World War 2
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I watched the movie “My Best Friend Anne Frank” last night, I know about the amount of criticism when it was first released, I don’t really know why though, of course, there was some fictionalisation. However in essence the main story is true. But this is not going to be a movie review. The story…
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Limburg is the southern province in the Netherlands (there is also a province with that name in Belgium). It was one of the first places to be liberated in the Netherlands. By the end of September 1944, the entire province was liberated. Hanna Van de Voort was a woman who was born in Meerlo, the…
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A photograph like the one above is nearly as disturbing to me as an image of piles of dead bodies. It is not the image but the knowledge of what happened to most—if not all—of the people in the picture. The majority looking into the camera lens were young, healthy people, still in the prime…
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The number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust is estimated at six million. I have often argued that this number is higher. I have no data to back this up, but if you read the testimony of Hans Levy, you can’t help but wonder. Did they include the number of suicides in that number of…
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These are just some of my favourite World War II movies, in no particular order. Tora Tora ToraThe photo above is a still from the 1970 movie Tora Tora Tora. The 1970 war epic received widespread praise from both critics and film fans for its detailed depiction of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. Universally considered…
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Jerry Himmelfarb was a GI from Buffalo, New York. He wrote this letter to his Rabbi about his experiences. It is one of the most powerful testimonies I have ever read. Jerry, serving with the U.S. Army in Germany, wrote to Rev. Harry H. Kaufman, Cantor of Temple Beth El, telling of what the J.D.C.…
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According to the Joods Monument (Jewish Monument) website, 210 Dutch Jews were murdered on this day 80 years ago in Auschwitz. I could write a piece on each person, but I decided to stick with only one of the victims because it symbolises the pure evil of the Nazi regime. The photograph above is of…
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All of those men who liberated the camps throughout Europe never lost the memories of what they witnessed. Below are just some of their accounts. The Dachau concentration camp was liberated on April 29, 1945. Hilbert Margol (pictured above) and his twin brother, Howard. Two Jewish American soldiers were there and documented the tragedy. Hilbert…
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This is one of those amazing stories of resilience and perseverance. Odette Sansom, aka Odette Churchill and Odette Hallowes, code name Lise, was an agent for the United Kingdom’s clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during World War II. She was born on 28 April 1912 in Amiens, France. She met an Englishman, Roy…
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A young lady who survived the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, August 1945 RMS Queen Elizabeth returning with 15,000 Soldiers to New York at the end of World War II, 1945. The Ship was not overcrowded, the soldiers simply ran onto the deck as they arrived. A soldier sharing his lunch with a goat in Saipan,…
History of Sorts 