History

General history issues, although a lot will be about WW2

  • 9/11 1941

    The picture above is an arrest card of Meijer Barmhartigheid. He was one of the 389 young Jewish man who were arrested during raid in Amsterdam on February 22 and 23 ,1941. Of those 389 only 2 survived the Holocaust. 100 of them were murdered in the Hartheim clinic, which was also the clinic used…

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  • If someone is running round like a headless chicken or rushing around like a headless chicken, they are panicking when they should be thinking carefully about what needs to be done. This is of course a figuratively expression. However for one unfortunate, or fortunate. chicken this saying had a literal meaning. On 10 September 1945…

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  • I was reminiscing on TV shows I watched as a kid in the Netherlands. One of my favourite shows was a series called “Q&Q”. It was about 2 teenage detectives. The boys named Aristides Quarles and Wilbur Quant accidentally snap a photo of a dead body in the woods. After finding the place where the…

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  • Happy Birthday Aron Polak

    Aron would have been 81 today, but he didn’t even get to the age of 2. He was born in Amsterdam on September 8, 1941. He was murdered in Sobibor March 26,1943. The fact that he was murdered at such a young age is not even the saddest part of his story. There was actually…

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  • The Siege of Leningrad

    Today marks the 81st anniversary of the start of the siege of Leningrad. The Siege of Leningrad was one of the deadliest and most destructive sieges in the history of the world – quite possibly the deadliest ever. It would last for 872 days, and there would be more than a million Soviet civilian casualties,…

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  • Seeing babies in incubators nowadays is a fairly common sight. Infant incubators are used to provide a warm environment for babies born prematurely or for other infants who are unable to maintain a normal body temperature. The infant incubator is a relatively small, glass-walled box that may have portholes fitted with long rubber gloves through…

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  • The First Supermarket.

    Nowadays doing your shopping in a Supermarket is the most normal thing in the world. You go through the aisles, pick up what you need, and then queue up for the check out to pay for your goods. However this wasn’t always the case. In days of yore( and not even that long ago) you…

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  • Nowadays boarding a plane is nearly as common as get on a train. Come to think of it I have been probably more on a plane then in a train. However in 1954 flying was quite expensive and was only affordable for a few or after saving money for it for possibly year, especially for…

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  • I wish I could say I am remembering Sjakie Degen for his breakthrough work in science. I wish I could say I am remembering Sjakie Degen for a great book he wrote. I wish I could say I am remembering Sjakie Degen for a great painting he painted. I wish I could say that Sjakie…

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  • T4

    The first of September 1939 is well-known for the German invasion of Poland, triggering World War II. However, it is less known as the date the official killing of disabled people was made law, albeit under the guise of euthanasia. It was only five lines which determined the fate of hundreds of thousands:Reichsleiter [Philipp] Bouhler…

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