Holocaust
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Although many German film makers left Germany in the 1930s, because of the rise of the Nazism, propaganda minister Göbbels still had quite a pool of film makers to help him produce a great number of propaganda movies. The most famous and probably prolific was Leni Riefenstahl. But a close second was Veit Harlan. After…
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The Netherlands had been occupied by the Nazis between May 15th 1940,after the Dutch forces surrendered, and May 1945. Although many parts had already been liberated by autumn 1944. The official liberation day was set on May 5,1945. The Netherlands had a population at the time of about 8.8 million. During the 5 years of…
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Martha Gellhorn was a pioneering female journalist who often reported from the front lines during World War II. Her father was Jewish, and her mother was a protestant. She was married to Ernest Hemingway from 1940–1945. She was the only woman to land in Normandy, France, on 6 June 1944—D-Day. She was also one of…
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++++CONTAINS SOME GRAPHIC IMAGES+++++++++ I could do a blog on any of the 44,000 Nazi concentration camps. Yes you are reading that right, there were about 44,000 concentration camps. Some were extermination camps, some were labour camps and there were transit camps. Regardless what their designation was, the ultimate aim was the annihilation of those…
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American composer and conductor Enrico Nicola “Henry” Mancini was born in Cleveland on April 16 in 1924.But he grew up in Pennsylvania, where he played the flute flute with his father in an Italian immigrant music group called “Sons of Italy”, At age eight, Mancini started to learn to play the piccolo. He later studied…
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I came across date about the ‘Voormalig Rotterdams kindertehuis’ or Former Rotterdam home for Children. Initially I was a bit confused. I wanted to find out more so I looked in some Rotterdam archives, then I noticed that the actual home was in Arnhem. To make it even more confusing the address was Amsterdamscheweg 1,…
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The last few years have been a strange year for a great number of countries across the world, especially when it comes to education. There is no doubt that the Covid 19 pandemic will have consequences down the line for many students. However most of them when they go back to school, they will still…
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This broke my heart. On September 14, 1945 an obituary appeared in the Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, which was a Dutch Jewish weekly newspaper, it was an obituary for several generations of one family: George Sandelowsky (father and father-in-law), who had died on February 25 as a result as the awful conditions in Bergen Belsen concentration…
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(originally posted March 22, 2020) I did a blog on Marcel Marceau about two years ago. Today, he would have been 100 years old. Therefore, I thought it appropriate to do another tribute to this Silent Hero. He survived the Nazi occupation and saved many children during World War II. He was regarded for his…
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Dr. Maria Montessori once said “Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.” The picture above is of a Montessori school in Amsterdam, it was taken in 1937. Leonard Samuel van Esso was one if that school’s pupils.…