History

General history issues, although a lot will be about WW2

  • “Worn Down Piano” is a song by the American band The Mark & Clark Band, from their album Double Take. The song was written in 1977 by twin brothers Clark and Mark Seymour. The record was produced by Ron Dante of Archies fame, and was released as a single. The song (duration 8:10) is about…

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  • I had planned to write a post on the victims of Buchenwald that died shortly after liberation, I was sidetracked by stumbling across the story of Albert Leonard Wittenberg. Albert was born on 14 April 1909, in Paramaribo, Surinam. Surinam was a Dutch colony in South America. Like many of his fellow countrymen and women,…

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  • Who is Berthold Mendel Judenfreund? He was just a farm labourer, not a man of violence or a criminal, just a farm labourer. On April 10, 1943, 25 years before I was born, the Nazis murdered him at Auschwitz. What makes his story so sad is that he could have survived. His nephew said the…

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  • Northern Ireland

    On Good Friday, 10 April 1998, the Good Friday Agreement, also known as the Belfast Agreement, It consists of two closely related agreements,the British-Irish Agreement and the Multi-Party Agreement. It led to the establishment of a system of devolved government in Northern Ireland and the creation of many new institutions such as the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive,…

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  • A Baby Shoe

    A baby shoe and a date— Not a birth date, The date she died. Today 8 April 2023, is the day I cried. Why? I don’t know. I did not know the baby, nor did I know the parents. On 27 March 1944, this baby was murdered. Today I cry. I did not know her,…

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  • Papa Roach are celebrating 23 years of their legendary album Infest, which was released April 25, 2000. One of the many songs on the album is “Last Resort,” Papa Roach vocalist Jacoby Shaddix described the song as a “cry for help”. He also said “That song was about one of my best friends, and then…

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  • It is quite hard to describe this story because it is a tragedy and a miracle at the same time. It isn’t clear when baby Ruben was born, some sources say he was born on 6 April 1943, while other sources say it was 9 April 1943. On his grave’s headstone, it says 9 April.…

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  • Music and Holocaust

    One of the definitions for music is vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony and expression of emotion, but it is so much more than that. Music brings hope in times of despair, comfort in times of grief and joy in times of sorrow. Music…

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  • April 1

    It’s that time of year again when you have to analyze anything you hear or see (as if you shouldn’t always do that) because it could just be a prank or a joke. But where did it all start this fooling of people on April First? Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back…

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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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