History

General history issues, although a lot will be about WW2

  • This looks like a fairly standard receipt and although it is hard to make out the names on the document, it does tell a very dark tale. The document is a receipt issued by the SS to a Dutch citizen. The receipt is an acknowledgement of a payment of 37.50 Dutch guilders to this man…

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  • Klara Boda—just a child. Klara Boda—just a child with two fluffy toys. Klara Boda—just a child who wanted to go to school Klara Boda—just a child who wanted to be a princess. Klara Boda—just a child, whose life was not complicated. Klara Boda—all she needed was love and care. Klara Boda—just a child who received…

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  • Maastricht is one of my favourite cities. I grew up only about 10 miles away from it and would have visited it numerous times. It is, the most south eastern city in the Netherlands and is well known for its close proximity to Belgium and Germany. It is also the the home of violin virtuoso…

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  • I wish I could tell you that this picture was used to have a good laugh at my history teacher Benno Redisch. The photograph was handed to us by his wife to use in a presentation on his 10th anniversary as a teacher, but he was not my teacher. I wish I could tell you…

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  • The Nazis told so many lies about the Jews in order to justify their deportations and murder to the wider population. One of the lies was that the Jews were an economical threat, they were all very wealthy and lazy. Yes there were some wealthy Jews but not more then in any other group of…

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  • So much death.

    I was doing research on Elisabeth Casseres a 13 year old girl who was murdered in Auschwitz on September 28,1942. But when I clicked on a link of her death notification it opened up a notification of the Dutch Ministry of Justice which was issued on July 20,1950. The notification was published in the “Nederlandsche…

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  • I was going to do a piece on Nora Italiaander. She would have celebrated her 80th birthday today, but she was murdered on June 4,1943 in Sobibor. She was just aged 2. The picture above is of her death notification issued on the 11th of June 1947, 4 years after her death. But like Nora…

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  • Ankie Stork was a Dutch resistance fighter during the German occupation of the Netherlands. She saved thirty-five Jewish children from the Nazis by hiding them in several locations the town of Nijverdal during World War II. She acted as part of Utrechts Kindercomité,(Utrecht Children Committee) a Dutch resistance group based in Utrecht. Ankie was a…

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  • I was reminded of this song while I was watching “the Man in the Castle”. So many musicians were murdered during the Holocaust Musicians like the talented composer Gideon Klein The youngest Jewish composer murdered during the Holocaust, Gideon Klein was only 26 when he was murdered in the Fürstengrube sub-camp near Auschwitz. His oeuvre…

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  • Most of them were murdered.

    I have to be honest and admit that I am not entirely sure if the title is entirely correct, I am working on presumptions. However they are well founded presumptions. More then 75% of all Dutch Jews were murdered during the Holocaust it is therefore safe to presume that the at least 75% of these…

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