World War 2
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Geleen is a small former mining town in the province of Limburg, in the southeast of the Netherlands. It is not a particularly famous place, although it is where the first professional football was played in the Netherlands, and it used to host one of the world’s biggest rock festivals, “PinkPop.” It is also where…
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The eagle flies high in the sky on a warm, sunny day. He wonders if he can fly to the sun. Because he is the ruler in the skies, no one can stop him. He can go wherever he wants to go—free to roam, not restricted by anyone or anything. During his flight, a strange…
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Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl is one of World War II’s most famous personal accounts, providing a powerful and intimate look into the life of a Jewish teenager in hiding. However, many readers are unaware that the original version of Anne’s diary contained passages about her developing sexuality, curiosity about the human…
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This blog is not intended to pass judgment. However, when writing about the Holocaust, it’s important not to shy away from its more controversial aspects. As I mentioned at the beginning, my goal is not to judge anyone—because the truth is, I cannot say with certainty how I would have acted in a similar situation.…
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On March 26 and 28, two transports of Slovakian Jews were registered as prisoners in the women’s camp, where they were subjected to forced labor. These were the first transports organized by Adolf Eichmann’s department IV B4 (the Jewish office) within the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA). On March 30, the first RSHA transport from…
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Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, a number of British aristocrats harbored sympathies for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. While some saw Hitler as a bulwark against communism, others were drawn to his authoritarian rule and nationalist ideology. This essay explores key figures within the British aristocracy who expressed support for Hitler, their motivations,…
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On March 24, 1941, the first train transport of Dutch artworks took place to the newly established art bunker in the Sint-Pietersberg. The Dutch stored approximately 800 art treasures in the Limburg art bunker, including works by Vermeer, Paulus Potter, and Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch.” The Dutch kept the artworks during the war in the…
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Heroes don’t always wear capes or dressed in uniforms. Sometimes, they are just ordinary people. I say ordinary, but they are often anything but ordinary, as with Fredy Hirsch. I first heard of Fredy a few years ago. As a birthday gift, I recently received the book The Librarian of Auschwitz. While the story centres…
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The term ‘work extension’ was a euphemistic term for the actual goal of the deportations: to work to death those who were healthy enough to work and to murder all others. At least 102,000 Jewish Dutch people were murdered or died from exhaustion and diseases. Auschwitz-BirkenauIt is not exactly known when the Nazis decided to…
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When you think of sports cars, one of the names you think of is Porsche. When you see a Porsche driving by, there is no second-guessing as to what car it is. The Dutch police used Porsches between 1962 and 1996. In the early 1960s the absence of speed limit indications on Dutch motorways saw…
History of Sorts 