Post WW2

  • Salo Muller is a Dutch physiotherapist, author, and Holocaust survivor known for his efforts in seeking justice and compensation for Holocaust victims. He was born on February 29, 1936, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Salo Muller’s early life was profoundly affected by the Holocaust. His parents, who were Jewish, were deported and murdered in Auschwitz when he

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  • My interview with Hans Knoop.

    I had the privilege today to interview Hans Knoop. Hans Knoop is a Dutch journalist who was best known for the role he played in the unmasking and arrest of the war criminal Pieter Menten.Knoop was born during the Second World War to Jewish parents in hiding. Knoop grew up in Amsterdam. In 1963, Knoop

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  • Anna (also known as) Ans van Dijk, was a collaborator of Jewish descent. The Germans arrested Van Dijk while he was in hiding on April 25, 1943. After she agreed to work for the SD, Van Dijk was released. It is estimated that approximately seven hundred people had been arrested—because of her actions. Van Dijk

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  • The Kielce Pogrom

    I know some Polish people will vehemently deny that this ever happened, but it did. It is a shame some people still insist on whitewashing history because it serves no one, and the truth always comes out. We can only stop these crimes from happening again when we learn from the past. It is not

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  • Burnden Park Disaster

    When you hear about football tragedies, you might think about something like Manchester United being beaten 7-0 by Liverpool, but not about a great number of casualties among supporters. Yet there have been dozens of football disasters with a great number of deaths. One I hadn’t heard of before is the Burnden Park disaster. Thirty-three

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  • The Rawagede Massacre

    I love the Netherlands. I was born and raised there and proud to call myself a Dutchman. Like all other countries in this world, it has pages in history that are not so glorious. I believe that the best way for any country to deal with the darker days of its history is not to

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  • Shortly after a war it would be quite unnerving to see a bomber flying over your city. However in West Berlin in 1948, this was a welcome sight. It probably was the equivalent of Santa delivering presents early. After World War 2, when Soviet Union leader Josef Stalin occupied West Berlin in 1948, Halvorsen participated

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  • ++++++++ Warning: Contains Graphic Images+++++++++ One could be forgiven to think that the photos in this blog are photos of a famine in a 3rd world country, as we have seen so often before. However, these photos are from one of the richest countries in the world, the Netherlands. Towards the end of World War

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  • Ama-Diving for pearls

    +++contains female nudity+++ The Japanese culture always fascinated me, usually in a scary way, but occasionally in a more pleasant way. Ama pearl divers represent one of Japan’s less-known and yet fascinating cultures. Ama (海女 in Japanese), literally translates to ‘woman of the sea’ and has been recorded as far back as 750 in the

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