Auschwitz

  • From Zero to 102

    I was reluctant to use the title, From Zero to 102 as the title, I didn’t want it to look like a review for a car. However, I couldn’t think of a more suitable title either. The 0 and the 102 are the ages of two victims of the Holocaust. This is how evil the

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  • Olympic gymnast Judikje Simons, together with her husband Bernard Themans, cared for Jewish orphans in Utrecht. The Jewish couple ran the Central Israelite Orphanage on Nieuwegracht in Utrecht. In March 1943, Judikje and Bernard, along with their daughter and son, the Dutch orphans, and the orphanage staff, were deported to Sobibor. RefugeesAs “father and mother”

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  • I See More Than Shoes

    Where some see shoes, I see a father desperately comforting his daughter, telling her everything will be fine when he knows it won’t be okay ever again. Where some see shoes, I see missed opportunities to get to know the people wearing them. Where some see shoes, I see the sad face of a little

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  • Music is not just a series of notes strung together, it is also a tool that can be used for good and bad. Music evokes deep emotions, a bit of music often remains with you in your mind for the rest of your life. The Nazis used music in the concentration camps, not to make

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  • Max Hirsch was one of the 937 passengers aboard the St. Louis, the cruise ship that left the port of Hamburg on May 13, 1939, with Cuba as its final destination. The vast majority of the passengers were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Across the Atlantic Ocean, they hoped to find a safe haven. However,

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  • Geleen is a small former mining town in the province of Limburg, in the southeast of the Netherlands. It is not a particularly famous place, although it is where the first professional football was played in the Netherlands, and it used to host one of the world’s biggest rock festivals, “PinkPop.” It is also where

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  • An Eagle Flies

    The eagle flies high in the sky on a warm, sunny day. He wonders if he can fly to the sun. Because he is the ruler in the skies, no one can stop him. He can go wherever he wants to go—free to roam, not restricted by anyone or anything. During his flight, a strange

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  • In November 1942, Fritz Pfeffer joined the Frank and Van Pels families in hiding, bringing the total number of people to eight. He was a solitary figure among two families and shared a room with the adolescent Anne Frank. Fritz was also a father—he had a son, Werner, with his first wife, Vera Henriette Bythiner.

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  • On March 26 and 28, two transports of Slovakian Jews were registered as prisoners in the women’s camp, where they were subjected to forced labor. These were the first transports organized by Adolf Eichmann’s department IV B4 (the Jewish office) within the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA). On March 30, the first RSHA transport from

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  • Heroes don’t always wear capes or dressed in uniforms. Sometimes, they are just ordinary people. I say ordinary, but they are often anything but ordinary, as with Fredy Hirsch. I first heard of Fredy a few years ago. As a birthday gift, I recently received the book The Librarian of Auschwitz. While the story centres

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