Poland
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It is nearly impossible to quantify the number of people being killed during the Holocaust, I personally think the estimated number of 1.5 million children is too low. The one thing that can be quantified accurately is the value put on life. For a family of 5 it would be 37.50 guilders ,or the 2022…
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The immediate aftermath of the Second World War in Europe is frequently conceptualized as a period of liberation and profound relief. However, for the small minority of Jewish survivors who attempted to rebuild their lives in Poland, the cessation of hostilities did not guarantee safety. On August 11, 1945, the city of Kraków became the…
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War brings out the best and the worst out of people, that is just a fact. It is easy to acknowledge the good but there is often a struggle acknowledging the bad, even to the extent of trying to completely erase it from history. When it comes to the Holocaust there is no question about…
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The Wola massacre was the systematic slaughter of an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 Polish civilians and captured Home Army resistance fighters in Warsaw’s Wola district. Carried out by German troops and collaborationist forces from August 5 to 12, 1944, it occurred during the opening phase of the Warsaw Uprising. The uprising had begun on August…
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People are often surprised to learn I am not Jewish, and a few have even questioned my decision to write about the Holocaust as a non-Jew. While Jewish people were the primary targets and largest group of victims, Nazi persecution extended to millions of others as well. My connection to this history is personal: members…
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The Mechelen Transit Camp, located in a former army barracks known as Kazerne Dossin, was established by the Nazis in 1942. Its primary function was to serve as a holding and sorting facility for Jews and Roma before their deportation to extermination camps, primarily Auschwitz-Birkenau. Over the course of two years, Mechelen became a site…
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The Schutzstaffel (SS): The Engine of the Nazi State The Schutzstaffel, commonly referred to as the SS, played a pivotal role in the rise and implementation of the Nazi regime in Germany between 1925 and 1945. Originally formed as a paramilitary bodyguard unit for Adolf Hitler, the SS evolved into a multifaceted organization responsible for…
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Gesina Groen would have been 85 today. But she was murdered on her 1st birthday. She was born on July 26,1941 in Amsterdam and murdered in Auschwitz July 26,1942, together with her mother. There are no pictures of Gesina, just a picture of the house she lived in. The address is Nieuwe Keizersgracht 70, Amsterdam,…
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Most people will have heard about the Kindertansport-Children-Transport—a unique humanitarian rescue programme, which ran between November 1938 and September 1939. Approximately 10,000 children, the majority of whom were Jewish, were sent from their homes and families in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Great Britain. But there were two other Kindertransports. In Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch, better known…
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According to the Joods Monument (Jewish Monument) website, 210 Dutch Jews were murdered on this day 84 years ago in Auschwitz. I could write a piece on each person, but I decided to stick with only one of the victims because it symbolises the pure evil of the Nazi regime. The photograph above is of…
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