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ramonfliek.bsky.social
Through the Looking-Glass
@ramonfliek.bsky.social
36 followers 41 following 380 posts
"Let the WARNING ride forth once more: Tyranny is at our door”

find the full stories here: https://www.facebook.com/ramonfliek and keep track of the rapid decline of US Democracy here: https://www.trumpactiontracker.info
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February 3, 1938: The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was established in Nazi Germany, putting Hitler himself in complete control of the military with Wilhelm Keitel as nominal commander-in-chief. 12 senior generals were sent into retirement.

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The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was established in Nazi Germany by decree, putting Hitler himself in complete control of the military with Wilhelm Keitel as nominal commander-in-chief. The new command structure abolished the position of War Minister, and twelve senior generals were sent into retirement. Photo: Adolf Hitler inspecting Czech fortifications near the village of Neu-Erbersdorf in Sudetenland (Wilhelm Keitel on the far left).
February 4, 2026 at 3:04 AM
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February 2, 1943: The 47 transport departed #Westerbork for #Auschwitz-Birkenau with 890 people. The youngest was Marcel Alexander van Rijk (b. April 30, 1942); the oldest was Louis Bloemist-Kaas (b. 1849). Only one boy survived (he was assigned to the Kanada-Kommando).

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890 people were deported on this transport; 7 of them were prisoners (Häftlinge) and includes the name of one woman and the remark “mentally ill” (Geisteskrank). The train consisted of 19 cars and there were 85 children on board; all of them, apart from two adolescents who were murdered in Auschwitz on April 30, 1943, were murdered immediately after they reached Auschwitz-Birkenau. The youngest was Marcel Alexander van Rijk (b. April 30, 1942); the oldest was Louis Bloemist-Kaas (b. 1849). According to Joodse Raad documentation dated February 5, 1943, some 110 ill persons were also deported on this transport. A daily report written by a member of the Jewish Order Police (Ordnungsdienst, OD) in Westerbork indicates that the seventh transport comprising ill persons from Amsterdam reached the camp that day; the first transport of this kind had set out on January 19, 1943. These transports marked the implementation of Zöpf‘s aforementioned program concerning the deportation of Jewish medical patients from the Netherlands which reached its climax with the eviction of patients from the Jewish psychiatric hospital in Apeldoorn on January 22, 1943. The report also states that OD personnel were sent to tidy up the hospital following the evacuation of its patients and returned to Westerbork on February 2. The transport reached Auschwitz on February 4, 1943. After a selection, 48 men and 52 women were led into the camp. The men were tattooed with the serial numbers 99867-99914, and the women were branded with the numbers 34126–34177. The remaining deportees were murdered in the gas chambers immediately upon reaching the camp. Only one man, aged 22, survived; he was assigned to the Kanada-Kommando (the unit that sorted deportees’ belongings) along with 4 other deportees and was taken to Warsaw in October 1943. Photo: Auschwitz.
February 3, 2026 at 4:10 AM
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February 1, 1944: Two transports left #Westerbork on a single train, one to #BergenBelsen with 908 Jews, and the other to #Buchenwald carrying 27 Hungarian Jewish men, their wives and children were deported to #Ravensbrück.

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Hetty later recalled: "On 1 February 1944 our name was on the list. That night, with about one thousand one hundred people, we boarded the train. Surprisingly, it was a passenger train… At about ten o'clock, we left Westerbork and travelled all through the night. The whole of Germany was in darkness so we saw nothing. We stopped for one-and-a-half hours at a very large station later on in the night. Then we were off again. When daybreak came we could see a bit of the country. We had tried to get some sleep during the journey but it was impossible, as the uncertainty of our fate kept us awake." On arrival at the Bergen-Belsen it was pitch black, it was raining and it was freezing cold. The platform was filled with about 30 SS men with bloodhounds. "'Get out!' someone screamed. Bewildered, we left the train. 'Leave your luggage except hand luggage, and line up' an SS officer shouted. A long queue formed. Mothers held onto their children. Some of the men were told to come forward – Dad was one of them. They were told to pack the luggage onto trucks. The long columns of people started to move. I could see a small bridge over the railway line, and although it was early in the morning, a few locals, mostly men, were watching us as we started to walk." After the Jews deported to Bergen-Belsen had left the train, the wagon with the Hungarian Jews was uncoupled from the rest and continued via an unknown route to Buchenwald. Photo: Taken just after the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen: women preparing some meager food with corpses piled behind them.
February 2, 2026 at 3:05 AM
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January 31, 1937: Adolf Hitler issued a decree forbidding German nationals from accepting a Nobel Prize. The ban came after the Nobel Foundation had awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Carl von Ossietzky (a German journalist and pacifist).

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Ossietzky was the recipient of the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in exposing the clandestine German rearmament. As editor-in-chief of the magazine Die Weltbühne, Ossietzky published a series of exposés in the late 1920s detailing Germany's violation of the Treaty of Versailles by rebuilding an air force (the predecessor of the Luftwaffe) and training pilots in the Soviet Union. He was convicted of treason and espionage in 1931 and sentenced to eighteen months in prison Ossietzky continued to be a vocal critic of German militarism after the Nazis' rise to power. Following the 1933 Reichstag fire, Ossietzky was again arrested and sent to the Esterwegen concentration camp near Oldenburg. His brutal torture after his arrest was documented by the International Red Cross. He was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize in 1936, but was forbidden from travelling to Norway to accept it. After enduring five years of mistreatment in Nazi concentration camps, Ossietzky died of tuberculosis in a Berlin hospital in 1938. When Ossietzky's was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize it was not allowed to be mentioned in the German press. Photo: Ossietzky in Esterwegen concentration camp.
February 1, 2026 at 1:39 AM
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January 30, 1933: Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. On the 12th anniversary of the Nazis coming to power (January 30, 1945), Hitler gave a speech appealing the German people to keep up resistance. This was the last public speech Hitler ever made.

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Photo: Hitler makes his first radio broadcast as German Chancellor in front of a radio microphone, Wed 01 Feb 1933.
January 31, 2026 at 1:53 AM
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January 29, 1943: The train that departed from Camp #Westerbork to #Auschwitz-Birkenau on Friday January 29, was the 46th transport. It consisted of 20 railcars. This transport carried 659 people; only two men returned alive.

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Photo: Camp Westerbork.
January 29, 2026 at 9:17 PM
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January 28, 1945: After a long march in the cold, Rob Cohen and his group of Auschwitz prisoners are packed into an open freight train. His comrades from the Kanada Lager are in the same railcar with him. It is bitterly cold. The train departs for an unknown destination.

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Rob Cohen is driven out of Auschwitz together with a thousand others. It is bitterly cold, around 20 degrees below zero. Cohen knows that the Russians are close. “That was hopeful, but we didn’t know what that would mean for us.” Thanks to his work in the Kanada Lager, Cohen is still in relatively good condition. There he had to search and sort the luggage from arriving trains, while the owners themselves were often gassed immediately. He was able to secretly smuggle extra underwear, good shoes, and even three sausages, found in the baggage of newly arrived prisoners. With his slightly warmer clothing, Cohen is an exception. By far most people are wearing worn-out prison clothing, wooden clogs, and have nothing to eat. For days on end the group walks in the icy cold. The Nazis are merciless. “Anyone who can’t go on is shot without hesitation. They just leave them lying by the side of the road.” The Germans drive the columns of emaciated men and women onward. The pace must be kept up in order to stay ahead of the Red Army. Nazis with whips and dogs force the people to keep moving. Thousands die of exhaustion. The groups pass through villages. The residents are ordered to stay inside their homes and are forbidden to give anything to the prisoners. Photo: A death march through Poland.
January 29, 2026 at 2:58 AM
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January 27, 1945: Auschwitz concentration camp, with its last 7,500 inmates still present, was liberated by Soviet forces.
At least 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, and at least 1.1 million died.

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At least 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, and at least 1.1 million died. Overall 400,207 prisoners were registered in the camp: 268,657 male and 131,560 female. The Germans tried to conceal how many they had murdered. In July 1942, according to Rudolf Höss's post-war memoir, Höss (German SS officer and the commandant of the Auschwitz) received an order from Heinrich Himmler, via Adolf Eichmann's office and SS commander Paul Blobel, that "ll mass graves were to be opened and the corpses burned. In addition, the ashes were to be disposed of in such a way that it would be impossible at some future time to calculate the number of corpses burned." Photo: Children liberated at Auschwitz concentration camp, 1945.
January 28, 2026 at 1:11 AM
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January 26, 1942: That morning a transport 11 left the #Łódź Ghetto with destination #Chełmno Extermination Camp. There were 761 Jews on the train while the temperature had dropped to 15 degrees below freezing (celsius). All deportees were killed on arrival in gas vans.

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The transport consisted of approximately 13 passenger carriages, with about 55 people in each carriage and arrived at the Koło railway station, via Kutno, at around 1 p.m. The deportees were forced to leave the train and add their luggage to the pile after which they were forced to march approximately two kilometers to the synagogue in Koło. The Jews were violently abused by the German guards as they walked through the town and those who fell down, or were unable to walk, were beaten to death and thrown on a cart. Initially, some of the Jews still believed they had been sent to the countryside for labor purposes. They left messages written on the synagogue walls, such as, "To our Jewish brothers and sisters — be hopeful, everything will be fine, you will sleep here one night and then you will go to the countryside.” The deportees would spend the night at the synagogue and, on the following morning, trucks would take the Jews to the Chełmno death camp. In the camp, 10 people were usually taken aside, to write supposedly reassuring letters to their relatives. They were later shot. All the other deportees were killed on arrival in gas vans and were buried in the Rzuchów forest. Photo: Deportation of Jews from the Łódź ghetto on cattle cars.
January 27, 2026 at 3:07 AM
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January 25, 1943: 53 prisoners were taken to the Wall of Death, between Block 10 and Block 11 in Auschwitz I , and shot dead.

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Colonel Edward Gött-Getyński, Colonel Jan Karcz, Colonel Karol Kumuniecki, Cavalry Captain Włodzimierz Koliński, Wiktor Koliński, Mieczysław Grabowiecki, Karol Korotyński, Henryk Suligórski, Marian Studencki, Tadeusz Radwański, Heliodor Zaleśny, Zbigniew Ruszczyński, Henryk Stirer, Kazimierz Superson, Bolesław Borczyk and Eugeniusz Obojski were taken to the Wall of Death, between Block 10 and Block 11, and shot dead. These men were Polish NCOs, officers and members of the intelligentsia and and underground resistance fighters during the Nazi German occupation of Poland. The camp compound leader, Hans Aumeier, Rapportführer Gerhard Palitzsch, the Head of the Political Department Maximilian Grabner, and functionaries of the Political Department who were responsible for the individual cases, carried out a selection in the bunkers of Block 11 in Auschwitz I (the Stammlager or main camp of the Auschwitz concentration camp network). 53 prisoners who were put in the bunkers between October 29, 1942 and January 23, 1943 were selected to be shot. The prisoners to be shot were under suspicion of conducting illegal activities directed against the SS in the camp or of having prepared escapes. Many were also considered eyewitnesses to the SS crimes. Photo: Block 11: Auschwitz Main Camp
January 25, 2026 at 10:09 PM
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January 24, 1948: 19 former SS men & 2 female auxiliaries from the German Nazi Auschwitz camp garrison, sentenced to death in the so-called first #Auschwitz trial, were executed by hanging in the courtyard of the Krakow Montelupich prison.

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All executions were carried out on January 24, 1948, at the Kraków Montelupich Prison, "one of the most terrible Nazi prisons in occupied Poland" used by Gestapo throughout World War II. Liebehenschel, Mandel and Kremer were condemned to death, as were Hans Aumeier, August Bogusch, Therese Brandl, Arthur Breitwieser, Fritz Buntrock, Wilhelm Gehring, Paul Götze, Maximilian Grabner, Heinrich Josten, Hermann Kirschner, Josef Kollmer, Franz Kraus, Herbert Ludwig, Karl Möckel, Kurt Mueller, Eric Muhsfeldt, Ludwig Plagge, Hans Schumacher and Paul Szczurek (Arthur Breitwieser and Johann Kremer had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment). Maria Mandl and Therese Brandl were the first to be executed. Luise Danz, Hans Koch, Anton Lechner, Adolf Medefind, Detlef Nebbe, and Karl Seufert received life sentences. Alexander Bülow, Hans Hoffmann, Hildegard Lächert, Eduard Lorenz, Alice Orlowski, Franz Romeikat, and Johannes Weber were sentenced to 15 years. Richard Schroeder received 10 years, Erich Dinges five years, and Karl Jeschke three years. Hans Münch was acquitted. Münch was nicknamed "The Good Man of Auschwitz" for his refusal to assist in the mass murders there. He developed many elaborate ruses to keep inmates alive. He was the only person acquitted of war crimes at the 1947 Auschwitz trial in Kraków, where many inmates testified in his favor. Photo: Maria Mandl, "The Beast" Of Auschwitz, during her trial in Poland
January 24, 2026 at 10:01 PM
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January 23, 1943: The transport from #Westerbork to #Auschwitz-Birkenau consisted of 516 people. Only one person survived. Louis Bannet owed his survival to the fact that he was a gifted musician. In Birkenau he was selected to play in a camp orchestra.

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While waiting to be given his identification number, Levie (Louis) Bannet was recognized by the Dutch interpreter for the Germans; The Dutch pimp Hein Frank and recommended that he join the Men‘s Orchestra of Birkenau. After an audition led by kapo Franz Kopka, in which two prisoners were led away after being unable to play the trombone and in which Frank had told him to "play for his life," Bannet succeeded in the audition by playing "St Louis Blues". Bannet played in the camp orchestra for over two years. They largely played German marches such as "Alte Kameraden" as work at the camp began, and sometimes he was made to play as the trains came into the camp "so people would think it wasn't such a bad place." He was once woken alongside a clarinet player and drummer by an SS officer and taken to a house in the countryside to play music for a party held by Josef Mengele, while hidden behind plants so they were not seen. Bannet's mother, brother, two sisters and their children were part of the 41 members of Bannet's family who were killed in the camps. He was able to save the life of his brother, who was unable to work at the camp, by hiding him and smuggling medicine to him. In November 1944, Bannet was marched from Auschwitz to #Ohrdruf concentration camp, taking his trumpet with him on his waist. He was forced to do manual labor as there was no orchestra at Ohrdruf, until a friend introduced him to an SS officer who gave him another audition on a violin with two strings. He played "My Home Is a Star", and again succeeded when the officer asked him to play it for his wife over the telephone. He was then sent to concentration camps #Sachsenhausen and then #Buchenwald before being moved onto a train with 103 people for over a month, subject to the threat of typhus yet being one of only 17 people to survive this train. On 9 May 1945, he was liberated from Auschwitz. Photo: Auschwitz-I camp orchestra, 1941 (SS photograph).
January 24, 2026 at 2:12 AM
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January 22, 1945: Herman Israël van Gelder is executed by firing squad together with nineteen others on the Woudweg in Dokkum as a reprisal for the fatal attack on the SD officer Jakob Maus and his Belgian driver Raoul de Keuckelaere.

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Mid-January 1945, a Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) vehicle comes to a halt in Dokkum in front of a raised bridge. Just beforehand, the bridge has been raised by members of the Frisian resistance, who are about to free pharmacist and resistance member Piet Gunster from the car. As the German vehicle carrying Gunster approaches, the members of the Frisian resistance open the bridge over the Valomsvaart (a canal). There is no question that the nonviolent rescue that had been agreed upon did not go as planned: one of the resistance members opens fire and two of the SD officers inside do not survive the attack. Gunster, struck by a bullet in the leg, is wounded and is taken away through the snow on the back of a bicycle. Gunster’s liberation is of great importance to the resistance. A brutal interrogation would have had fatal consequences, as his pharmacy serves as a meeting place for resistance members. The pharmacist knows everything about the resistance in Northeast Friesland. SD chief Wilhelm Artur Albrecht, who is also in the car but manages to escape, is furious. He proposes to “shoot all of Dokkum flat.” He does not receive permission for that. Dr. Haase, an SS-Sturmbannführer and head of the Dienststelle Groningen, does grant him permission to kill twenty Dutch people as a reprisal. Herman Israël van Gelder helped Jewish people who were in hiding. As part of a mixed marriage, he was called up for forced labor in the Jewish labor camp at Havelte. He escaped from the camp and went into hiding. On December 27, 1944, he was arrested in Groningen and imprisoned in the Huis van Bewaring (remand prison) in Groningen. His wife and 3 children survived the war. Only one of his 9 siblings survived all other were murdered in #Auschwitz, #Buchenwald and #Sobibor Photo: surreptitiously taken photo of the executed men.
January 23, 2026 at 2:00 AM
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January 21, 1944: After 5 months of forced labor in Auschwitz-Monowitz at the Buna Works, 16 year old Abraham van Coevorden got sick and was send back to Auschwitz-Birkenau and is murdered in the gas chambers.

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Despite possessing a so-called “Ausnahme Bescheinigung 170,” which meant that Abraham ’s father Herman van Coevorden, his wife Martha Wijnberg, and their three children were exempt from deportation because they belonged to “the last group of 170 persons still permitted to function as the Jewish Council,” he was arrested in July of 1943. After being arrested Herman was imprisoned in the Oranjehotel (a notorious prison) on July 24 and on July 31 transferred to Camp Westerbork. There he was housed in punishment barrack 67 together with his wife and children, who had already been send to Westerbork on July 26. Herman made multiple attempts to escape deportation with his family by applying for a genealogical investigation and requesting ancestry documents. On August 23, 1943, he received a letter from the person investigating the ancestry stating that “Further steps serve no purpose!” The following day, on August 24, 1943, the entire Van Coevorden family was deported to Auschwitz, on a transport of more than 1,000 people. Their son Abraham was selected for forced labor upon arrival. Herman, Martha, Hartog Benjamin, and Henriette Rosette were murdered immediately after arrival in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The 16 year old Abraham was put to work in Auschwitz III–Monowitz at the Buna Works. His registration card notes that he was admitted three times to the Krankenbau (sickbay) of Auschwitz III. After his third admission, he was sent back to Auschwitz II-Birkenau where he was murdered in the gas chambers on January 21, 1944. Photo: Abraham van Coevorden. Detail from a class photograph from the Dongeschool in Amsterdam, 1938–1939.
January 22, 2026 at 2:37 AM
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January 20, 1942: Heydrich chaired a meeting of 15 civil servants and SS officers in a villa at Großer Wannsee. The topic of the conference was technical, logistic implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question”.

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The Wannsee Conference lasted only about ninety minutes. Heydrich did not call the meeting to make fundamental new decisions on the Jewish question; mass-murder of Jews in the conquered territories in the Soviet Union and Poland were ongoing. #Auschwitz was already in operation and a new extermination camp was under construction at #Belzec, and other extermination camps were in the planning stages. Legalized discrimination against Jews in Germany began immediately after the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933. The ideology of Nazism brought together elements of antisemitism, racial hygiene, and eugenics and combined them with pan-Germanism and territorial expansionism with the goal of obtaining more Lebensraum (living space) for the Germanic people. Hitler had previously decided that all European Jews should be killed. By early 1942, the Nazis had already murdered more than one million Jews. In the meeting on 20 January 1942, the Nazis organized the murder of the remaining Jews. They were deported to concentration and extermination camps. The murder of millions of people was treated like a bureaucratic task. The focus was on numbers, logistics, and administrative responsibilities. In less than two hours, the Nazi officials planned how to carry out the murder of 11 million Jews. Photo: The villa at Großer Wannsee
January 21, 2026 at 1:51 AM
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January 19, 1945: Red Army soldiers liberated some 400 prisoners left behind in the #Auschwitz sub-camps, Arbeitslager #Neu-Dachs. Two days earlier the SS had started the evacuation of Auschwitz, 56.000 men and women were taken on forced Death Marches in freezing temps.

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Two days earlier the SS had started the evacuation of Auschwitz. Around 56,000 men and women, prisoners under the escort of armed SS men, marched out from various parts of the camp complex in the direction of Wodzisław Śląski and Gliwice, from where the prisoners were transported to other concentration camps. The prisoners were forced to march dozens of kilometres in severe winter condition. Several thousand people were killed during these so-called Death Marches. Some were deported by rail while others were forced to march in freezing temperatures and some of the prisoners were forced to march all the way to the destination camp. Over 3,000 prisoners from the Neu-Dachs sub-camp were forced to cover the distance of 250 km (155 miles) on foot to Gross-Rosen concentration camp. During the evacuation any prisoners who were too exhausted to continue the march or lagged behind were shot dead by the SS escort. An estimated 3,000 people were killed in this way in Upper Silesia and the Opole region alone, whereas a total of between 9,000 and 15,000 Auschwitz prisoners were killed during the whole evacuation. A survivor later recalled: “After 5–10 kilometres, they began shooting into the ranks of marching prisoners. We learned that the SS men were deliberately firing at people, wanting to reduce the size of the transport this way. Ahead of us, there was a transport of women. The road on both sides was strewn with women who had been shot. Behind us, there was another column of women.” Photo: Wooden barracks at Neu-Dachs sub-camp, located at the Dachsgrube coal mine on the outskirts of Jaworzno.
January 19, 2026 at 9:44 PM
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January 18, 1943: No one survived that was on the train that left Camp #Westerbork with #Auschwitz as its final destination. This transport carried 750 people, 315 men and boys and 433 women and girls. Among them were 102 children, Jeannette Roet was only 3 months old.

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No one survived that was on the train that left Camp #Westerbork on Monday 18 January. With Auschwitz as its final destination, this 44th transport carried 750 people, 315 men and boys and 433 women and girls. Among them were 102 children. The oldest person on this train was Helene Adler Rosenthal (85). The youngest was the baby Jeannette Roet. She was not yet four months old when she was deported together with her mother, Lena Roet (19), grand mother, aunt and two uncles. On January 21, 1943, after selection, 10 men and 25 women were led into the camp. The men were tattooed with the numbers 90812–90821 and the women received the numbers 29600–29624. The remaining 713 deportees were murdered in the gas chambers immediately upon reaching the camp, including the whole family Roet. All 102 children in this transport were murdered. While Lena, her baby, her mother and siblings were on the train to Auschwitz their father was beaten to death in Erika concentration camp. The 52 year old Salomon Roet had been a merchant in The Hague where He and his wife and six children lived. The eldest was 21 and the youngest 6 years old. During the war they lived in an area that was the center of the “black market.” Salomon Roet was involved in this trade and was arrested for it. He did not serve his sentence in a regular prison but was sent to Justizlager Erika. On January 19, 1943, Salomon Roet was severely mistreated. He was beaten by a Kapo. The Kapo ultimately forced Salomon to crawl between burning bales of straw that were placed close together. Salomon suffered burns over his entire body and died that day from his wounds. On the day Salomon Roet died, his wife, four of his children and his grand daughter were on the train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were murdered in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. None of the Roet family members survived the war. Photo: Baby strollers left behind at Camp Westerbork after a transport left for Auschwitz.
January 19, 2026 at 1:01 AM
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January 17, 1945: Wilhelm Gustav Ritter (39) dies in Dachau concentration camp after having traveled well over 10.000 miles, on the MS St. Louis, in search of freedom.

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On May 13, 1939, Wilhelm boarded the MS St. Louis in the Port of Hamburg. The German ocean liner departed Hamburg for Cuba with 936 passengers, mostly Jewish refugees. The voyage would later be known as The "Voyage of the Damned”. On reaching Cuba, she anchored at 04:00 on May 27 at the far end of the Havana Harbor, but was denied entry to the usual docking areas. The Cuban government, headed by President Federico Laredo Brú, refused to accept the foreign refugees, although they held legal tourist visas to Cuba. As Captain Schröder negotiated and schemed to find passengers a haven, conditions on the ship declined. At one point he made plans to wreck the ship on the British coast to force the government to take in the passengers as refugees. He refused to return the ship to Germany until all the passengers had been given entry to some other country. US officials worked with Britain and European nations to find refuge for the Jews in Europe. The ship returned to Europe, docking at the Port of Antwerp (Belgium) on June 17, 1939, with the 908 passengers. The British agreed to take 288 of the passengers, 224 were accepted by France, 214 by Belgium, and 181 by the Netherlands. Those who were allowed to travel on to Britten were the lucky ones as they were not impacted by German occupation and deportation. Wilhelm was allowed entry in the Netherlands and quarantined in hospital previously used for sailors with infectious diseases. Until the Germans invaded the Netherlands the hospital filled up with Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria, including many orphans. After the Germans invaded the Netherlands Willem ended up in Camp #Westerbork. In 1943 Wilhelm is transported from Westerbork to #Theresienstadt and in September of 1944 he is transported on to Auschwitz and two weeks later he again is put on a transport, this time to #Dachau. Wilhelm is able to survive in Dachau for 3 months. Photo: Refugees aboard the St. Louis 1939.
January 17, 2026 at 5:49 PM
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January 16, 2019: Felice Polak (Holocaust survivor) passed away at her home in Wageningen. 22 Jewish children in the courtyard of the Deventer synagogue, celebrating the Jewish New Year in September 1942. All would be murdered except for the girl in the white dress.

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top row, from left: Jacob Bos (Deventer, 19 August 1931 - Sobibor, 9 July 1943), Jopie van Spiegel (Deventer, 17 July 1930 - Auschwitz, 16 September 1943), Bram Roos (Hardenberg, 8 July 1928 - Auschwitz, 11 October 1942), Jacob Salomons (Deventer, 13 February 1927 - Central Europe, 31 March 1944), Heiman Roos (Hardenberg, 12 May 1931 - Auschwitz, 11 October 1942), Theo Berg (Deventer, 20 May 1932 - Auschwitz, 22 October 1942), Jetje de Leeuw (Deventer, 30 December 1930 - Auschwitz, 11 February 1944), Hartog Spanjar (Deventer, 23 October 1929 - Auschwitz, 12 October 1942). second row, from left: Frits Zwartz (Deventer, 28 June 1932 - Sobibor, 28 May 1943), Gertrud Bloch (Emden, 7 October 1930 - Auschwitz, 19 February 1943), unknown boy, Felice Polak (Deventer, 13 November 1933 - Wageningen 16 January 2019 ), Rudolf Noach (Deventer, 22 October 1930 - Sobibor, 14 May 1943), Greta Vrenkel (Vlagtwedde, 25 February 1932 - Sobibor, 7 May 1943), Reina Bos (Deventer, 16 December 1932 - Sobibor, 9 july 1943). front row, from left: Jacob (Sjakie) Bos (Deventer, 27 July 1934 - Auschwitz, 27 November 1942), Mina Frommet (Eva) Bos (Deventer, 21 December 1935 - Auschwitz, 27 November 1942), Louis Meijer (Jos) Bos (Deventer, 19 May 1937 - Auschwitz, 27 November 1942), Salomon Behr (Deventer, 5 June 1939 - Auschwitz, 27 August 1943), Abraham (Bram) Behr (Deventer, 9 March 1938 - Auschwitz, 27 August 1943), Izaak Muller (Deventer, 29 May 1935 - Sobibor, 2 July 1943), Izaäc Gosschalk (Deventer, 25 February 1931 - Auschwitz, 22 October 1942).
January 16, 2026 at 6:54 PM
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January 15, 1945: In the early hours of Sunday, 14 January, the Nazi forces launched a raid in the small town of "Nederhorst den Berg" to obtain forced laborers for the Germany war machine. Frits van Zanten (22) was shot when he tried to flee. He died the next morning.

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In the early hours of Sunday, 14 January, the German occupying forces launched a raid in the small town of "Nederhorst den Berg" and the surrounding area to obtain forced laborers for the Germany war machine. Frits van Zanten, who had gone in hiding when he received notice from the Nazi's that he needed to report for transport to Germany, was spotted near his hiding address and when he tried to flee was shot in the back by the German Sicherheitspolizei (security police) . He died at eleven o’clock the next morning, He was 22 years old. Photo: Clandestine photo taken of German soldier escorting Dutch men away for forced labor in Germany.
January 16, 2026 at 12:05 AM
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January 14, 1930: Nazi paramilitary officer Horst Wessel was shot and fatally wounded by a German Communist in a raid on his apartment. He would die of his injuries on February 23 and become a martyr and propaganda tool of the Nazi movement.

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Goebbels had been looking for someone to turn into a martyr for the Nazi cause. Goebbels saw in Wessel's shooting the possibility of a propaganda bonanza. He eulogized Wessel in his newspaper, Der Angriff, in overtly Christian tones: "A Christian Socialist! A man who calls out through his deeds: 'Come to me, I shall redeem you!' ... A divine element works in him. making him the man he is and causing him to act in this way and no other. One man must set an example and offer himself up as a sacrifice! Well, then, I am ready!" Wessel was buried in Berlin on 1 March 1930. Contrary to Nazi claims, there were no attacks on the funeral procession, which Goebbels claimed was watched by 30,000 people. The funeral was filmed and turned into a major propaganda event by the Nazi Party. Wessel was elevated by Goebbels' propaganda apparatus to the status of a leading martyr of the Nazi movement. Many of Goebbels's most effective propaganda speeches were made at gravesides, but Wessel received unusual attention among the many unremembered storm troopers. Although Goebbels could not persuade Hitler to attend Wessel's funeral, Hitler did speak at Wessel's grave three years after his death, on 22 January 1933, for the dedication of a memorial. The memorial, which was cubic in design, had a metal leaning flag and wreath on the top. It featured Horst’s name on the front, and on the back, the names of his father Ludwig and his brother Werner. Hitler called Wessel a "blood witness" whose song had become "a battle hymn for millions". He said that Wessel's sacrifice of his life was "a monument more lasting than stone and bronze". For years, Goebbels continued to use Wessel's "martyrdom" as propaganda. Photo: Adolf Hitler in Berlin at the ceremony for Horst Wessel in the Nikolaifriedhof January 22, 1933.
January 14, 2026 at 8:26 PM
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January 13, 1922: Adolf Hitler was sentenced to three months in prison for disrupting a meeting at the Munich Löwenbräukeller where Otto Ballerstedt (leader of the secessionist Bayernbund) was giving a lecture. Hitler assaulted Ballerstedt, who was seriously injured.

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On 14 September 1921, there was a highly publicized incident, when Hitler, Hermann Esser, Oskar Körner (later to die in the Beer Hall Putsch) and some other NSDAP supporters stormed a Ballerstedt meeting in the Munich Löwenbräukeller in order to prevent him giving a lecture. Hitler achieved this goal by drastic measures: He reached Ballerstedt, then assaulted and injured him severely. Ballerstedt was then forcibly dragged out of the Hall. As a result, Hitler was on trial on charges of a breach of the peace, public indecency and assault. He and Esser were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for 100 days and payment of 1,000 Reichsmark. The prison sentence was served from 24 June to 27 July 1922 in Munich Stadelheim prison, where Hitler remained only a month. From 1925, Ballerstedt moved more and more into the background politically. In the early 1930s, he moved to the writing of photographically illustrated landscape and cultural-heritage books. Ballerstedt was arrested on the evening of 30 June 1934 by armed SS men in his Munich apartment, a day before going on a planned trip to Austria. He was killed during the Night of the Long Knives in or near Dachau concentration camp and his body found on the morning of 1 July in the forest near Gündinger Neuhimmelreich. The autopsy revealed that he had died by a shot to the back of the head. Ballerstedt probably fell victim to Hitler's personal revenge. Photo: The Löwenbräukeller in Munich.
January 14, 2026 at 12:27 AM
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January 12, 1943: Jan Campert, Dutch journalist, poet, writer, and member of the resistance, died in #Neuengamme concentration camp.

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Jan Campert, a Dutch journalist, poet, writer, and member of the resistance. He is best known for the poem "Het lied der achttien dooden" ("The Song of the Eighteen Dead"), which he wrote in response to the execution of eighteen resistance members by the Nazi's on 13 March 1941. Campert helped approximately twenty Jews escape occupied The Netherlands. On 21 July 1942, he was arrested just across the border while attempting to smuggle the 21-year-old Jewish man, Frans van Raalte, into Belgium. After his arrest he was imprisoned in Camp Amersfoort and eventually transferred via #Buchenwald to the German concentration camp #Neuengamme in November 1942. According to the official statement in his medical file, he died there on 12 January 1943 at the age of forty, at 1:30 p.m., of pleurisy. Photo: Prisoners at forced labor in camp Neuengamme.
January 13, 2026 at 12:39 AM
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January 11, 1943: The transports from Camp #Westerbork to #Auschwitz-Birkenau were resumed and 750 people were deported. On arrival at #Auschwitz 546 people were immediately send to the gas chambers and of those who were chosen to live only 8 survived.

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Leendert Josua (Leen) Sanders was born in Rotterdam in 1908 as the fourth of ten children of Josua Jacob Sanders and Saartje Grootkerk. From the age of fourteen he competed in boxing matches. In 1926 he became Dutch amateur featherweight champion; in 1928 he turned professional, and in 1929 he became national lightweight champion. He celebrated several triumphs in Germany: in October 1928 he defeated Jupp Besselmann in Cologne. In February 1930 and 1931 he fought three times against Olympic champion Bep van Klaveren: Van Klaveren won the first bout on points after fifteen rounds, while the rematch and the third fight ended in draws. Sanders became a boxing promoter, the owner of a boxing school, and later Dutch middleweight champion. During the bombing of Rotterdam their home was destroyed, after which they moved to The Hague. Sanders joined the resistance, forged identity papers, and distributed anti-German pamphlets. To avoid deportation, the family went into hiding, but after four months they were betrayed and on January 11, 1943, deported via Camp Westerbork to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Both his sons, David (8 y/o) and Josua (10 y/o) were murdered in the gas chambers on arrival. Sellina Sanders-Park, Leendert's wife, was murdered in Auschwitz on April 30, 1943. Sanders was recognized by a boxing SS man, who arranged one of the best jobs in the camp for him as Stubendienst. On Sundays he had to box; on other days he worked in the kitchen, distributed food, assigned beds, and was responsible for the maintenance of the barrack. This enabled him to help other Dutch prisoners with extra food and clothing. During the evacuation of Auschwitz, Sanders was sent on a death march to Groß-Rosen and from there transported by cattle car to #Dachau. At the end of April 1945 he was liberated in Dachau by Americans troops. Photo: Leen Sanders
January 11, 2026 at 8:07 PM
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January 10, 1934: Marinus van der Lubbe (25), a Dutch council communist, was executed by guillotine in Nazi Germany after being convicted of setting fire to the Reichstag building.

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On Monday, 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, The Reichstag, home of the German parliament in Berlin, was set on fire. Van der Lubbe was arrested in the Reichstag building, soon after the building had begun burning. After his arrest and interrogation he confessed and claimed to have acted alone and have set the Reichstag building afire in an attempt to rally German workers against fascist rule. The Nazis attributed the fire to a group of Communist agitators and used it as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government. The Nazi's induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties and pursue a "ruthless confrontation" with the Communists. This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi rule in Germany. Marinus was tried along with the chief of the Communist Party of Germany and three members of the Bulgarian Communist Party, who were working in Germany for the Communist International. At his trial, Van der Lubbe appeared sleepy and apathetic, resulting in suspicions that he had been drugged. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the Reichstag fire and was guillotined in a Leipzig prison yard on 10 January 1934, three days before his 25th birthday. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Südfriedhof (South Cemetery) in Leipzig. The four other defendants (Ernst Torgler, Georgi Dimitrov, Blagoy Popov, and Vasil Tanev) were acquitted. Photo: Marinus van der Lubbe during his trial.
January 10, 2026 at 10:08 PM