Westerbork
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At first, I was reluctant to use the word beauty in the title because we now live in an era where some people might find that offensive, and they will scream about it. I pity them because they lose out on so much. Etty Hillesum was a beauty in every sense of the word. It…
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Compared to other concentration camps ,Westerbork was ‘reasonably’ safe and life was less harsh there, But that is also what made it a more sinister place. From 1942 to 1945, Westerbork was a transit camp (Durchgangslager) located in the Netherlands. As a transit camp, Westerbork served as a temporary collection point for Jews in the…
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The biggest group of Holocaust victims were the Jews, an estimated six million were murdered between 1933 and 1945. The second biggest group were the Gipsies (Roma and Sinti). During World War II, it is estimated that more than 500,000 Sinti and Roma from all over Europe were murdered by the Nazis in what has…
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I’ve written about Eddy Hamel before, but I wanted to revisit his story as we’re in the middle of the FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign, with the finals set to take place in the United States — in East Rutherford, New Jersey in 2026. I hope his memory will be honored then. Eddy Hamel was…
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The one thing that always baffled me is the vehement hate the Nazis had for Jazz music. It was considered “Entartete Musik”—degenerate music, a label applied in the 1930s by the Nazis to Jazz and also other forms of music. I wrote a piece about Johnny & Jones before, this is not so much a…
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I was going to write an article about Ursula Gerson, who was murdered in Auschwitz on September 6, 1944, at the age of 8. But then I saw there were more Dutch Jewish children and Jewish refugees, who fled Germany and Austria with their parents, who were murdered that day. Duifje Gans was murdered in…
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On 3 September 1944, Anne Frank and the seven others living in hiding at the Secret Annex were put on the last transport to Auschwitz, along with over a thousand other Jewish prisoners. One of the cruellest jokes (for lack of a better word) the Nazis played was to pretend these journeys were return trips…
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Before I go into the main story, I just want to point out the most disturbing aspect of the picture above. At the very front is a lady carrying a baby. We know now what her fate would have been. It is a disturbing sight on an old photograph, so just imagine how disturbing this…
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Eighty-three years ago today, Edie (Elias) van Biene and Sara (Sonja) Rood were married in The Hague. Just a few days ago, I celebrated my own 30th wedding anniversary. It was a hot day, and I still vividly remember our first dance, the kiss, and our first night of passionate love as a married couple—each…
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When you look at the picture you might think that it is an innocent portrayal , of a street somewhere in the Netherlands. A typical Dutch scene. Someone cycling, two bikes parked against a sign. What could be hateful here? It is actually the sign itself that has a message of hate. It says “Jews…
History of Sorts 