Auschwitz
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Never Again are two words that are easily said. Though, do we mean them? Or are we just saying them to make ourselves feel better? Recently, I was called a “genocide junkie.” I didn’t judge the person who said it; I could understand where they were coming from. But I disagree—they are wrong. I write extensively…
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Dr. Johann Paul Kremer was a German physician and professor of anatomy who became infamously known for his role as an SS physician at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during the Holocaust. Born on December 26, 1883, in Stellberg, Germany, Kremer was highly educated and had a background in medicine and anatomy, working as a professor…
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The Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands, beginning in 1940, marked a dark chapter in British history, as these small territories—Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark—became the only British lands occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Channel Islands’ geographical proximity to mainland Europe made their defense difficult, the way local British authorities…
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Your killing me did not stop your hate. Hate is like a disease, a cancer—it eats at you bit by bit, and the more you hate, the sicker you get. Hate is like a tumour in your head. It drives you insane up to the point that you don’t even realize anymore that killing an…
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Life is only a sequence of events and accidents, often determined when and where you are born. When I was 15, as a young man in the 1980s in the Netherlands, my main interest was girls and trying to get beer. When Elie Wiesel was 15 and a young man in Romania (or then Hungary)…
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This blog only contains 2 pictures. A picture of a broken doll and a picture of some children’s shoes. Both were called pictures of Auschwitz artifacts, now I know the description is not meant disrespectful and was meant with the best intention and perhaps it is the only way to describe them. But the word…
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The picture is of a page in a poetry album which belonged to a friend of Hedi Metzger. The text is in German and it says. “Forget me not, trust in G-d. Speaking is silver, and silence is gold. This from your memories, Hedi Metzger, Amsterdam 19-4-1939.” Less than 2.5 years later she would be…
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In the 1920s, it was not uncommon in the Catholic south of the Netherlands for one or two children in a family to join a monastery or convent. However, having six out of eight children devote themselves to religious life was extraordinarily rare. What makes the Löb siblings’ story even more remarkable is that their…
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I was going to do a piece on Nora Italiaander. She would have celebrated her 86th birthday today, but she was murdered on June 4,1943 in Sobibor. She was just aged 2. The picture above is of her death notification issued on the 11th of June 1947, 4 years after her death. But like Nora…
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One key document that reveals the Nazis administrative machinery behind the Holocaust, is the August Frank memorandum, issued on September 26, 1942. Written by SS official August Frank, this memorandum outlines the procedures for handling Jewish property during deportations to extermination camps. While many Nazi documents focused on the mechanics of extermination, Frank’s memorandum offers…
