History

General history issues, although a lot will be about WW2

  • “Paranoid” is a song by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released in 1970 off the band’s second studio album Paranoid (1970). It is the first single from the album, while the B-side is the song “The Wizard”. It reached number 4 on the UK Singles Chart and number 61 on the US Billboard Hot…

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  • Rita and Sandor Joachim Krammer met their death on 26 October 1942, Nazis murdered them at Auschwitz. Rita was born on 5 January 1935 in Groningen, the Netherlands. Her little brother, Sander Joachim, was born on 15 March 1937. Their mother, Regina Krammer-Gunsberger. was born in Deutschkreuz in Austria, and their father, Jacob Krammer, in…

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  • This a piece that was newly published On October 24,2022, for The New School’s online journal Public Seminar, responding to James Carroll’s epic six-part essay in that outlet, “Revelations of the War in Ukraine.” It was written by Robert Edwards a writer based in New York City (blogging at The King’s Necktie), and a former…

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  • On 25 October 1944, Fake Krist, a fanatic employee of the German Sicherheitsdienst, was shot dead by the Haarlem resistance, in the Netherlands Initially, the attack was attributed to Hannie Schaft’s resistance group, but later it turned out that a police squad with members from Halfweg, resistance group had liquidated Fake Krist. To this end,…

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  • 160 Days

    Elleke Trijtel was born in Amsterdam on October 24. 160-days later, they murdered you in Sobibor. Dear Elleke, your parents loved each other, you were the fruit of their love. You were born under a regime that hated you so much, they only allowed you to live 160 days. There was no rain the day…

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  • I think it is safe to say that Eddie van Halen changed the concept of a guitar solo forever, when he first played “Eruption”. Not only guitar solos, rock guitar in general. Eruption” solo popularized the tapping style of guitar playing, and in doing so revolutionized the sound of rock. Not bad for a tune…

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  • We are less than a month away from the Fifa Worldcup. The selection of Qatar as the host nation is, to use an understatement, controversial. But I hope it will do some good. I was wondering though about the history of Dutch football and especially the World War II years, the national competition didn’t halt.…

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  • The birth of a baby is a joyous occasion, even in war time. I don’t know if it is a specific Jewish tradition, but I know it is a Dutch one, that the birth of a child is announced in the newspapers. As did Harry’s parents, Willy and Rose, when he was born on October…

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  • They Thought They Were Safe

    Approximately 25,000 Jews from Germany and Austria sought refuge in the Netherlands in the 1930s after the Nazis came to power. They were welcomed in the Netherlands because many Dutch were appalled by the treatment of the Jews in Germany. The photograph above shows a large protest meeting in the Amsterdam R.A.I. in 1938 against…

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  • In my opinion 1993 was the worst year in Pop music-I have no scientific data to back this up, it is just based on the re-runs of Top of the Pops on BBC4. Most of the songs are awful and hardly memorable. Luckily the rock track on this episode of Rocktober is not from 1993…

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