Auschwitz
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In the corner, worn and scuffed, it lay,A silent witness to a world gone gray.Its leather cracked, its latches weak,It held the echoes no voice could speak. Ingrid de Vries, a child so small,Born in Amsterdam, one crisp fall.Her laughter danced in the autumn air,A fleeting joy—beyond despair. Her suitcase—packed with careful hands,By those who…
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No one of us can ever imagine how it felt to be in Auschwitz. Except for those who survived it. Below are just some quotes from survivors Silvia Vesela -Slovak Jewish Auschwitz Survivor “It’s a really humiliating feeling when your personality is being taken away. I don’t know whether you can understand it. You suddenly…
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While Jewish identity was traditionally defined by religious beliefs and cultural heritage, the Nazi regime considered Jewishness a racial characteristic, making conversion to Christianity irrelevant in terms of escaping persecution. Many Jews sought refuge in Catholicism, hoping that baptism would provide protection from Nazi oppression. However, in most cases, conversion did not shield them from…
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Nowadays, people often complain when a train is running late, me included, by the way. However, recently, I have changed my way of thinking about that. Throughout Europe during World War II, the military used the railways to accommodate an industrialized scale of murder. It could only work if the trains ran on time. The…
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A vital element of the Holocaust’s industrial-scale genocide was the efficient logistics system that transported millions of people to their deaths in concentration and extermination camps. The Deutsche Reichsbahn, the German national railway company, played a central role in this process. By providing the means of transportation for the deportation of Jews and other victims,…
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Prisoners in Auschwitz were given a number, which was tattooed on their arm. Marking people with a number makes it easier to treat them as objects rather than human beings. However, not everyone got a number, and there were occasions when they ran out of ink. More people were killed in Auschwitz than the combined…
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The picture above is of an Opel Bliz troops transporter, Opel is one of the companies that provided the Nazi regime with equipment but also with funding. But Opel was not the only company. Funding the Nazis already started early 1930s. Nineteen representatives of industry, finance, and agriculture signed a petition on November 19, 1932…
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Earlier this week I had one question and one statement about concentration camps. The question was “What are the differences between a concentration camp and an extermination camp?” This question I will try to address as much as possible in this blog. But before I do that I want to mention the statement which was…
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Sometimes I struggle with finding a suitable title for a post. As it was for this post, but then he thought using just the raw data as the title is probably the best tribute for this family. The Family is the Chaim family Julius Chaim moved to Nijmegen on 15 October 1940, from Amsterdam. He…
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Below is the testimony of Rudolf Höss, taken on Monday, 15 April 1946, during the Nuremberg Trials. Morning Session DR. KAUFFMANN: With the agreement of the Tribunal, I now call the witness Hoess. [The witness Hoess took the stand.] THE PRESIDENT: Stand up. Will you state your name? RUDOLF FRANZ FERDINAND HOESS (Witness): Rudolf Franz…
History of Sorts 