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Holocaust in the Netherlands

The Netherlands is the country with the relatively highest number of Jewish victims in Western Europe. Of the 140,000 Jews, 107,000 were deported. Five thousand people returned from the camps, and approximately 20,000 survived in other ways, most of them in hiding. The persecution and murder of the Jews during the Second World War is referred to as the Holocaust or the Shoah. Here you will find…

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A First Kiss in the Annex

Anne Frank and Peter van Pels’s first kiss is one of the most touching and human moments in Anne’s diary, The Diary of a Young Girl. This event unfolds during one of the most challenging periods of Anne’s life, and it provides a poignant glimpse into the emotional complexity of adolescence in the face of immense hardship. Anne’s feelings for Peter, their budding friendship, and their eventual…

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Whispers in the Dunes

Beneath the whispering coastal pine,Where sand and sorrow softly twine,They stood with courage, hearts held high,Though freedom’s cost was to defy. No trumpet sounded, no fanfare played,Just silent steps through dune and glade,Where tyrants feared the truth they bore,And stilled their voices evermore. But wind remembers, trees still weep,The dunes their vigil gently keep—And in that quiet,…

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Edda van Heemstra aka Audrey Hepburn

There is one myth about Audrey Hepburn I have to dispel, she was not British-Belgian. In Belgium as in many other European countries you don’t automatically obtain citizenship just because you’re born there. You get the nationality of your parents, usually the nationality of the Father or sometimes the Mother. Audrey was born on May 4,1929 in Brussels to a British father and Dutch…

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The Testimony of Toshio Tono—Evil of the Japanese Imperial Army

When we hear about the evil during World War 2, it is mostly about the evil committed by the Nazis, and it is important to be reminded of that. However, some acts of the Imperial Japanese Army were just as evil, if not more evil than that of the Nazis. In 1945, as a first-year student at Kyushu Imperial University’s medical school in southern Japan, Tono became an unwilling witness to…

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Exotic Military Service

For a long time in Dutch historiography and discourse, the entirety of the Indonesian War of Independence was referred to by the euphemistic term politionele acties, as used by the government at the time. In the Netherlands, the prevailing impression was that there had only been two distinct, short-term police actions intended to restore Dutch authority over a rebellious overseas territory. This…

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My Interview with Michael Jacobs: Discussing Anti-Semitism

On Sunday, 19 February 2023, I had the privilege of interviewing Michael Jacobs. Michael is a confrontational speaker. We discussed the rise of Anti-Semitism, and intolerance in general. I don’t think anti-semitism ever went away, it just laid dormant for a few decades. We are now at the point where the same mistakes of 1920/30s are being re-made, but this time on a larger scale. There is an…

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Funding the Holocaust.

The picture above is of an Opel Bliz troops transporter, Opel is one of the companies that provided the Nazi regime with equipment but also with funding. But Opel was not the only company. Funding the Nazis already started early 1930s. Nineteen representatives of industry, finance, and agriculture signed a petition on November 19, 1932 where they requested for German President Paul von…

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The murder of 10 women in Camp Vught.

Concentration camp Vught, also known as concentration camp Herzogenbusch , was the only purpose built concentration camp in the Netherland. The other 2 major camps, Westerbork and Amersfoort, were already built before the war as a refugee center and army barracks. The construction of Camp Vught began in May 1942. The camp consisted of 36 living and 23 working barracks. It was surrounded by a…

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The electrocution of Topsy the Elephant

++++contains scenes of animal cruelty++++++++ When I cam across this story I didn’t know what to think of it except for, no matter at what angle you look at it ,this is cruelty. Topsy was born in the wild around 1875 in Southeast Asia and was captured soon after by elephant traders. Adam Forepaugh, owner of the Forepaugh Circus, had the elephant secretly smuggled into the United States with…

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Industrial Murder

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Holocaust is the ‘wholesale murder’ approach the Nazis took, the industrialization of death. The gassing already started in 1939 as part of the T4 program, the murder of the disabled, what really is sickening is the fact that the first of such killings was on request by parents of a severely disabled child. But the T4 murders were relatively small…

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Jaws @ 50

Steven Spielberg’s classic was released in cinemas on this day 50 years ago. Below just some random facts and anecdotes about the 50 year old Great White. Behind-the-Scenes Anecdotes Bruce the Shark was a NightmareThe mechanical shark, nicknamed “Bruce” after Spielberg’s lawyer, frequently malfunctioned. This led Spielberg to limit its screen time dramatically — ironically making the film much…

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Kazimierz Piechowski: The Man Who Escaped Auschwitz in a Stolen SS Car

On June 20, 1942, the SS guard at the Auschwitz exit was visibly shaken. In front of him idled the car of Rudolf Höss, commandant of the notorious concentration camp. Inside were four armed SS men. One of them—a second lieutenant, or Untersturmführer—was shouting and cursing furiously. “Wake up, you buggers!” he bellowed in German. “Open up or I’ll open you up!” Panicked, the guard hurried to…

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The Eyes of an Angel

A baby with the eyes of an angel. Edith Poppelsdorf was born in Amsterdam on 28 December 1941. She was murdered at Auschwitz on 16 August 1942. She reached the age of 7 months. Someone looked into those eyes and decided to send her to the gas chambers. That’s all I really can say about Edith. Although I have been doing this for several years—the look of these angel eyes always gets to me, like…

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What Would I Have Done?

When reflecting on the persecution of Jews and others during the Holocaust, it’s tempting to judge those who stood by and did nothing, condemning their inaction and confidently asserting, “I would have acted differently.” However, the truth is, none of us can truly know how we would respond unless faced with the same horrifying circumstances. I aim to be brutally honest—I don’t know what I would…

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Adolf Hitler and Hajj Amin al-Husayni: Two Leaders, One Hate

The meeting between Adolf Hitler and Hajj Amin al-Husayni on November 28, 1941, in Berlin represents a significant, though often overlooked, episode in the broader context of World War II and the Middle Eastern political landscape of the time. Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was a key Palestinian nationalist leader, and his visit to Berlin marked a convergence of political…

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Daughters of Silence

For Anne and Margot Frank In secret rooms where daylight thinned,Two sisters lived, two hearts were pinnedTo dreams too vast for walls to bind—They wrote, they watched, they stayed behind. Margot, firstborn, quiet flame,A scholar’s grace, a whispered name.With pages neat and eyes downcast,She traced her prayers, she held them fast.A life of duty, still and wide,She bore her grief with silent…