the Netherlands
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Sophie is the girl on the left in the above picture. Today would have been her 90th birthday. She was born on 16 March 1932 in Amersfoort. She was transferred via Kamp Vught to Camp Westerbork on 23 May 1943. There were 1172 people on that transport. 1171 Jewish Dutch citizens and one other, possibly…
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Although Westerbork wasn’t an extermination camp but transit camp, it didn’t mean that no one was murdered there. It is often referred to as a ‘humane’ camp, but there was nothing humane about it. Only 751 people were murdered there, now some will say that some died and were not murdered, but I don’t subscribe…
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I am a member of several history websites receiving daily notifications about events that happened in history this day. Today, I received a notification of the anniversary of the 1945 death of Anne Frank at Bergen Belsen. I don’t know how they came to that conclusion, because the exact date of Anne and Margot Frank’s…
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I know that looking back on history with a retrospective view always comes with a 20/20 vision, nevertheless it is important to understand that it was widely know what was happening to the Jewish population in Europe throughout World War 2. Too often I have heard the argument that no one knew until after the…
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There are times when I am so eager to tell the story of one of the Holocaust victims. But then there are times. like today, where I am happy that I don’t know anything more then just the name of a child. Because I know it would have broken my heart in millions of pieces.…
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In 1943, 19 trains left Westerbork for Sobibor. Over 34.000 men, women, and children from The Netherlands made this journey. Not knowing where they would go, thinking they would be resettled. Most of these people were all murdered within a five months of arriving in Sobibor. Only 18 people out of all these Dutch transports…
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I was going to write about a young boy called Jonas van Oosten. He was murdered in Auschwitz on January 16,1943, aged 16. When he was two years of age he won a kite competition. The kite was much bigger then himself. He proudly posed with his kite for a photograph, in front of a…
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Nathan Roozelaar& Eva Roozelaar-Hart, who were they? To be honest I know very little about them. All I know that they were both born in Amsterdam. Nathan on March 21,1887 and Eva on July 15,1887. At some stage they must have met because they got married, when I don’t know? I do know that Nathan…
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These are students and teachers of the Jewish Lyceum in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, July 1942. More than 75% of the Dutch Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. There are about 60+ people in this photograph of which most or all were murdered. Most of them are young people. Girls who never again received a Valentine’s card. Boys…
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It is just a photo of a soldier with his family. One could easily dismiss this photograph as someone’s memory. A father who loved to smoke, a mother all dressed up and two well-dressed children—a boy and a girl. This photo could have easily been a picture of my grandfather with his family. Like the…
History of Sorts 