Poland

  • The girl in the playpen is Renee Sara Gottschalk, born in the Central Refugee Camp Westerbork on 21 June 1941. The two girls in the dark dresses are the daughters of chief physician F. Spanier. The lady on the right is Rosa Strauss; Renee Sara’s mother. Her father was Erich Gottschalk. Renee and her mother…

    Read more →

  • It is an old Dutch tradition that you send a little card to friends and neighbours to announce the birth of a baby. As did Izak Vredenburg and Ganna Vredenburg-Hirsch. They must have been delighted to announce the birth of their baby boy Samuel Juda Vredenburg. He was born in Amsterdam on 24 July 1942.…

    Read more →

  • During World War II, Jewish citizens in the Netherlands were isolated and subjected to discrimination and persecution by the National Socialists and their associates. Most of them did not survive the war. More than 102,000 Jews from the Netherlands were deported and murdered during the Holocaust. One of the most compelling pieces of evidence to…

    Read more →

  • The most beautiful announcement any parent can make, is the announcement of the birth of a child. Mary Louise van der Horst-Beerenborg and Abraham Arthur van der Horst. must have been so proud when they put a notification in the Jewish weeklu(Het Joodsche Weekblad) on September 4.1942 that their son Hartog was born on August…

    Read more →

  • It is stories like Gideon’s that make me want to give up doing blogs on the Holocaust, but paradoxically, it also encourages me to continue with it. The reason why I want to stop is apparent. Every time when I see a picture of a beautiful innocent infant, knowing that child was murdered by an…

    Read more →

  • A Stolpersteinplural Stolpersteine; literally means “stumbling stone”, metaphorically a “stumbling stone” is a sett-size, ten-centimetre (3.9 in) concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. Created by the artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, Stolpersteine is brass-topped cobblestones embedded in the pavement outside a…

    Read more →

  • The Jehovah Witnesses are often forgotten as Holocaust victims. An estimated 1,000 German Jehovah’s Witnesses died or were murdered in concentration camps and prisons during the Nazi era, as did 400 Witnesses from other countries, including about 90 Austrians and 130 Dutch Jehovah Witnesses. On 29 May 1940, the Vereeniging of Bible researchers (The name…

    Read more →

  • Sally was born on August 19, 1934 in Geffen, the Netherlands. I wish I could say more about Sally, but there is very little known about him. The fact that he was murdered on May 28,1943 in Sobibor is sad, What makes it even sadder, his father, mother and older sister were murdered the same…

    Read more →

  • Before I go into the story of the men, who were put on slave labour by the Nazi regime, I will have to explain what ‘Limburg’ is .Limburg is a province in the southeast of the Netherlands and the northeast of Belgium. I was born and grew up in the Dutch side of Limburg. The…

    Read more →

  • It is hard, if not impossible, to define what the most evil crime was during the Holocaust. It is not like there is a gradient scale you can apply. Without a doubt though the murder of children was among the most heinous of acts. One especially comes to mind. On 20 April 1945, on the…

    Read more →