World War 2
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The picture above is an arrest card of Meijer Barmhartigheid. He was one of the 389 young Jewish man who were arrested during raid in Amsterdam on February 22 and 23 ,1941. Of those 389 only 2 survived the Holocaust. 100 of them were murdered in the Hartheim clinic, which was also the clinic used…
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The Pacific War (1941–1945) reshaped Southeast Asia and subjected millions to brutal occupation under Imperial Japan. Among the most harrowing stories is that of Batu Lintang camp, located on the outskirts of Kuching in Sarawak, Borneo. Originally a British military barracks, the Japanese converted it into an internment and prisoner-of-war (POW) camp after their conquest…
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As Edmund Burke once said”The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”, I would like to add “for good women to do nothing” This is is how the Nazi regime and all its evil could flourish. People saw what was happening, it was often blatantly obvious but…
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If someone is running round like a headless chicken or rushing around like a headless chicken, they are panicking when they should be thinking carefully about what needs to be done. This is of course a figuratively expression. However for one unfortunate, or fortunate. chicken this saying had a literal meaning. On 10 September 1945…
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The remark is associated with Lieutenant-General Frederick “Boy” Browning, deputy commander of the First Allied Airborne Army, during the planning of Operation Market Garden in September 1944. Browning is widely reported to have expressed his reservations to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery with the words: “But, sir, I think we might be going a bridge too…
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If you did not know the man in the photograph, you would think he was a loving family man, doting on his daughter. However, since we know the man is Joseph Goebbels, the dynamic of this photo changes. Goebbels did portray himself as a good family man and a loving father. Clearly, he had no…
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When the rain falls, my face gets wet. When the sun shines, it blinds my eyes. When the snow falls, I want to go out and feel the crunch of the fresh new snow beneath my feet. When it is muddy, I get dirty. When I am hungry, I eat. When I am thirsty, I…
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History is not only shaped by great victories, cultural flourishing, or moments of unity; it is equally defined by the tragedies that scar communities for generations. One such tragedy is the Treznea Massacre, an atrocity committed on September 9, 1940, in the village of Treznea (Hungarian: Ördögkút), in Sălaj County, Transylvania. This event remains one…
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People sometimes tell me that the pictures of the piles of corpses, in the concentration camps are the most disturbing ones from the Holocaust. However, I am not in total agreement because I found the photo above much more disturbing. It shows the cause of the Holocaust. Hitler understood for the Nazi ideology to work…
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(originally published September 21 2023) The last two nights, I watched the documentary Ordinary Men—The Forgotten Holocaust (now streaming on Netflix). It is a German documentary film by director Manfred Oldenburg and producer Leopold Hoesch from 2022. The documentary examines how and why thousands of ordinary Germans participated in mass atrocities as members of Nazi…
History of Sorts 