World War 2
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On May 29, 1942, Radio Prague announced that Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, lay dying in Prague’s Bulovka Hospital from wounds sustained in a daring ambush carried out by Czech resistance fighters. Days earlier, as Heydrich’s open-topped Mercedes wound through the outskirts of Prague near Holešovice along the road then known as Rudé…
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In April 1945 the allied troops forced the citizens of Neunburg,Germany to face up to some of the atrocities ordered and committed by their elected government. They were made to look at bodies of Jewish and other slave laborers in woods outside Neunberg, where they were marched from a Nazi Gestapo camp and where thy…
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The Longest Day is still one of my favourite movies. The epic cinematic event about D-Day and the direct aftermath. It was one of the first ensemble cast movies, basically anyone who was anyone in Hollywood was part of the movie. Because it was shot less then 2 decades after D-Day and the end of…
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The Holocaust wasn’t only the mass murder of Jews and others, it was preceded by other crimes. Although many people would not have perceived them as crimes, because they were legalised by Nazi laws. The greed of the Nazis was expressed in a large number of measures, orders and ordinances (VO) with the force of…
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The title of this post is a quote engraved in the Marble reception hall of the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten in the Netherlands. The cemetery was created in October 1944 under the leadership of Joseph Shomon of the 611th Graves Registration Company as the Ninth United States Army pushed into the Netherlands…
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Before I go into the main story about Adriana Valkenburg, I have to explain something about prostitution in the Netherlands to put this into context. It has always been acceptable in the Netherlands. However, it was only in 1988 that prostitution was considered a legal profession—but in the year 2000, prostitution was legalized by the…
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History rarely writes scripts as pure or as devastating as the life and death of Captain Witold Pilecki. In the grand, tragic theater of twentieth-century Europe, his name stands as a solitary monument to human courage—and an indictment of totalitarian cruelty. Pilecki is famously remembered as the Polish cavalry officer who intentionally got himself captured…
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The Stroop Report is one of the most damning and significant pieces of documentary evidence from the Holocaust, meticulously detailing the Nazi suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. Compiled by SS General Jürgen Stroop, the report serves not only as a military account but also as a grim testament to the brutality and…
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The involvement of the Dutch railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen, or NS) in the Holocaust is a deeply tragic chapter in Dutch history. During World War II, the NS played a significant role in the deportation of Jews and other persecuted groups to Nazi concentration and extermination camps. Context and Occupation The Netherlands was occupied by Nazi…
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Even after death, the Nazi victims were still subjected to evil science. Hermann Stieve and His Connection to Liane Berkowitz and Mildred Harnack: An Intersection of Science and Ethical Transgression Hermann Stieve, a German anatomist who held a prominent position at what is now Humboldt University of Berlin, is remembered not only for his contributions…
History of Sorts 