Poland

  • The Banality of Evil

    The mistake that is often made in describing the Nazis, who were responsible for millions of deaths, is that they are called ‘monsters’ The scary thing is they weren’t monsters, they were human beings,extremely evil ones  but human beings nonetheless.By calling them monsters, you provide an excuse for the crimes they committed, for what else…

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  • The most impactful way to convey the story of the Holocaust is to personalize it—to bring it down to an individual, human level. Rather than reducing the victims to mere numbers or statistics, we must illuminate their lives, their struggles, and their humanity. By sharing their personal stories, we can break through the abstraction and…

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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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  • Red Sector A

    “All that we can do is just survive. All that we can do to help ourselves Is stay alive…” These are the opening lines of the song “Red Sector A” by the Canadian Rock band Rush. I am not exactly a fan of the band; there are only a few of their songs I like,…

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  • I don’t believe people who say that they don’t like music. They might not like certain types of music, but everyone loves at least one bit of music. Without music, life would be boring. I am always amazed by the number of tunes and songs composed using only eight notes or less. The music scale…

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  • At first, I was reluctant to use the word beauty in the title because we now live in an era where some people might find that offensive, and they will scream about it. I pity them because they lose out on so much. Etty Hillesum was a beauty in every sense of the word. It…

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  • Hans Frank was a prominent figure in Nazi Germany, serving as Adolf Hitler’s personal legal advisor and later as the Governor-General of occupied Poland. Born on May 23, 1900, in Karlsruhe, Germany, Frank was initially trained as a lawyer, joining the Nazi Party in 1923. He quickly rose through the ranks by aligning himself closely…

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  • One of the reasons why so many died during the holocaust is because ‘good’ people, decided to look the other way. The Red Cross knew what was happening and decided to do very little. I know some people will say”It was war time, what could they do?” And I understand that question and appreciate the…

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  • They weren’t numbers, they all had names—Children with dreams and lovers with flames,Mothers with lullabies soft on their lips,Fathers with hands roughened by gripsOn shovels, on hammers, on books worn with age,Each is bound to the world, each written on a page. They weren’t numbers; they all had lives,Some barely begun, some hardened by strife,Eyes…

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  • I’ve written about Eddy Hamel before, but I wanted to revisit his story as we’re in the middle of the FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign, with the finals set to take place in the United States — in East Rutherford, New Jersey in 2026. I hope his memory will be honored then. Eddy Hamel was…

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