Never Forget – History of Sorts

Never Again—Never Forget

On 27 January 1945, the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz. Although those who survived were physically liberated, for many the mental torture never left them. Their experiences were relived in their nightmares and there was constant anxiety.

The United Nations has designated 27 January as Holocaust Memorial Day. I believe every day should be a Holocaust Memorial Day, especially nowadays when so many want to forget or revise history.

Never Again. Never Forget. I cannot say Never Forgive because that is not my call—that’s the prerogative of those who survived and their families.

source

https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/?mode=gallery&view=horizontal&q=auschwitz&rows=25&page=1

Dirk de Klein- T 4 Victim

Dirk de Klein, born April 10 1888.

Died November 25,1939.

Place of residence: Heinsberg- Germany

Cause of Death: Pneumonia

Dirk de Klein was diagnosed with an incurable disease in 1936. He was also an ardent opponent of the Nazi regime. He had criticized Hitler and Himmler, publicly on several occasions. He did not like the direction his beloved Germany was going.

He had moved to Heinsberg from the nearby Dutch town of Geleen in 1930.

In late November 1939 during a check up in the Hospital he was transported by Gemeinnützige Krankentransport GmbH(Charitable Ambulance)

—-a National Socialist subdivision of the Action T4 organization. The euphemistically named company transported sick and disabled people to the Nazi killing centers to be murdered under the Nazi eugenics program and was known for the gray buses it used.—

ambulance

Dirk de Klein was transported to the nearest T 4 facility and was gassed there.

His family was told that he was transferred from his nearby Hospital to a specialist Hospital to treat his condition. But unfortunately he died of pneumonia caused by complications in his medical treatment.

Now you all probably know by now that this Dirk de Klein is in fact me. But this blog is meant to illustrate that anyone could have been a victim of the Nazi regime. I was just lucky I was born in 1968 rather then 1888.

But it easily could have been me, Even the geography could have been a possibility. A lot of people moved to German from the Netherlands and vice versa, especially in the south Eastern part of the Netherlands. My hometown and the town I mentioned Heinsberg are only a few miles from each other, A walking distance even.

Let us never ever forget what happened to millions of innocent lives, and let us remember that this could easily happen again but this time you might be the victim.

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know a you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of €2 ,however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thanks To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then €2 just add a higher number in the box left from the paypal link. Many thanks

€2.00

I will NOT be silenced

alex

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 have a purpose so serve it. God gave you a talent so use it”

I will not be silenced because there are 1.5 million voices of Children pleading with me to tell their untold stories, To implant their names in people’s minds.

Children like Alex Weijel were born on 24 November 1939 in Enschede, the Netherlands. Killed a few weeks before his 3rd birthday on 12 October 1942 in Auschwitz.

Alex’s eyes look at me and in my head, I hear him say, “Do not forget me.”

How could I forget him if I had been born at that time it could have been me who was killed.

I will not be silent because of the screams of those who never even saw the light of day, because they were carried in a womb of a mother who was seen as an inconvenience and was shot, stabbed, gassed or worked to death.

I will not be silenced; I will NOT be silenced.

Please subscribe by following my blogs.

Or follow me on

Twitter @Dirkjohannes

When it comes down to it, I know very little.

jood

This might seem like a strange statement to make, to the people who read my blogs, but when it comes down to it , I know very little in relationship to the Holocaust.

Yes, I do know the statistics and the numbers.

Yes I do know the stories of the survivors and even know a lot about the whole history of the Holocaust, and all that happened leading up to it.

But I do not know the pain which was suffered. I just cannot fathom the last seconds of life in the gas chambers, or the moments before being shot in the back of the head and being pushed in a mass grave.

I do not know nor do I want to know how it feels to be so evil that you don’t hesitate to kill children,women. people who are sick, without even blinking an eye.

I do not know hate for someone who is slightly different then me, I embrace our similarities and learn from those differences so that I can become a better human being.

I do not know the guilt the survivors have, especially since they have nothing to feel guilty about. They survived and that is all that matters.

I do not know what it is to be a victim of the worst genocide in history.

I decided to use the yellow star of David for this blog because it is the Jews that suffered most, but I could have also used a pink triangle or a black one. There were so many markings to identify people and class them as subhumans .

I know why and equally I don’t know why the Holocaust happened.

I don’t know why people are now willing to forget and are ready to “move on”.

You don’t move on from this , this needs to remain ingrained in our mind forever.

NEVER FORGET

1018;518 not just numbers but all individual stories.

Auschwitz

The most disturbing aspect of the Holocaust is the numbers of people being killed. No one of us can even begin to imagine the horror.

Many knew their fate before they got killed. They were put on transports on journeys that sometimes would take days. Journeys under unfathomable inhumane conditions, many would already die during the journeys. The ones who survived the journey only survived to be killed immediately after they arrived at any of the death camps. Or otherwise to be slowly worked to death or killed as part of experiments. Eventually some of those who survived to be liberated, still died because of the weakened state their bodies were in, and even getting proper food would cause such a shock to the system that it killed them.

On June 23 1943 1018 Jews were transported from Drancy, near Paris. to Auschwitz. Of those 1018,518 were killed immediately in the gas chambers. Each one of them an innocent human being. All individual stories, stories like the one of Arthur Goldstein who had been German Jewish journalist and socialist politician. In 1933 when the Nazis took power he fled to Paris. 10 years later the state he had served before as a politician condemned him to death. He was one of those 518 of the Drancy transport who was murdered in the gas chambers on June 25,1943.

I would love to tell the individual story of all the 6 million Jews, 312,000 Serb civilians, 250,000 people with disability, 1.8 Million non Jewish Poles, and all those other victims like homo-sexuals, Gypsies, Soviet POW’s, Soviet civilians and so many others. But it would be impossible for only one man to tell these individual tales of bravery and sacrifice.

One task that lays on all of our shoulders is to make sure we never ever forget and we do not allow for some individuals to rewrite history to accommodate their own political narrative.

gas chambers

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

$2.00

Source

USHMM

The Holocaust

1024px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-N0827-318,_KZ_Auschwitz,_Ankunft_ungarischer_Juden

The Holocaust a word that everyone knows the meaning off but yet no one understands.

No one understands why it happened, at least not really. People will say it is because the political ideology of a few, who wanted eradicate all of those who they deemed undesirable.

But it is not that easy, Throughout history there have been many different political ideologies and dictatorship and even though many of these were brutal and evil, it hardly ever entailed the wholesale slaughter of millions. And I do apologize for the word ‘wholesale’ but that’s really what it was, a ‘business’ transaction.

victims

Millions killed as if it was another day in the office and that’s how it was sold to mainly the Germans and Austrians but also other European nations.

The Jews,Gays,Roma. Sinti,Disabled and other were not human, they were a blight on humanity and a costly one. They needed to be removed, they were a burden on the regular tax paying working man and woman. Even education was suffering because of them. They were not pure and tainted a pure race. For mankind to survive these impurities needed to be destroyed.

Berlin, Boykott-Posten vor jüdischem Warenhaus

People trusted their government because they had brought them prosperity so the ordinary citizen looked away, because they knew it was for the ‘best’.

Nowadays we know better, but we don’t. Not really. New research has shown that many adults lack basic knowledge of what happened — and this lack of knowledge is more pronounced among millennials, whom the survey defined as people ages 18 to 34. “Never Forget” means little to them. And it is easy for the older generation, and I include myself in this. to judge and be disgusted by this lack of this knowledge, but here is the thing. These millenials are our children,nieces our nephews. It is us who failed to instill this knowledge,unwittingly so. We relied on the various education systems to do that job for us, not realizing late 20th and early 21st century education was different then our education. The focus was now more on absorbing data there was no need for critical thinking. But it’s not too late we can still educate. The Holocaust must never ever happen again.

800px-Jewish_refugees_at_Croydon_airport_1939

train

arbeit

Next time we say or write “Never Again” lets not say it as a slogan but as a commitment, if not for us then for the millions who died. Or for those who still wake up every night and see the faces of their loved ones,it’s the least we can do.

children

Donation

$2.00

Holocaust Remembered

1024px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-N0827-318,_KZ_Auschwitz,_Ankunft_ungarischer_Juden

On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, was liberated by the Red Army.

UN Resolution 60/7 establishing 27 January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day urges every member nation of the U.N. to honor the memory of Holocaust victims, and encourages the development of educational programs about Holocaust history to help prevent future acts of genocide.

“We must also go beyond remembrance, and make sure that new generations know this history. We must apply the lessons of the Holocaust to today’s world. And we must do our utmost so that all peoples may enjoy the protection and rights for which the United Nations stands”

Some of the pictures below are graphic and may be disturbing. But please do keep in mind disturbing as they may be, they are still fairly sanitized there are other images even more disturbing.

In 1948 ,a girl who grew up in a concentration camp was asked to draw “home” and what she drew was scribbles. It shows how the horrors of the concentration camp warped her mind. It’s a mystery what the lines truly mean to her, probably the chaos or the barbed wire.

A girl who grew up in a concentration camp draws a picture of home while living in a residence for disturbed children, 1948

Transport

jewish-transport-640x480

SS prison guards forced to load victims of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp into trucks for burial, 1945

SS prison guards forced to load victims of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp into a trucks for burial, 1945

Evil words

preparations-for-the-70th-anniversary-of-the-liberation-of-auschwitz-birkenau-461706598-597f989f0d327a00119f5992

Photos of Jewish children in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Prisoners were stripped of all their possessions when they arrived at the camps. In an area of the camp called Canada people\’s personal belongings were processed, stored and then redistributed to Germans.

holocaust-series-11_0