, some people just have a very strong life force. After he got married he returned, together with his wife, to his country of origin, Lithuania. When the Nazis invaded Lithuania in 1941,…
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David Olère was a Jewish Polish-born French painter and sculptor best known for his explicit drawings and paintings based on his experiences as a Jewish Sonderkommando inmate at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. He began to draw at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the last days of the camp, when the SS became less attentive. His work has an invaluable…
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There is one certainty in life and that is that history repeats itself, no matter how hard we try. Does this mean we have to stop highlighting history? No, of course not. Organisations like BDS are actively urging people to boycott Jewish businesses and businesses associated to Jewish businesses. They are not very original in…
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The aspect I find hardest to reconcile is the Holocaust’s horrific assault on children—the calculated murder of innocents. It’s an atrocity I will never fully comprehend. Some might argue that the Nazis didn’t target children specifically because they were young, but rather because they—or their parents—were deemed members of so-called dangerous racial, biological, or political…
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Below is part of the evidence given by Sofia Wieslawa Maczka. She was a doctor of medicine, an X-ray specialist, and an inmate at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. She gave evidence during one of the Ravensbrück trials against Gerda Quernheim, a nurse at the camp. This piece is short and not easy to read. I do…
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The Smile of an Angel has the power to warm your heart. It gives comfort to a weary soul. The Smile of an Angel makes you want to become a better person, the manifestation of the best version of you. The Smile of an Angel spreads joy ans and love. Then why did the The…
History of Sorts 
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