Hero

  • Anyone who knows movies will know the name Charles Durning. He has starred in so many classic movies in a variety of genres, comedies, thrillers, musicals. Movies like “Dog day afternoon”, “The Choirboys” or “The best little whorehouse in Texas” the list is endless. Additionally he has also starred in a great number of TV…

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  • On May 5,2019 on the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands. One of the heroes who contributed to this liberation passed away aged 103. Like me he was Dutch and like me he had a love for Ireland and we both ended up making this emerald isle our home. But where I am…

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  • I had not heard of Tina Strobos before although I have read so much about WWII and the Holocaust, but for some reason her name escaped me. She was born Tineke Buchter. She was a  was a Dutch physician and psychiatrist from Amsterdam and during WWII she was involved in the Dutch resistance.Together with her…

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  • Often the psyche of people is that they see what they want  to see. They see a headline or a picture and they will have made up their minds. There is no further need for more details on the background story, they have enough to work with and make up their own story. For example…

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  • One of the definitions of a hero is “a person noted for courageous acts or nobility of character” Mercer G. Abernathy was such a person and even though I don’t know him it is with a 100% certainty I can state he was a hero. I know nothing of this man except for his Army…

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  • Desperation and Survival

    I have often wondered how the Sonderkommandos coped with their  work. Sonderkommandos were  forced labour units made up of  Nazi death camp prisoners. usually Jews.They were forced to help with the disposal of gas chamber victims among other duties. Sometimes even removing family members. It is not like they had a choice, it was either work…

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  • The Fighting Girlfriend

    Your husband goes off to war and gets killed in battle. What do you do? Well like any other wife you would sell all your belongings and with the money earned from that sale, you go an acquire a tank, to take revenge. It sounds like a great plot for a revenge movie directed by…

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  • I am a father of three children, and every time they leave the house—a million scenarios go through my head of things that could happen to them, but I am not unique in this because it is what fathers and mothers do—they worry for their kids. Otto Frank was a father, and a husband, to…

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  • This is one of those men that makes me proud to be Dutch, and like me he has also a connection with Ireland. He was born in Hattem, a small town  in the east of the Netherlands. His father was an officer in the Dutch Navy. Willem studied mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he…

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  • Charles Jesse Uplinger- Just a random name. But he wasn’t just a random man. He was a son, a husband, a brother and a friend and above all a Hero. Born  on 9 April 1917, Sherburn, Martin County, Minnesota I never met him but yet unbeknownst to him he had an impact on my life,…

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