World War 2
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I was in two minds on how to do this blog. Initially I was considering adding graphic pictures to accompany the text , but then I thought that the pictures may just be too horrific and it would turn people away from reading the text. Additionally there would be a chance that this blog would…
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Anyone who knows movies will know the name Charles Durning. He has starred in so many classic movies in a variety of genres, comedies, thrillers, musicals. Movies like “Dog day afternoon”, “The Choirboys” or “The best little whorehouse in Texas” the list is endless. Additionally he has also starred in a great number of TV…
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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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“Evil, I think, is the Absence of Empathy,” the title of this blog is a quote from Captain G. M. Gilbert after the Nuremberg trials. His appointment was as the prison psychologist of German prisoners. During the process of the Nuremberg trials, he became a confidant to several of the defendants, including Hermann Göring. Empathy…
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Many people believe that the industrialized scale killing of Jews, Homosexuals, Roma and others in Auschwitz started immediately when the camp had opened. However, for the first few weeks there were only 30 prisoners. On May 20,1940 the first 30 numbers were assigned to German prisoners who had been designated as professional criminals. They were…
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Anyone living outside the Netherlands or the Flemish speaking part of Belgium will probably have never heard of Wim Kan. It is actually not that easy to describe what he was, his title was cabaretier ,which is French for Cabaret performer. But I think the term ‘stand up comedian’ would be more relevant nowadays, even…
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This week the painting with the name “Haystacks” by Claude Monet was sold for $110 Million.But that value pales compared to the value of the scrappy bits of paper which contained the last words of those who were killed in the Holocaust. Those bits of paper are invaluable and no amount of money on earth,…
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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 May 5,2019 on the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands. One of the heroes who contributed to this liberation passed away aged 103. Like me he was Dutch and like me he had a love for Ireland and we both ended up making this emerald isle our home. But where I am…
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Perhaps the Dutch government were naive to believe that they would able to stay neutral like they did in WWI. Perhaps they thought they had nothing to fear from the Germans. However when Germany invaded Norway and Denmark in April 1940, it became clear that neutrality was no protection. Frantically the Dutch started to prepare…
History of Sorts 
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