History of Sorts

When you look at the picture above, you may just admire the men participating in physical exercise.

Life is only a sequence of events and accidents, often determined when and where you are born.

On 29 April 29, 1942, the Nazis announced a new law to further humiliate the Dutch Jews.

I had a dream last night.

This blog only contains 2 pictures.

Dina Pronicheva (born Dina Mironovna Wasserman) was a Jewish actress at the Kyiv Puppet Theatre and one of the very few people—fewer than 30—who survived the mass executions at the Babi Yar ravine.

This is a fictional letter, but it is a letter I envisage I may have written to Margot, if I had been a friend or schoolmate.

On June 23, 1944, a delegation comprising two representatives from the International Red Cross and one from the Danish Red Cross conducted an inspection of Theresienstadt, accompanied by SS First Lieutenant Karl Rahm, the camp commandant, and one of his d…

When I hear that wind blow All across the Wicklow mountains Is it you, I hear a calling?

I have written quite extensively about the failure of the Dutch to protect their Jewish neighbors and even resist the Nazi occupiers in general.

Where did you go when the room fell still, Beyond the quiet window sill?

There are some in Germany and other countries—who portray all of those involved in the 20 July plot as heroes.

The picture is of a page in a poetry album which belonged to a friend of Hedi Metzger.

In the 1920s, it was not uncommon in the Catholic south of the Netherlands for one or two children in a family to join a monastery or convent.

Hate is mankind’s worst disease and it seems to be incurable.

Hans Asperger, the Austrian pediatrician whose name became synonymous with a specific form of autism, is a figure both celebrated and condemned.

I have to be honest and admit that I am not entirely sure if the title is entirely correct, I am working on presumptions.

“Goodbye” is such a strange word.

I want to start by saying that I am not Jewish, although I may have some Jewish ancestry.

Not the SS men that were executed The execution of five Dutch SS men took place in late September 1944 in a sheep shed at Zecksteeg, near Ede.

I was struggling to give this blog a title.

The Nazis knew how to use the radio in a very effective way to relay their message of hate.

The English rock band, The Kinks once sang, “He is a dedicated follower of fashion” and I can assure you, I am not that.

WARNING: This article contains graphic descriptions of torture and murder.

Karl August Wilhelm Frenzel was an SS non-commissioned officer at the Sobibór extermination camp.

I could write down the history of Bethrina Kooperberg but it is more poignant to use her own words to illustrate the person she was.

I wanted to change the title of the blog to evoke an emotion, but then I thought: if this picture doesn’t hit you in the gut, perhaps nothing will.

The Nazi concentration camp system evolved into a machine of mass murder, and Auschwitz became its deadliest cog.

In 1798, the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge published The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, one of the best-known poems in the English language.

There are moments in football when the game changes without anyone in the stadium quite realizing it.

As many of you will know by now, I was born and raised in a small mining town in the southeast of the Netherlands.

There is a common misconception that the Nazi regime’s campaign of murder and persecution began only after the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939.

The world’s leading transport and logistics company, Kühne + Nagel, has been portrayed in historical research as one of the principal logistics companies involved in the Nazi regime’s systematic plundering of Jewish property during the Holocaust.

As Nazi forces prepared to retreat from Kyiv in the autumn of 1943, they attempted to conceal the evidence of the atrocities they had committed at Babi Yar.

Serial killers are not exclusively a Western phenomenon.

The Holocaust is widely recognized for the systematic genocide of six million Jews, along with the persecution and murder of other marginalized groups such as Roma (Gypsies), disabled individuals, Slavs, political dissidents, and homosexuals.

On may 26,1992,Israel’s President Chaim Herzog unveiled a rock from Jerusalem, at Auschwitz.

Operation Market Garden, launched on September 17,1944 during World War II, was an ambitious Allied military operation aimed at ending the war by securing key bridges in the Netherlands and enabling a rapid advance into Germany.

The history of military conflict is defined not only by sweeping strategic maneuvers, but by individual acts of supreme resolve under impossible circumstances.

I want to start by saying that I am not Jewish, though I may have some Jewish ancestry, which I am still exploring.

Jim Croce’s music career was brief, but his impact on American popular music was profound.

The photograph above was taken in January 2013, when Freda Wineman met former prime minister David Cameron at 10 Downing Street ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2013.

Ella Lingens’ life serves as a powerful testimony to the resilience of the human spirit and the capacity for moral courage in the face of unimaginable evil.

On July 26, 1897, in the Austrian village of Wattens, Jakob Gapp was born into a modest working-class family.

Look into my eyes and will see mischievousness m you see the eyes of a boy who is playful.

Members of Charlie and His Orchestra Germany Calling was an English-language propaganda radio programme broadcast by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

The Nazis would never have been able to commit the crimes they committed if they hadn’t received the cooperation from businesses that supplied to them.

I don’t want to make this a current political blog, and I won’t.,but I need to get this off my chest.

41 Months and 6 Days was all I was allowed to live.

By mid-September 1944, the Allies had made substantial progress in their liberation of Western Europe following the successful Normandy landings in June.