Holocaust
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Oskar Gröning was a German SS Unterscharführer stationed at Auschwitz. His responsibilities included counting and sorting the money taken from prisoners, as well as being in charge of the personal property of arriving prisoners. On a few occasions, he witnessed the procedures of mass killing in the camp. On April 20, 2015, when he was…
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The one subject I find difficult to address is how the Dutch treated the Jews during the war. It is easy for me to say they didn’t do enough to help their Jewish neighbours, because that would be true. However I did not live in that time. I did not have to face severe punishments,…
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Anne Frank has become an enduring symbol of the atrocities of the Holocaust through her poignant and insightful diary, “The Diary of a Young Girl.” During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Anne and her family were forced into hiding, and their eventual arrest marks one of the many tragic moments of World War II.…
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During the Holocaust, several Nazi concentration camps had orchestras composed of prisoners. These orchestras were used for propaganda, forced to play during appalling situations such as executions, roll calls, and as prisoners were marched to forced labor or gas chambers. Below are some of the most notable orchestras formed in concentration camps. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Women’s…
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People are often surprised to learn I am not Jewish, and a few have even questioned my decision to write about the Holocaust as a non-Jew. While Jewish people were the primary targets and largest group of victims, Nazi persecution extended to millions of others as well. My connection to this history is personal: members…
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-The question “Would You Go Back to 1889 and kill baby Hitler?” was once posed by The New York Times Magazine. 42 % of the people answered “Yes”. Jeb Bush, younger brother of former US President George W. Bush, answered this question with “Hell yeah, I would, You gotta step up, man” I do believe…
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While the title refers to this period as a prelude, the Holocaust was already underway by 1933. However, the Action T4 program marked the beginning of systematic mass murder. The T4 Euthanasia Program, also known as Aktion T4, represents one of the most chilling manifestations of Nazi ideology and is often considered a precursor to…
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This blog is not to pass judgment; it is meant to illustrate how evil the Nazis, and particularly Mengele, were. They forced doctors to do things they would usually not even contemplate, and it put them in impossible positions. Berthold Epstein: Berthold Epstein (1890–1962) was a remarkable Czech pediatrician whose life was marked by groundbreaking…
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On August 4,1944 Anne Frank, her family and all the others hiding in the annex in the office building in Amsterdam are arrested. Anne was 15 at the time, the same age my niece is now. However my daughter is free to meet her friends, go to the shop, compete in competitions and even free…
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The Mechelen Transit Camp, located in a former army barracks known as Kazerne Dossin, was established by the Nazis in 1942. Its primary function was to serve as a holding and sorting facility for Jews and Roma before their deportation to extermination camps, primarily Auschwitz-Birkenau. Over the course of two years, Mechelen became a site…
History of Sorts 