History
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George Okker would have celebrated his 101st birthday on November 14,2022 . Although turning 101 is not that common, it is not that uncommon either. However poor George Okker didn’t even reach his 20th birthday. There is quite a bit of data on George but strangely enough no photographs. The only pit of picture I…
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Edward Jonas Ossendrijver was born on November 8,1941. Today would have been his 80th birthday. On his 10th birthday he may have listened to Cold, Cold Heart, sung by Tony Bennett which was released that day. On his 20th birthday he may have heard about the Imperial Airlines Flight 201/8, a Lockheed Constellation aircraft, which…
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Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7th 1941. We have all seen the images of that fateful day. However the order for the attack was given more then a month before. On November 5th, 1941, the 7th Imperial Conference was convened, and two types of request proposals (Draft A and Draft B) were decided upon.…
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Many people think that Halloween is a festival of evil, where the aim is to scare people by dressing up in very scary costumes, or what I find more bizarre is the whole “trick or treat” notion. Everyday we tell our kids not to take sweets or candies from strangers, come 31 October we turn…
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I was on Irish National radio this afternoon, discussing the sale of Nazi uniforms as Halloween costumes in Ireland. It was on Joe Duffy’s Liveline show. I enjoyed being on it, but the show was a bit manipulated. I received a call from one of the researchers at 10 a.m. this morning. He asked me…
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Annelies Marie Frank aka Anne Frank, born 12 June 1929 – murdered February or March 1945, in Bergen Belsen. She was a German-Dutch teenager of Jewish heritage, kept a diary. One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously with the 1947 publication of The Diary of a Young Girl…
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Ernst Friedrich Christoph “Fritz” Sauckel was a Nazi politician, Gauleiter of Gau Thuringia from 1927 and the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment (Arbeitseinsatz) from March 1942 until the end of World War 2. He was one the 24 persons accused in the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. He…
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It is strange sometimes how one thing can draw your attention to another. I did a piece recently on the German national anthem, that led me to look at the Dutch national anthem. “Wilhelmus van Nassouwe”, usually known just as “Wilhelmus” is the national anthem of the Netherlands. It dates back to at least 1572,…
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The saying goes “Behind Every Great Man There Is A Great Woman” but of course it can also be said that behind every great woman there is a great man. The Anne Frank foundation said about Miep Gies’s husband. “Jan was not a person to stand in the limelight, not even amid all the publicity…
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The title of this blog is also the title of a book written by Willy Peter Reese. He was born on born January 22, 1921 in Duisburg. It is not clear when he died but it estimated he more then likely died between June 22 and 27, 1944 near Wizebsk in the Soviet Union. Willy…
