Murder of Children

  • The title of this blog is a line from a song by the hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. I chose it because it speaks a simple truth—a child does not know how to be evil. The boy in the picture above is Samuel Siegfried Opdenberg. He was born on February 7, 1940,

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  • 1.5 Million Tears

    In memory of the 1.5 million children murdered during the Holocaust 1.5 million tears, silent and small,Each one is a child, with dreams to recall.Eyes once bright with wonder and play,Dimmed by the darkness that stole them away. Tiny shoes, now empty and still,Echo in halls where whispers chill.Toys abandoned, songs unsung,A generation silenced, so

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  • Echoes of Innocence

    Echoes of Innocence In the stillness, voices cry,Children lost to shadowed sky,Eyes that once held light and grace,Now, vanish without a trace. Tiny hands, too pure to harm,Were torn away in war’s cruel alarm.Laughter stolen, dreams undone,Innocence eclipsed by a blazing sun. They ran through fields of hope and play,Unaware that night would steal the

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  • The Murder of a Family

    In Auschwitz’ shadow, where darkness lay deep,A mother once cradled her children to sleep.Her son, just ten, with bright, curious eyes,Her daughter, eleven, under grey, smokeless skies. They walked hand in hand on a road cold and grim,A path carved in silence, devoid of a hymn.The mother, so gentle, whispered soft prayers,But the heavens were

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  • Bernard Henri Piller was born in Maastricht on 8 February 1932 and murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz on 23 September 1943. He reached the age of 11 years. Henri Samuel Piller was also born in Maastricht on 15 April 1935. The nazis murdered him at Auschwitz on 23 September 1943 at the tender age

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  • Destructed Lives

    In the summer of 1942, several Jewish families from Winterswijk, the Netherlands, decided to hide in the Korenburgerveen nature reserve. With the help of farmers, barracks were built in the peat, and local residents provided water and food. A total of 23 people found refuge in the bog, including five children. On November 27, 1942,

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  • When I write an unfinished life, I mean it as the life of the 1.5 million children who were murdered during the Holocaust. For several years I have been trying to finish a song to remember all those children, but for some reason, I cannot finish it. Every time, I sit down to visualize the

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  • The parents of Jacques and Fred Goldwasser managed to reach Switzerland, but they were forced to leave their children behind. In 1943, the brothers were separated and placed with foster parents. Jacqui was with the childless couple Messow, and Freddi was with the then-childless couple Jonas. Richard Messow and Erich Jonas owned a Sperre as

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  • When you look at the photograph above, you may be forgiven for thinking that it is an image of a class of children doing arts and crafts at school. They are children doing arts and crafts, but it is not in a school (at least not a regular school) it is a group of children

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  • There are no photographs of the two babies—just death certificates. Elisabeth Jeanne Petzal was born with her twin brother Robert Harry on 10 August 1943 at Camp Westerbork. They were children of Werner Petzal and Fanny Betsy Oppenheim. Both were murdered at Auschwitz on 18 October 1944. They were just a year old when they

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