Germany

  • The girl in the playpen is Renee Sara Gottschalk, born in the Central Refugee Camp Westerbork on 21 June 1941. The two girls in the dark dresses are the daughters of chief physician F. Spanier. The lady on the right is Rosa Strauss; Renee Sara’s mother. Her father was Erich Gottschalk. Renee and her mother…

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  • It is stories like Gideon’s that make me want to give up doing blogs on the Holocaust, but paradoxically, it also encourages me to continue with it. The reason why I want to stop is apparent. Every time when I see a picture of a beautiful innocent infant, knowing that child was murdered by an…

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  • The Jehovah Witnesses are often forgotten as Holocaust victims. An estimated 1,000 German Jehovah’s Witnesses died or were murdered in concentration camps and prisons during the Nazi era, as did 400 Witnesses from other countries, including about 90 Austrians and 130 Dutch Jehovah Witnesses. On 29 May 1940, the Vereeniging of Bible researchers (The name…

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  • Without a shadow of a doubt, the star of the 1936 Olympic Games was Jesse Owens. But there was another medal winner who became more infamous than famous. He came 3rd behind in the Men’s 100 metres sprint behind Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe and third place in the Men’s 200 metres sprint behind Jesse…

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  • It is hard, if not impossible, to define what the most evil crime was during the Holocaust. It is not like there is a gradient scale you can apply. Without a doubt though the murder of children was among the most heinous of acts. One especially comes to mind. On 20 April 1945, on the…

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  • I have long given up on trying to understand the logic behind some of the Nazis actions. For example the mass murder of Doctors, the Nazis themselves could have used them for their own medical needs. Simon Blitz was born on June 28, 1907 in the Watergraafsmeer( The Watergraafsmeer is a polder in the Netherlands.…

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  • On May 10, 1945, probably knowing that he was close to being captured, by swallowing a capsule of potassium cyanide at the Mürwik naval base in Flensburg-Mürwik, Richard Glücks ended his own life. Although the lack of official records or photos gave rise to speculation about his ultimate fate. There are many biographies about this…

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  • Chocolate Bar Bomb

    I just don’t know how the war would have gone if the Germans had succeeded with these bombs. It gives a new meaning to the dessert name “death by chocolate,” The German bomb makers created explosive devices by coating a thin layer of rich dark chocolate and then packaging it in expensive-looking black and gold…

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  • They say a picture tells a thousand words. But it never tells the complete story. The photo above has a clear description of how evil men can be. Below are some testimonies and eyewitness accounts of liberators and survivors of the Holocaust. Gina Rappaport was liberated by the US Army in April 1945, after spending…

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  • The 4th of May is the date when all deaths from World War 2( and the last few years also from other conflicts) are remembered. At 8pm a 2 minutes silence is observed nationwide. There were 7,900 military death, 198,000 civilian deaths, of which 20,000 died between late September 1944 and early May 1945 due…

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