Art
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On January 27 in 1945, Soviet troops walked through the gates of the Auschwitz complex, and I say complex—because Auschwitz was more than one camp. What they saw, they could not believe. Rather than going through all the horrors on this UN-designated Holocaust Remembrance Day, I have opted to show some art of those who
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Margard (Marga) Kaufmann, born in Gronau, Germany 10 November 1928. Murdered in Auschwitz on 3 September 1943, reached the age of 14 years. Marga’s parents were married in 1923 in Gronau, where her mother, Adele, had taken over her grandmother’s grocery store in 1918. Marga never knew her grandparents, Zilversmit. Her mother had four brothers,
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Many European countries had an equivalent of the NSDAP(Nazi) party, the Dutch National Socialist party was the NSB. It may be hard to believe nowadays but not every National Socialist party started off as an anti-Semitic party, as was the case with the NSB. The NSB even had Jewish members, and the party leader ,Anton
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As the saying goes “all is fair in love and war” In the autumn of 1944, an almost twenty-nine-year old English soldier named Jim fell head-over-heels for nineteen-year-old Emelia Sluys. Emelia was staying with relatives on Groesbeekseweg in the city of Nijmegen,the Netherlands, because her home had been destroyed during the Battle of Arnhem. To
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David Friedmann’s story is not just a story of dealing with the horrors of the Holocaust but also a story of a second chance and hopes despite immense grief and hardships. The artist David Friedmann was born in Mährisch Ostrau, Austria (now Ostrava, Czech Republic), but moved to Berlin in 1911. In 1944, Friedman was
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The story of Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker (1897–1940) unfolds like a World War II drama—complete with a daring escape from the Nazis, a tragic accident, an opera singer, and the plundering of a world-class art collection. Goudstikker was one of Amsterdam’s leading Jewish art dealers, renowned for his connoisseurship and scholarly expertise, and his
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I once painted skies.Vast, open, careless heavens that dripped sunlight and hope.My brush danced with joy, my palette a chorus of life.But then came the grey. It was not the grey of morning mist or soft winter clouds—It was the grey of silence,of smoke that climbed like prayerfrom chimneys built to erase names. I was
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(Originally posted November 2017) We might have been able to get out of it, but we didn’t want to. Since we’re in it, we’re going. In this case, it’s best to leave things as you find them. We’ve been allowed to take all our luggage—a good sign. Maybe they were right and we’re following the
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A picture tells a thousand words, and in this case, they truly do. The drawings and cartoons are made by Emile Franken. I am not sure what happened to Emile. I do know he was born on 15 April 1921 somewhere in the Netherlands and he survived the war. I also know he spent time
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This blog will not contain a lot of text, mainly photographs and art of soldiers who served during World War II, and will contain short descriptions. The photograph above was discovered by Levi Bettwieser, a passionate collector of old film rolls who was lucky enough to stumble upon 31 undeveloped rolls of film full of