• Jeremy Strozer writes first-person historical flash fiction to expose the wanton waste of war. Fascinated by ideas and personal stories, he finds connections between seemingly disparate phenomena. By enjoying thinking and learning about the past he understands the present by creating its context. He has faith in the links between all things; believing there are…

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  • On 5 March 1933, the Nazi Party won nearly 44 per cent of the vote, which gave them 288 seats in the Reichstag. Hitler formed a coalition with the National Party (8 per cent). The Communist Party won 81 seats. There were 44,685.764 entitled to vote. The voter turnout was 88.74%. The Invalid votes were…

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  • I have been accused before of focusing on the involvement of the Dutch during the Holocaust too much. But I do believe, if you want to be critical of others, you have to look at your own first. Like in Germany, the mistreatment and eventual murder of Jews in the Netherlands started as a gradual…

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  • 1 in 3

    The one thing I always fear when I do these blogs about World War II and the Holocaust is what I will discover about my family. Thus far, there is no indication that any of them collaborated with the Nazis, but I have a big family, and even now, in 2023, there is still new…

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  • The 26 February Incident

    A bit of history that was forgotten in the West, I believe. In the early hours of 26 February 1936, a group of young radical Japanese army officers led approximately 1,400 troops, under their command, on an attack at the Prime Minister’s residence and other buildings in Tokyo, killing Home Minister Saito Makoto, Finance Minister…

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  • The news of the 22 February 1941 raid of 427 Amsterdam Jews made a deep impression on the Amsterdam population. Out of solidarity with fellow-Jewish citizens and resentment of the Nazis’ actions in the capitol, a general strike, was announced for 25 February 1941. The call, which came from several members of the illegally operating…

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  • Rosette Levie was deported to Sobibor in June 1943 from Vught via Westerbork on the so-called children’s transport She was born in Amsterdam on 24 February 1938. She was murdered in Sobibor on 11 June 1943 at age five. Dear Rosette, you never made it to your first school day. You were denied your first…

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  • Four Freedoms

    The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Monday, 6 January 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people “everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy: “In the future days, which we seek…

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  • The photograph above is of Wim Henneicke, a bounty hunter and collaborator. His wasn’t driven by hate or by a warped sense of nationalism but by greed. Wim Henneicke was part of a group called “Colonne Henneicke.” The Colonne Henneicke, officially the Hausraterfassungsstelle, was a group of Dutch collaborators who were active as bounty hunters…

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  • Attack on Aruba

    What many people don’t realize is that the Kingdom of the Netherlands, is not just the bit of land , of which is 75% under sea level, but it is also the Dutch Antilles in the Caribbean. During World War II, Indonesia and Surinam were also ruled by the Dutch. For most of World War…

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