World War 2
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Theodoor van Gogh Although Theodoor van Gogh was not an artist himself, he was the great-nephew of one of the most renowned painters in history—Vincent van Gogh. Theodoor, known as Theo, was born in Amsterdam and was the uncle of filmmaker, columnist, and public intellectual Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004. In 1941,
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On 5 May 1945, Mauthausen Concentration Camp was liberated by the US Army. Just a simple poem to commemorate that day. In Mauthausen’s shadow, where darkness did dwell,In the heart of despair, where horrors did swell,There came a day of courage, a day of light,When the chains of oppression were shattered in flight. From the
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On 4 May 1945, the German Admiral Von Friedeburg at Lüneburg surrendered to British Field Marshal Montgomery on behalf of the German troops in Northwest Germany, the Netherlands, Schleswig-Holstein, and Denmark. On 5 May, Canadian General Charles Foulkes summoned the German Supreme Commander Johannes Blaskowitz to Hotel De Wereld in Wageningen to discuss the effect
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Flóra Klein was just a teenager when the world around her began to fall apart. She was born to a modest Jewish family in Jánd, a small Hungarian village. Life was hard but filled with love—her parents kept traditions alive, the Sabbath was a sacred time, and music often floated from the kitchen as her
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Voor de Nederlandse slachtoffers van de Tweede Wereldoorlog Beneath the bells that softly toll,In hush of dusk, we bare our soul.Two minutes still, the world stands shy,As tears fall slow from silent sky. We speak no names — yet all are near,The brave, the lost, the ones held dear.From city square to windswept dune,Their memory
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On April 29, 1942, the Nazis announced a new humiliation for Jewish Dutch citizens. Starting on May 3, they were required to wear an identifying mark: a six-pointed yellow Star of David with the word “Jew” in the center. This star made it possible to recognize Jews in public. The German occupiers intended this to
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Neuengamme concentration camp was a significant and harrowing part of the Nazi concentration camp system during World War II. Located near Hamburg, Germany, Neuengamme was established December 13, 1938, and initially served as a satellite camp of Sachsenhausen. By 1940, it became an independent main camp (Hauptlager), and it was the largest concentration camp in
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You will never know how it feels to fall in love and wake up every morning next to the love of your life. You will never know the anxiety of school exams. You will never know that nervousness of a first working day. You will never know how it feels like to have your teenage
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s Allied forces closed in on Germany in early 1945, the SS began evacuating inmates from camps like Dachau in a series of forced marches, hoping to hide evidence of atrocities and prevent liberation by the Allies. Prisoners, already debilitated by starvation and disease, were forced to march dozens of miles in the brutal cold
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(Update from the November 2016 blog) One aspect of history I find particularly difficult to grasp is the collaboration of some Jews with the Nazis. On the one hand, I understand that self-preservation is a powerful human instinct—survival at any cost can drive people to make unimaginable choices. Yet, conversely, it’s hard to reconcile how
History of Sorts 
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