Holocaust
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Alois Hitler was born on June 7, 1837, in the small village of Strones, in the Waldviertel region of Lower Austria, near the Bohemian border. His mother, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, was unmarried at the time of his birth, which led to uncertainty surrounding his paternity. For the first several years of his life, Alois bore…
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The Ardenne Abbey massacre took place during the Battle of Normandy at Ardenne Abbey, a Premonstratensian monastery in Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe near Caen, France. In June 1944, members of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend executed 20 Canadian soldiers in the abbey gardens over a period of days and weeks. The killings formed part of the wider…
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I don’t know why I decided to do a blog specifically about the women victims of the Holocaust, but I just felt compelled to do one. I am married to a beautiful wife, and we have a beautiful daughter. I have two older sisters, and of course, like everyone else I also have a mother,…
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Salo Muller is a Dutch physiotherapist, author, and Holocaust survivor known for his efforts in seeking justice and compensation for Holocaust victims. He was born on February 29, 1936, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Salo Muller’s early life was profoundly affected by the Holocaust. His parents, who were Jewish, were deported and murdered in Auschwitz when he…
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On June 5, 1940, Governor Wouters refused entry to Jewish refugees from Austria who arrived by ship at the port of Curaçao. They were only allowed to disembark after pressure from the Minister for the Colonies. However, as citizens of an enemy nation, they were subsequently detained on Bonaire. It wasn’t until 1942, after repeated…
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Ruth Westheimer (June 4, 1928 – July 12, 2024), widely known as Dr. Ruth, was an American sex therapist, media personality, and author. The New York Times described her as a “Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a cultural icon in the 1980s,” noting that she “ushered in a new age of freer, franker talk about sex…
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Before diving into this historical account, I want to share a personal observation. This is not a political statement, but it is impossible to read these events without noticing the stark similarities to our world today, where countries continue to close their borders to refugees fleeing crisis. The MS St. Louis was a German ocean…
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I was struggling with the title but to be honest I can’t think of another way of describing it. An estimated 1.5 to 2 million children were killed during the Holocaust. How many were killed in Auschwitz is not clear but if you consider that for example on October 10,1944 800 gypsy children were gassed,…
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The Dutch railways were essential to the Nazis, not only as the transport of Jews and others eastwards to the camps but also as a propaganda tool. During the pre-war crisis years, the Netherlands welcomed many malnourished Austrian children. Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart, himself an Austrian, thought he should show gratitude for this. The Nazis, therefore, organized…
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The title is The 4 from Breda, but there are only 3 men pictured. There is a reason for that which I shall explain a bit later. After the Second World War, 241 Germans were tried in the Netherlands for war crimes. Among them, the quartet Willi Lages, Ferdinand aus der Fünten, Franz Fischer and Joseph Kotälla,…
