Theresienstadt

  • Theresienstadt, also known as Terezín, was a town in northern Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic), it was used from 1941 to 1945 by the Nazis as a walled ghetto and concentration camp and was also used as a transit camp for western Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps. In 1943, the

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  • I could have picked any name out of millions of victims to write about today. So why did I select Margot Frank-Cohen? No particular reason other than that she would have been 100 years old today. A few decades ago, it would have been utter nonsense to talk about someone’s 100th birthday. Hardly anyone would

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  • Holocaust Testimonies

    There are millions of Holocaust stories I could write, but none will be as powerful as the testimonies of those who survived the darkest era. Following are some of those testimonies. Written by Zdeněk and Jiří Steiner, born 20. 5. 1929 in Prague, residents of Prague, former prisoners in the concentration camps of Theresienstadt and

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  • It is easy for me to be judgmental about Stella Goldschlag, but the fact is I don’t know what I would have done. However Stella did go beyond anything I would have done. Stella was boen in Berlin on July 10,1922 as the only child to a middle class Jewish family. Although the family did

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  • Music soothes the savage beast—that is what Eric Vogel must have thought when he sent a petition to the Commander of the Theresienstadt camp on 8 January 1943. It was to start a jazz band named the Ghetto Swingers. The band would include the following members: Dr Brammer (piano), Dr Kurt Bauer (percussion), Fr. Goldschmidt

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  • Around this time of year, many 17-year-old kids are getting ready for school exams. Although they may think it is unfair that they have to sit for hours and hours to do their exams(I know I thought it was unfair), they don’t actually realize how lucky they are. Education, although a basic human right, is

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  • Painting for Mengele.

    When you look at some bizarre connections in History, you cannot escape the fact that life sometimes has a ironic way of weaving a tapestry of coincidences. One of Hitler’s favourite movies was the Walt Disney classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” released in 1937. One of the main animators of the movie was

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  • On the 23rd of June , 1944,two delegates from the International Red Cross and one from the Danish Red Cross visited Theresienstadt  accompanied by the commandant SS First Lieutenant Karl Rahm and one of his deputies. During the visit the delegations were treated to an Opera by the Jewish composer Hans Krása. The children’s opera Brundibár was

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  • Robert Desnos was born in Paris on 4 July 1900,the son of a successful café owner,He was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement. When World War II broke out in 1939, he  was drafted as a sergeant. His wartime journalism appeared in magazines such as Europe, Commune, and

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  • A while ago I read a comment of someone saying that she could no longer read stories about the Holocaust, not because she didn’t want to but because she couldn’t because the stories were so sad, they were heartbreaking. I can fully appreciate that, because it is heartbreaking and unless you are a complete psychopath

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