Auschwitz

  • It is just a photo of a soldier with his family. One could easily dismiss this photograph as someone’s memory. A father who loved to smoke, a mother all dressed up and two well-dressed children—a boy and a girl. This photo could have easily been a picture of my grandfather with his family. Like the…

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  • Café Alcazar Amsterdam

    On 9 February 1941, members of the Dutch Nazi party, NSB, assisted by German soldiers, forced their way into the café-cabaret ‘Alcazar’ on Thorbeckeplein because Jewish artists were still performing there. This led to a brawl in which 23 people were injured. Clara de Vries was a jazz trumpet player. Her performance at Cabaret Alcazar…

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  • Everyone who was murdered in the Holocaust But murdering a 6 month old baby and a 2 year old toddler took a special kind of evil. The little boy Levy was born on February 6,1942. Just over 6 months later on August 23,1942 he was murdered in Auschwitz. His older sister, Frouwke(Dutch for little woman),who…

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  • Esther Stad was born this day 80 years ago. You’d expect I would be able to say a lot about Esther. 80 years should have provided me with a lot of data. But there are only a few things I can say about her. She was born on February 4,1942 in Amsterdam. Her Father was…

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  • The Steinbach Family

    The title of the blog is ‘The Steinbach Family’ but is really a blog about the Romani people. The reason why I picked the Steinba,ch family name is twofold. Firstly the picture at the start of the blog is of Settela Steinbach. It is one of the most iconic pictures of the Holocaust. Initially she…

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  • There are so few things that make sense in relation to the Holocaust, in fact there is nothing that make sense. On January 17,1945 In mid-January 1945,the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. SS units forced nearly 60,000 prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. This murderous evacuation, known as the “Death…

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  • Happy Birthday, Edith Frank

    I often think that Edith Frank is a forgotten hero. She was stuck with so many people in such a small space while desperately avoiding being discovered. That would be challenging to anyone’s health. But Edith could not afford to lose her sanity, not even for one second.v She was born in the German city…

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  • Silvain Wolf was just a footnote in history. But his story is an important one to tell. He was born on October 7,1902 in Beek, a small town in the province of Limburg, in the South East of the Netherlands. In 1930 he moved to nearby Sittard, where he got a job with his uncle…

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  • I have written several blogs on Westerbork. The reasons I highlight Westerbork are: It is the sinister aspect I want to explore here. The biggest crime committed in Westerbork was it gave those imprisoned— hope, or rather, false hope. It was a distraction from their awaited fate. The Dutch government established a camp at Westerbork…

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  • There are no pictures of Michel Polak and Mirjam Brilleman. There is only a picture of one the place they were murdered. Auschwitz and more then likely Auschwitz-Birkenau. There are no pictures of the 2 children because they were born on November 20,1941 in Amsterdam. The Nazis already had a tight grip on Dutch society…

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