Theresienstadt concentration camp

  • Jews in the NSB

    Many European countries had an equivalent of the NSDAP(Nazi) party, the Dutch National Socialist party was the NSB. It may be hard to believe nowadays but not every National Socialist party started off as an anti-Semitic party, as was the case with the NSB. The NSB even had Jewish members, and the party leader ,Anton

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  • Born in Mauthausen

    A truly remarkable story of love and survival. In the late 1930s, Anka Bergman was a lively law student living in the Czechoslovakian capital, Prague. “I wanted company and boyfriends and to enjoy myself. I didn’t know that Hitler was coming, but I filled my time with only cinemas and theatres and concerts and parties,”

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  • Amid the unimaginable suffering endured by European Jewry under Nazi rule, music emerged as a profound means of resistance, remembrance, and resilience. In the ghettos and concentration camps, music gave expression to a humanity that could not be extinguished. It provided a spiritual escape, a voice for longing and defiance, and a source of collective

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  • A mistake many people would make is that a charity as large as the Red Cross would not fall victim to manipulation. Although they have the best intentions, any charity can only go by the information given to them. They may believe they are eyewitnesses to something, but to suit “certain” narratives—façades can cover the

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  • The Dance of a Mother

    Catharina Brücker was the eldest child of Romanian tailor Mozes Brücker (1892–1944) and the Dutch Rossetta Eijl (1896–1944). Her father made women’s clothing for major fashion houses in Rotterdam and owned several shops in the city. From age six until she was twenty, Catharina attended a dance school where she learned ballet, tap dance, and

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  • Art can be a powerful medium when expressing emotions or illustrating life as experienced. Artist Bedřich Fritta who was born Fritz Taussig expressed his experiences of the Holocaust via art. Fritta was captured and deported on 4 December 1941 to the Theresienstadt ghetto. His wife and son followed in 1942. Fritta and other illustrators in

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  • In early April 1945, as the Second World War approached its harrowing conclusion, the Nazi regime intensified its efforts to relocate concentration camp prisoners in a desperate attempt to obscure the full extent of their crimes. Among these efforts was the transportation of prisoners from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt in three trains—each a grim convoy of

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  • From Zero to 102

    I was reluctant to use the title, From Zero to 102 as the title, I didn’t want it to look like a review for a car. However, I couldn’t think of a more suitable title either. The 0 and the 102 are the ages of two victims of the Holocaust. This is how evil the

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  • Heroes don’t always wear capes or dressed in uniforms. Sometimes, they are just ordinary people. I say ordinary, but they are often anything but ordinary, as with Fredy Hirsch. I first heard of Fredy a few years ago. As a birthday gift, I recently received the book The Librarian of Auschwitz. While the story centres

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  • Introduction Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration camp and ghetto established in 1941, was unique among the camps in that it played a dual role: both as a site of suffering and as a tool of deception. One of the most sinister aspects of this deception was a propaganda film produced by the Nazis in 1944, often

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