Czechoslovakia

  • A smiley face on a passport application form. A smiley face of a girl who had high hopes of travelling and getting many stamps on her passport. A smiley face of a girl who maybe one day would become a famous child actor, like Shirley Temple because she looks just like her. The same Shirley

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  • To be honest, I’m not entirely convinced of his nobility, he had many flaws. Nonetheless, his actions were remarkable, especially considering his family background. When people hear the name Göring, it usually conjures images of Hermann Göring, the notorious Nazi leader and one of Adolf Hitler’s closest confidants. Yet few know about his younger brother,

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  • Art can be a powerful medium when expressing emotions or illustrating life as experienced. Artist Bedřich Fritta who was born Fritz Taussig expressed his experiences of the Holocaust via art. Fritta was captured and deported on 4 December 1941 to the Theresienstadt ghetto. His wife and son followed in 1942. Fritta and other illustrators in

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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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  • The Lidice Massacre

    The Lidice massacre was one of the most brutal reprisals carried out by Nazi forces during World War II. It took place on June 10, 1942, in the village of Lidice, which was then part of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now the Czech Republic. The massacre was a direct retaliation for the assassination

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  • I wish I could tell you the story of Rolf Dirk Ullmann’s long life. I wish I could tell you about all his children and grandchildren, visiting him today for his 80th birthday. But I can’t. I can’t tell you about Rolf’s first experience eating an ice cream or chocolate bar or anything about his

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  • Heroes don’t always wear capes, or are dressed in uniforms, sometimes they are just ordinary people. I say ordinary but more often than not they are anything but ordinary, as was the case with Fredy Hirsch. I first heard of Fredy a few years ago. I got the book, The Librarian of Auschwitz, as a

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  • Holocaust Music

    “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,” is a famous line which was used by a character in William Congreve’s 1697 play The Mourning Bride. And sometimes music does soothe the savage beast, but during the Holocaust, some of these ‘beasts’ were so evil that nothing could soothe them. However, music did play an

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  • I am probably the most a-technical person on the planet. Fixing things is just something I am not equipped to do—it is why I admire people who can repair things. I love a show on the BBC called The Repair Shop. It is a British television show that aired on BBC Two for Series 1–3

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