Poland
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(courtesy of John Davis) This is an excerpt from John Davis’ book, Rainy Street Stories. It tells the story of a survivor he met at Flossenburg, who had survived Auschwitz, Ravensbruch, and finally, Flossenburg. Z-1557While vacationing many years ago, my wife Jane and I decided to visit Flossenburg, West Germany. This charming little town is…
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This post is about just a few of the 1.5 million children murdered during the Holocaust. These children have three things in common, today would have been their birthday, they were all Jewish and they were all murdered. Pictures above: Betje de Vries-van de Kar was born in Amsterdam on 28 December 1923 and was…
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Yesterday, a court in Germany convicted 97-year-old Irmgard Furchner and she received a two-year suspended sentence. Most of you will have heard of it. What you possibly didn’t hear is that after the war she married Heinz Furchtsam, a SS officer who also had worked in Stutthof. For reasons unknown to me, he changed his…
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“Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,” is a famous line which was used by a character in William Congreve’s 1697 play The Mourning Bride. And sometimes music does soothe the savage beast, but during the Holocaust, some of these ‘beasts’ were so evil that nothing could soothe them. However, music did play an…
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The beautiful beast and the hyena of Auschwitz were just some names used for Irma Grese. She was born to Berta Grese and Alfred Grese, both dairy workers, on 7 October 1923. Irma was the third of five children (three girls and two boys). In 1936, her mother died by suicide after drinking hydrochloric acid…
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The letter above is dated 18 December 1943. However, it is in direct connection with a program that started eight years earlier. On 12 December 1935, the Lebensborn program began as a campaign to encourage so-called “racially valuable” Germans to have more children. Lebensborn initially focused on giving financial assistance to members of the SS…
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I find it increasingly difficult to write about the murdered children of the Holocaust. 1.5 million innocent souls who are now 1.5 million stars in the sky. This post will have the raw data of some children murdered on this day 80 years ago. But just the raw data should send shivers down your spine.…
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For several years I have been on a quest to find answers, initially about the death of my Grandfather, but also about why the Holocaust happened. In the case of my Grandfather, I have found something like an answer or at least something I can live with. However, when it comes to the Holocaust I…
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Sometimes I feel like just giving up posting about the Holocaust, but I know I can’t. It is not always the images that upset me, more often it is that lack of images that gets to me. There are no images because the victims were just too young and were born in captivity, so there…
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I remember when I was getting married, one of the aspects that needed to be perfect was photography. It was going to be a special day and the photographs needed to reflect that. But what do you do when your every move is watched and you are seen as an enemy of the state? You…
History of Sorts 