the Netherlands

  • The photo was shot during wartime, 6 December 1944 (Sinterklaas, St-Nicholas in the Netherlands and Belgium, arrives in Rucphen, a town near Roosendaal (The Netherlands). Normally Sinterklaas arrives on a white horse but this he uses a Sherman-tank.) Sinterklaas or Sint-Nicolaas is a mythical figure with legendary, historical and folkloric origins based on Saint Nicholas(He is…

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  • Anton Mussert-Dutch Fascist

    Anton Adriaan Mussert ( 11 May 1894 – 7 May 1946) was one of the founders of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB) and its formal leader. As such, he was the most prominent Dutch fascist before and during World War II. During the war, he was able to keep this position, due to…

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  • Marinus van der Lubbe was born in Leiden, on 13th January, 1909. His father, Franciscus Cornelis van der Lubbe, was a heavy drinker who left the family when he was seven years old. His mother died five years later. He was then raised by an older half sister and was brought up in extreme poverty.…

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  • The Liberation of Breda

    Breda was liberated on 29 October 1944 by the 1st Polish Armoured Division. led by General Stanislav Maczek. A picture sometimes tells a thousand words, therefore below some pictures of that day 29 October 1944. Dutch Resistance fighters armed with captured German weapons celebrate the liberation of Breda by the Polish 1st Armored Division Honouring…

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  • Unusual WWII Facts:Part 14

    During World War II, the now-legendary VIII Bomber Command (often referred to as the Eighth Air Force) served as the principal American force assembled to attack Germany from the air. For several critical years in the early and mid-1940s, B-24 and B-17 bombers—the Flying Fortresses—from the “The Mighty 8th”, often in tandem with Royal Air…

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  • With all the horrible stories we have heard about Auschwitz it does happen that every once in a while we come across a more ‘lighthearted’ tale. By chance I came across the story of Roosje Glaser. Even before Nazi racial laws turned her into a wanted person in her native Netherlands, Roosje Glaser had limited…

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  •   Although the Netherlands was liberated on the 5th of May and VE day was on the 8th of May. It took more then a month after the official liberation of Europe for this Island at the north of the country to be liberated. It was on the 11th of June 1945 before Schiermonnikoog was…

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  • This day marks the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Mesch. The first village in the Netherlands to be liberated. It was more than three months after the Normandy landings when the men of the Thirtieth Infantry Division, Old Hickory, commanded by Captain Kent, crossed the Dutch-Belgian border at ten o’clock in the morning on…

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  • Johan (Joop) Westerweel (January 25, 1899, Zutphen – August 11, 1944, Vught) was a schoolteacher and a Christian anarchist who became a Dutch World War II resistance leader, the head of the Westerweel Group. Westerweel along with Joachim Simon and other Jewish and colleagues, helped save in the region of 200 to 300 Jewish lives by organizing…

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  • Without trying to blow my own trumpet, or in this case my countries trumpet, it is a well know fact that the Dutch are among the most inventive people in the world. As was the case with the crew of the HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen(and HMAS Abraham Crijnssen for a while) Sometimes in life, the guy…

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