• Rambling Boys of Pleasure!

    The sad news broke today that the Pogues frontman, Shane McGowan, died early this morning. The news brought me back to my memories of 1988. My best friend Patrick, who sadly passed away earlier this year, asked me if I knew the title of the Pogues single, which was on the radio a lot. (back…

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  • One of the definitions of hygiene is conditions or practices conducive to maintaining health and preventing disease—specifically through cleanliness. The lack of hygiene was one of the hidden killers during World War II, and indeed any other war, because it wasn’t always possible to keep a minimal level of hygiene. This post has a few…

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  • In my interview with Rosa DeVries, Rosa is an Israeli Jewish woman, originally from Amsterdam and a daughter of Holocaust survivors. She lives in Rishon LeZion (Hebrew: רִאשׁוֹן לְצִיּוֹן a city in Israel, located along the central Israeli coastal plain eight kilometres (5 mi) south of Tel Aviv, and about 55 km away from Gaza.…

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  • “Duck Soup” at 90

    It is hard to believe that Duck Soup was released 90 years ago today. It is an American pre-code musical black comedy film written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin, and directed by Leo McCarey. Released by Paramount Pictures on November 17, 1933, it stars the Marx Brothers…

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  • The Great Bank Robbery

    Although I have literally written hundreds of posts on World War II and the Holocaust, I hadn’t heard about the great bank robbery. The bank robbery at Almelo 1944, is a bank robbery was committed by the Dutch resistance on November 15, in which 46.1 million guilders (value in 2023: €354 million) was taken. It…

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  • Day 39

    On behalf of and with permission from Rosa DeVries, one of the many citizens in Israel who want peace. A daily impression of life after the October 7 attack by Hamas. Titled: Day 39, the text is in Dutch. Dag 39 Elke avond neem ik de tijd om dit blog te schrijven. Ik vind het…

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  • The fact that so many were murdered during the Holocaust is hard to fathom, and it is often compounded by personal stories. None so sad as that of Heinz Felix Geiringer. It is not clear if he died just before the end of the war in Europe or shortly after the end. Several databases list…

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  • Holocaust in Limburg

    Before I go into the main story about the holocaust in Limber, I have to explain the geographical situation of Limburg. There are two provinces called Limburg. One is in Belgium, the other in the Netherlands. The Dutch Limburg is the most Southern province of the Netherlands. To the West, it borders Belgium, and to…

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  • On the morning of 7 November, a young Jewish man, Herschel Grynszpan, wrote a farewell postcard to his parents and put it in his pocket. Grynszpan went to a gun shop in the Rue du Faubourg St Martin, where he bought a 6.35mm revolver and a box of 25 bullets for 235 francs. They went…

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  • I was going to write a post about the 100th Anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, was an initially failed coup d’état by the Nazi Party. We all know that eventually, they did seize control of Germany. Instead of writing about Hitler and…

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