Holocaust

  • Esther Feitsma was born in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, on November 30, 1931. She was murdered in Auschwitz on October 8, 1942, at the age of just 10 years. There is no picture of Esther Feitsma, nor is there much information about her. So why did I choose to write about this seemingly random name? Because,

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  • The 1930s were a period of profound upheaval in Europe. The rise of fascism and Nazism was altering the political landscape, and many countries were drawn into the vortex of ideologies that would define much of the 20th century. While much of the world’s attention was focused on the German threat under Adolf Hitler, the

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  • Awful atrocities were carried out at the Janowska concentration camp and surrounding Lvov (aka Lwow and Lviv) by the Nazis, Soviet troops and Ukrainian nationalists. In September 1941, the Germans set up a factory on Janowska Street in the northwestern suburbs of Lvov, in southeastern Poland(today Lviv in Ukraine). This factory became part of a

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  • When we think of Nazi concentration camps, our minds often conjure images of mass extermination, terror, and starvation. The haunting images of piles of corpses at Bergen-Belsen and the crematoriums of Auschwitz are etched into our collective memory. However, in the final years of the Third Reich’s vast concentration-camp system, the Nazis introduced a disturbing

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  • The Holocaust was not only a result of systemic ideologies but also the actions of individuals who embraced cruelty with fervor. Among these was Ruth Closius-Neudeck, a German SS overseer at concentration camps, whose infamy stems from her merciless treatment of prisoners. Her life and actions provide a chilling example of how ordinary individuals can

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  • Viewing images of the death and destruction wrought by the Holocaust can be deeply gut-wrenching. While it’s often said that a photograph speaks a thousand words, it’s equally valid that it can never tell the whole story. A photo captures only a single moment in time. This is one of the reasons I rarely share

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  • Goebbels Declaration of Hate

    Goebbels was more than a Nazi. He was pure evil, and he dedicated all his life and, indeed, death to Adolf Hitler. As minister of propaganda, he was probably the most powerful of Hitler’s henchmen; with the propaganda tools at his disposal, he was able to brainwash and persuade the general population. On 16 November

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  • Below is a rare picture of Hitler briefing his top brass. For years they claimed to know nothing about the Holocaust. But  extraordinary secret recordings – made by the British – explode that myth. Between 1942 and 1945, MI-19, a division of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, created a number of Combined Services Detailed

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  • The massacre that took place in Slonim on November 14, 1941, stands as one of the many tragic and brutal episodes in the systematic annihilation of Jewish communities across Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. Located in what is now western Belarus, Slonim was home to a vibrant and historically significant Jewish population before the German

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  • Gerda Metzger- T4 Victim

    Gerda suffered from a form skeletal muscular  paralysis and was taken from her mother then transferred to a so-called “children’s specialist department of the Municipal children’s Hospital in Stuttgart. A specialist had come to the family home to examine Gerda. The ‘Doctor’ took the child into a separate room. Gerda’s mother was not allowed to

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