World War 2
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Johan Marius Nicolaas Heesters (5 December 1903 – 24 December 2011), known professionally as Johannes Heesters, was a Dutch-German stage, television, and film actor, as well as a vocalist and concert performer. His career began in the 1920s and spanned more than eight decades. Remarkably, he continued acting until his death, making him one of
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On July 24, 1922, the Council of the League of Nations — the predecessor to the United Nations Security Council — formally approved the British Mandate for Palestine, marking one of the earliest legal steps toward the eventual establishment of the State of Israel. This decision came in the aftermath of World War I and
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On May 20, 1940, the first group of prisoners arrived at Auschwitz: approximately 30 German inmates classified by the SS as “professional criminals.” They had been selected from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. Less than a month later, on June 14, 728 Polish prisoners were deported by German authorities from a prison in Tarnów,
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The “Westerbork Film” refers to a film shot by Rudolf Breslauer at the Westerbork transit camp during World War II. This film is a significant historical document because it provides a rare visual record of life in a Nazi transit camp. The film was commissioned by Albert Gemmeker, the Westerbork Camp Commandant in 1944. He
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(Repost from May 15 2016) Let it never be said that the Eurovision Song Contest can’t be an inspiration to write a historical piece. The lyrics for “1944” concern the deportation of the Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union at the hands of Joseph Stalin in 1944. Jamala was particularly inspired by the story of
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Behind every yellow star was a human being with hopes, fears, and a life—just like you and me. This blog will contain images of human beings. These are all photographs of Dutch Jews, or of other European Jews who had managed to escape the Nazi regime—though only briefly. I don’t know the fate of each
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A few years ago, I was asked to give a speech at my eldest son’s high school graduation as a representative of the Parents’ Council. I ended the speech with a quote from Margot Frank. “Times change, people change, thoughts about good and evil change, about true and false. But what always remains fast and
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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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(Repost from Nov 18- 2023) I watched a documentary last night, Adolf Island, and to be honest, it wasn’t great. I can see why it only received 5.8 (out of 10) on the IMDB scale. However, it was a fascinating subject, presented by British archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls. I had known about concentration camps on the
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Oskar Speck (1907–1995) was a German canoeist who paddled by folding kayak from Germany to Australia over the period 1932-1939. A Hamburg electrical contractor made unemployed during the Weimar-period Depression, he left Germany to seek work in the Cypriot copper mines, departing from Ulm and travelling south via the Danube. En route, he changed plans
History of Sorts 
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