World War 2

  • The Suitcase

    A suitcase has a significant meaning , it indicates a change, often temporary and sometimes for an extended time, but no one ever expects the symbol of the end of a life. Many songs have the word suitcase in their lyrics and it is often in a sad context like in the Beatles son Lady…

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  • Deception and death.

    I was struggling with the title of this blog and even about the contents. I was going to do a picture blog with pictures of some of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, and even though I have done blogs containing horrific images I realized that although a picture tells a thousand words it doesn’t…

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  • In the southeast province of the Netherlands is Limburg. It used to be a rural area with mainly farming as employment opportunities. However, in the late 19th and early 20th century, something nicknamed “black gold” was discovered in the southern part of the province. This ‘black gold’ was coal. The Dutch government exploited the discovery…

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  • The one thing I find the most difficult in doing these blogs, is to remain as objective as possible and to try to keep emotions like anger out of it. It is nearly impossible, especially when you come across a story like the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101. As the name implies these men were…

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  • Last week a lady  asked me how was it possible that people committed so may awful atrocities during WWII, did their conscience not bother them. She also thought it must have taken years for people to be indoctrinated in evil thinking. I told her that it actually takes a very short time for the human…

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  • Cleaning the Gas Chambers

    +++++++++++++++++WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES+++++++++++++++++ The Nazis used forced labor to clean the Gas chambers. It was done by the so-called Sonderkommando, mostly made up of Jewish inmates who were selected because they were often young and still reasonably fit, fit enough to carry out physical labor. Being forced to clean the gas chambers was actually…

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  • Punishments in Auschwitz

    Killing the Jews and other so called “subhumans” in Auschwitz just wasn’t enough for the Nazi regime. Examples had to be made too, these examples were made by carrying out punishments. Most of these punishment were carried out in Block 11 this was also the place where the first attempts to kill people with Zyklon…

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  • Old Enough

    My name is Frouktje Oudgenoeg, I am 2 years old. My last name means Old Enough. That is exactly what I am. I am old enough to sing and dance. I am old enough to play outside in the garden, come rain or shine. I am old enough to get my face dirty with jam…

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  • One of the most effective weapons during WWII, and indeed nearly every war, was propaganda. Where the Nazis mostly used their propaganda to incite fear and hate, the allies and especially the Brits sometimes adopted a different approach. They’d often used humour and satire in order to ridicule the Nazis and their beloved leader Hitler.…

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  • Forbidden for Jews

    The Holocaust didn’t start with the mass extermination of Jews, it started in ways which could even be considered non violent, with gradually excluding Jews from society. In this blog there are some examples of signs saying ~Forbidden for Jews” or”No Jews allowed” from several locations in the Netherlands. On the signs above it says…

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