Holocaust

  • I want to start by saying that I am not Jewish, although I may have some Jewish ancestry. I am still looking into that. However, the Jews from Geleen were my fellow citizens, as were any other one, regardless of race or colour were my fellow citizens. However, the majority of the Jews of Geleen…

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  • Holocaust Sex Slaves

    I was struggling to give this blog a title. I was thinking of naming it—Brothels in the Concentration Camp. However, I think that would not do justice to the horror and impossible choices these women had to make.  In general, women who worked in brothels had a bit of autonomy over their lives. Some women enjoyed…

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  • Propaganda via Radio

    The Nazis knew how to use the radio in a very effective way to relay their message of hate. It was the perfect tool for propaganda. The Volksempfänger ( “people’s receiver”) was a range of radio receivers developed by engineer Otto Griessing at the request of Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda of the…

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  • Fashion and Fascism

    The English rock band, The Kinks once sang, “He is a dedicated follower of fashion” and I can assure you, I am not that. However, there are people working in the fashion industry, be it as designers, manufacturers or models, who often do not know the history of the brands they represent. On the other…

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  • ⚠️ WARNING: This article contains graphic descriptions of torture and murder. One of the most grotesque contradictions of the Nazi regime was its attitude toward cruelty. The same state that organised mass murder, genocide, and barbaric medical experiments could condemn acts of violence when they violated its own rules or threatened its authority. Within the…

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  • Karl August Wilhelm Frenzel was an SS non-commissioned officer at the Sobibór extermination camp. As commander of Camp I, he was responsible for a Sonderkommando—a unit made up of prisoners, predominantly Jews, who were forced to perform a range of tasks within the camp, including herding newly arrived victims towards the gas chambers. After the…

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  • I could write down the history of Bethrina Kooperberg but it is more poignant to use her own words to illustrate the person she was. The text is translated from Dutch and comes from a postcard and letter Bethrina sent from Camp Vught to her friends, the Van Beek family, dated 24 April 1943. “The…

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  • I wanted to change the title of the blog to evoke an emotion, but then I thought: if this picture doesn’t hit you in the gut, perhaps nothing will. The title is actually the title of the original photograph, which is in the public domain. I have only changed the names from their German forms…

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  • The Nazi concentration camp system evolved into a machine of mass murder, and Auschwitz became its deadliest cog. Located in Poland, Auschwitz initially served as a concentration and forced labor camp for Polish political prisoners. However, in 1941, it became the epicenter of Nazi extermination efforts. Among the most horrifying aspects of Auschwitz’s legacy was…

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  • In 1798, the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge published The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, one of the best-known poems in the English language. Among its most famous lines are: “Water, water, every where,Nor any drop to drink.” The words describe the terrible irony of being surrounded by water while being unable to drink it.…

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