Holocaust

  • This might seem like a strange statement for me to make to the people who read my blogs, but when it comes down to it, I know very little in relation to the Holocaust. Yes, I do know the statistics and the numbers. Yes, I do know the stories of the survivors and even a

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  • I was going to do a piece on the often-forgotten victims of the Holocaust, those who did want to be captured alive and decided to take their own lives. But when I looked at the list of suicides of Jews in the Netherlands during World War II, I discovered there were hundreds. Many decided to

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  • A working day in Auschwitz

    Every aspect in Auschwitz was designed for either extermination or dehumanization of the prisoners, mainly Jewish prisoners. For those young and fit enough to work there was a daily roll call, sometimes these could last for hours. Prisoner were forced to stand still, wearing very thin clothing regardless what weather condition ,even the slightest movement

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  • Jews in the NSB

    Many European countries had an equivalent of the NSDAP(Nazi) party, the Dutch National Socialist party was the NSB. It may be hard to believe nowadays but not every National Socialist party started off as an anti-Semitic party, as was the case with the NSB. The NSB even had Jewish members, and the party leader ,Anton

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  • There were very few Dutch who defied the Nazi occupiers; this is not to judge because I was never in that situation, and I wouldn’t know what I would have done. However, it is a fact that there were only a few who offered Resistance. Hannie Schaft was one of those few. Born Jannetje Johanna

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  • I will NOT be silenced

    I will not be silenced, no matter how often people try to silence me. I will not be silenced despite the threats. I will not be silenced although a small voice in my head sometimes says, “just give up”, but there is a louder voice screaming “No you fool, you have to keep going. You

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  • Some people say that Kristallnacht marks the start of the Holocaust. I don’t really subscribe to that point of view. In my opinion, the Holocaust started on 19 August 1934. That was the date when 88.1% of the German population gave Hitler Carte blanche to do whatever he wanted via a referendum, merging the posts

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  • We all know who Eva Braun was, yet so little is known about her family. I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that Eva’s parents—Eva, who was just 17 when she first met Adolf Hitler—didn’t seem to object to her involvement with a man whose intentions were clearly malevolent. Some might argue that Eva herself

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  • The Final Insult

    I am Dutch, and I always will be proud to be Dutch, but there are some things in my country’s history that really trouble me, even to the extent that it nearly sickens me. The Dutch bureaucracy is well known to be very efficient, which can be very beneficial, but it can also be destructive

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  • Isolating the Jews

    Long before the first trains left for the concentration camps, the Jews in Germany were isolated not by putting them in ghettos but instead by removing them from every aspect of social life. On 29 November 1938, the Jews were forbidden to keep carrier pigeons, aka homing or postal pigeons, as ordered by The Reich

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