Holocaust
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I saw a robin yesterday. The saying goes, “When robins appear, loved ones are near,” alluding to the belief that the robin is a messenger. Not a messenger from the living but from the dead. In that belief, the robin doesn’t bring a sad message—but a message of hope and encouragement. Then I wondered was…
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Primo Levi is one of the most famous Holocaust survivors. He wrote in 1986, “It happened, and thus it can happen again.” For some survivors, this was a reality soon after being liberated. Howard Cwick was an American Jewish soldier who liberated Buchenwald.The shame he and other liberators felt came from not liberating the camp…
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I know some Polish people will vehemently deny that this ever happened, but it did. It is a shame some people still insist on whitewashing history because it serves no one, and the truth always comes out. We can only stop these crimes from happening again when we learn from the past. It is not…
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I could nearly do a whole blog on how inappropriate this evil man’s name Gottlieb—translates to God Love. I doubt that very much. Gottlieb Hering was involved in the T4 program and later on, was the second and last commandant of the Belzec Extermination Camp. After Action T4, Hering was posted briefly to the Sicherheitsdienst…
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The photograph above is of a selection in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It looks horrendous enough when you look at it, but if you analyze it, the horrors become so real. Firstly, it is clear that the line on the left will not see the end of that day. They are doomed to go into the gas chambers.…
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A Pinch Cat Flashlight I worked for Philips from 1987 to 1997. It was a company that took great pride in its history. In 1891, mechanical engineer Gerard Philips (1858–1942) and his father—manufacturer, banker and tobacco and coffee trader—Frederik Philips founded the light bulb factory of the same name in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. In 1991,…
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Before I delve into the main story, it is worth providing a brief synopsis of Limburg. Limburg is the southernmost of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands and stands apart from the rest of the country due to its distinctive geography, strong historical connections to Central Europe, and unique cultural identity. Unlike the famously flat,…
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On May 20, 1940, the first group of prisoners arrived at Auschwitz: approximately 30 German inmates classified by the SS as “professional criminals.” They had been selected from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. Less than a month later, on June 14, 728 Polish prisoners were deported by German authorities from a prison in Tarnów,…
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Catharina Brücker was the eldest child of Romanian tailor Mozes Brücker (1892–1944) and the Dutch Rossetta Eijl (1896–1944). Her father made women’s clothing for major fashion houses in Rotterdam and owned several shops in the city. From age six until she was twenty, Catharina attended a dance school where she learned ballet, tap dance, and…
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Action 14f13 (also known as Aktion 14f13) was a chilling extension of the Nazi regime’s broader program of systematic murder under the guise of euthanasia. It followed the infamous T4 program, which aimed to eliminate people with physical and mental disabilities. Action 14f13 took this ideology further by targeting concentration camp prisoners deemed unfit to…
History of Sorts 