the Netherlands
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On this day in 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. January 27 is now observed by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rather than trying to comprehend the millions who were murdered by the Nazis’ hateful ideology and regime, I want to focus on just one of them. Ralph Ronald Belinfante would have turned
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Westerbork may not have been an extermination camp, but that didn’t mean it was less evil. In a way, it may have been eviler because it created an illusion that life wasn’t that bad and gave the people a false hope that their endurance of camp life would be temporary. The 261 couples married at
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(Repost from March 12 2023) I recently interviewed Eddy Boas and his son Phil. Here are some of the subjects we touched on. Eddy Boas is a Holocaust survivor and author of the book I’m Not a Victim— I Am a Survivor. He was born in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 1940. Eddy was just
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Hanna Isidora van PraagHanna Isidora van Praag was born in Amsterdam on 7 June 1928 and murdered at Auschwitz on 9 November 1943. She reached the age of 15 years. For Hanna Isidora van Praag Born beneath Amsterdam skies so fair,A whisper of wind, a dark hair,The streets she knew, the canals bright,Her laughter lit
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I look at the picture of Jacob de Mesquita and I ask myself “How was this possible?” How was it possible that this baby was selected to be send to the gas chambers? Was there not one person among the Auschwitz staff members who thought that this was wrong? Was there no one who saw
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Anyone familiar with my blog knows that the murder of children during the Holocaust touches me deeply. I know one of the excuses for murdering children was to avoid that they would take revenge. It always puzzled me. The only reason why you’d want to kill someone to avoid revenge is because—you knew what you
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If there is one thing that Anne Frank’s diary teaches us ,it’s the importance of context. If you take her diary out of context it probably is quite a boring book. But if you leave it in the context and the time it was written in it becomes a powerful story of daily life and
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The lives of Jewish lives weren’t just the things they did, but also the things they owned. During the Holocaust, the majority of Dutch Jews weren’t only murdered—but their possessions were also stolen or destroyed. During World War II, the Nazis quickly moved to remove Jews from economic life in the Netherlands. Salomon David Nathans
History of Sorts 