History

  • What a lot of people don’t realize is that Camp Westerbork was actually established as a refugee camp for Jews escaping the Nazi regime in Germany and Austria.and who had illegally entered the Netherlands. It was established by the Dutch government in the summer of 1939. In July 1942, the Nazis took over the camp…

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  • The title is a line from a report by Edward R. Murrow, a CBS radio news reporter.He  reported largely from Europe during World War II, and was the first reporter on scene following the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp The report was broadcast on  Sunday, April 15, 1945, in Studio B-4 of the BBC,…

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  • April 10

    These are just some historical events which took place on this day, April 10. Hayley’s comet 837 Halley’s Comet makes its closest approach to Earth at a distance equal to 0.0342 AU (5.1 million kilometres/3.2 million miles). Mount Tambora 1815 The Mount Tambora volcano begins a three-month-long eruption, lasting until July 15. The eruption ultimately…

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  • You only lived a few miles down the road from me. You could have been my teacher. You could have been my Doctor You could have been my plumber. You could have been the father of a girl friend You could have been the uncle of my best friend. You could have been a scientist…

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  • Time

    Time! When you think of it, time is such a bizarre concept. It can be measured in an exact set of parameters, years,months,weeks,days,hours,minutes,seconds and even milli and nanoseconds. Yet when you lose someone you love, a day can seem like a year, and a year can seem like a day. Time goes fast and slow…

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  • The NS-Frauen-Warte was a fortnightly  Nazi magazine for women. At a first glance the magazine looked harmless. It would often have recipes or sewing patterns etc. But most of the articles in the magazine were pure propaganda, aimed to brainwash women and especially young mothers. Below is an article from the January 1940 edition. The…

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  • I want to say this first before I go into the blog. I live in Ireland, I love Ireland and not one day have I regretted moving here. It is my home. However what does disturb me is that some Irish politicians are calling on a boycott on some Israeli goods. These same politicians appear…

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  • In 1566 the Netherlands were still under Spanish rule and was part of the greater Habsburg empire. The ruler of the Netherlands was Philip II of Spain. He had appointed his half-sister Margaret of Parma as his Regent. Philip was very much opposed to the Protestant teachings of Martin Luther, John Calvin and the Anabaptists,…

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  • One of the most effective weapons to fight antisemitism and racism is Critical Thinking. What scares me is that there seem to be fewer and fewer people who have this ability. Or maybe it is just a case that those who think critically are silenced. This blog is about a historical event. However, I can’t…

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  • Law abiding citizen

    I don’t know what it is but the last few days I have discovered several accounts of victims of the Holocaust which are very near to me. Not so much that I was related to these people or that I knew them, but I knew the locality and the addresses where they lived. In fact…

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