World War 2

  • On 29 April 1943, Wehrmachtbefehlshaber (Wehrmacht Commander) General Friedrich Christiansen announced that Dutch soldiers who had fought against the invading Germans in May 1940 would again be taken as prisoners of war and sent to Germany to work in factories and on the land. A wave of anger engulfed the country. A spontaneous protest strike…

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  • The liberation of Dachau

    I have been to Munich several times over the last 15 years or so, and every time I visited the city I planned to take the short train journey to Dachau.But for some bizarre reason I never got there.It was as if fate didn’t want me to go there, maybe it was afraid I wasn’t…

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  • (picture above:The Blessed Antoni Zawistowski was tortured and died at Dachau in 1942,courtesy Falco van Delft) Dachau became the camp where 2,720 clergymen were sent, including 2,579 Catholic Priests. The priests at Dachau were separated from the other prisoners and housed together in several barrack buildings in the rear of the camp. There were 1,780…

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  • Hans Otto Georg Hermann Fegelein (30 October 1906 – 28 April 1945) was a high-ranking commander in the Waffen-SS in Nazi Germany. He was a member of Adolf Hitler’s entourage and brother-in-law to Eva Braun through his marriage to her sister, Gretl. Fegelein joined a cavalry regiment of the Reichswehr in 1925 and transferred to the SS…

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  • In September 1943, Nazi paratroopers staged a daring commando raid that rescued Mussolini from the Apennine Mountain ski resort where he was being detained. Hitler installed Mussolini as the figurehead of the Social Republic of Italy (known informally as the Republic of Salo), a Nazi puppet state in German-occupied northern Italy. By April 25, 1945,…

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  • This guest book belonged to the parents of sixteen-year-old Carla Hustinx from the city of Maastricht. Their home was a regular place to stay for singers, movie stars, athletes and comedians that came to entertain American soldiers after the south of the Netherlands was liberated in September 1944. A relaxing evening helped the soldiers forget…

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  • If there was ever any indication how warped the Nazi ideology was , it is probably best illustrated in the execution of Dr Sigmund Rascher. Dr Sigmund Rascher was one of the most ruthless and brutal Nazi physicians in many ways even worse then Mengele. Among the worst atrocities committed at the infamous Dachau concentration…

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  • The Nazi Race doctrine

    The three groups displayed on the poster are, from top to bottom, “ostbaltische Rasse” (“East Baltic race”), “ostische Rasse” (“Alpine race”), and “dinarische Rasse” (“Dinaric race”). All these three groups were considered part of the sub-races of the Caucasian race, others including the Nordic and Mediterranean. The Nazis went to great lengths in teaching the…

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  • Fort Breendonk was originally built for the Belgian army between 1906-13 as part of the second ring of defenses of the National Redoubt protecting the important port-city of Antwerp.It was covered by a five-metre thick layer of soil for defense against bombings, a water-filled moat and measured 656 by 984 feet (200 by 300 m). By…

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  • On April 25, 1944, in his office at the Hotel Majestic in Budapest, Eichmann met with Joel Brand, a leading member of the Jewish Relief and Rescue Committee. Brand had already attended previous meetings with Eichmann and other SS officers in an attempt to bribe them to allow a number of Jews out of Hungary.…

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