Poland
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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…
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Dear Felix Max, You were born 29,220 days ago. Approximately 701,280 hours or 42,076,800 minutes, or even 2,524,608,000 seconds ago. These numbers are so hard to comprehend, just as hard to fathom that you were murdered only 550 days after you were born. The only consolation here is that you had one extra day of…
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Edith Roseij Beek was born on April 12, 1934, in Oss, the Netherlands. She was the youngest of the two children of Arnold Beek and Clara Betsy de Jong. Brother Johan Rene Simon was born in 1930 in Oss. On November 19, 1943, she was murdered in Auschwitz, at age of nine. When she was…
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This story has torn my heart open. I can’t tell you too much about Johannes van der Hoek all I can tell you is that he was born on 6 November 1942, in Westerbork. He must have been placed on a transport to Auschwitz, straight after his birth because, he was murdered there on 9…
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I was struggling to find a title for this piece. I was thinking of using words like testimonies or confessions, but neither of those words reflect the reality in my opinion. Testimony is too soft because it lessens the effect of the severity of the actions of the perpetrators. On the other hand. testimony in…
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The picture above is a wedding picture of Betje van Bergen-de Levie and her husband Philip Hartog van Bergen. I wish I could tell you that they celebrated many anniversaries. But they didn’t even get a chance to celebrate the 1st major anniversary which is celebrated in the Netherlands, the Twelve and a half year…
