Sobibor

  • Happy Birthday Gretha Reintje Cohen. It should have been your 84th birthday today. An evil regime did not even allow you to reach your 6th birthday. You were murdered 10 days before your 6th birthday in Sobibor, on July 9th 1943. No matter how sad your death is, it is even sadder to see that…

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  • Marijke Godschalk was born in Assen, the Netherlands, on June 18 1941. Less then 2 years later she would be dead. Not because she was ill or had been involved in an accident. She died because of someone’s idea of her. Although she looked like any other Dutch or even German girl, I would even…

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  • Happy Birthday Willem Belinfante. You would have been 87 today. You were born on May 30 1934. in Amsterdam. Your parents were Esther Pais Belinfante, your mother, and Wolf Belinfante, your Father. Both born in Amsterdam. Your Father was a butcher, nowadays in this Covid 19 era he would have been considered an essential worker.…

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  • I came across date about the ‘Voormalig Rotterdams kindertehuis’ or Former Rotterdam home for Children. Initially I was a bit confused. I wanted to find out more so I looked in some Rotterdam archives, then I noticed that the actual home was in Arnhem. To make it even more confusing the address was Amsterdamscheweg 1,…

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  • Dr. Maria Montessori once said “Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.” The picture above is of a Montessori school in Amsterdam, it was taken in 1937. Leonard Samuel van Esso was one if that school’s pupils.…

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  • They say that babies born today will live for 100+ years. This of course can not be said with a 100% certainty, simply for the reason that we don’t know what the future brings. When Margherita Berkelij was born on February 3,1937 her parents had all reason to believe that Margherita would live a long,…

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  • I wish I could tell you that this picture was used to have a good laugh at my history teacher Benno Redisch. The photograph was handed to us by his wife to use in a presentation on his 10th anniversary as a teacher, but he was not my teacher. I wish I could tell you…

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  • I was going to do a piece on Nora Italiaander. She would have celebrated her 80th birthday today, but she was murdered on June 4,1943 in Sobibor. She was just aged 2. The picture above is of her death notification issued on the 11th of June 1947, 4 years after her death. But like Nora…

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  • One thing I only thought of today. On September 26 1940 there was a ban imposed on all Jewish newspapers in the Netherlands, with the exception of ” Het Joodsche Weekblad” the Jewish weekly. I always found that strange, why didn’t they ban all newspapers? Then today I cam across the story of Edmund Plesser…

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  • It is strange how things can come full circle. My first real blog was about an event during WWII in my hometown of which I was blissfully ignorant about, until I stumbled upon it by accident.. I came across the story of Frieda Goldschmidt-Jakob which actually ties into that story. On October 5,1942 the RAF…

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