Persecution - TracesOfWar.com

Nieuwste artikelen

Article by Kevin Prenger
Published on May 29th, 2018

Kristallnacht

In the night of November 9 to 10, 1938, a large-scale and violent anti-Jewish protest took place in Germany and Austria. Jewish shops and homes were demolished and looted, synagogues were put on fire and individual Jews were mistreated and some even murdered. The protest had evolved into a pogrom. The night would enter the history books as the Kristallnacht (Night of Crystals).

Article by Robert Jan Noks
Published on November 22nd, 2017

Concentration camp Majdanek

Nowadays, the location of the former concentration camp Majdanek lies well within the city limits of Lublin, a city in eastern Poland near the Ukrainian border. Today it looks somewhat like a park at some 2,5 miles from the city center. It is surrounded by modern apartment buildings and a Roman Catholic cemetery that was already there before the camp was built. The highway to the Ukraine and Russia runs along the former camp grounds. In the war, this was a major route for the German army to the eastern front and from the fall of 1943 onwards for the retreating German forces.

Article by Gerd Van der Auwera
Published on November 4th, 2017

Concentration camp Treblinka

Regarding the Holocaust, Auschwitz immediately comes to mind. It is the best known Nazi extermination camp. It is often forgotten though that Auschwitz was not the only extermination camp, in addition there were Camp Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka. This article is about the last camp. It was an element of Aktion Reinhard and perhaps the most efficient extermination camp. Over a period of 18 months, approximately 800,000 people were killed here.

Article by Robert Jan Noks
Published on October 24th, 2017

Concentration camp Sobibor

Sobibor is a small village in southeast Poland in the province of Lublin, on the railway between Chelm and Wlodawa and a few miles distant from the present Polish eastern border with the Ukraine. Had it not been for World War Two, it would have remained no more than an unimportant and unknown hamlet. History though decided otherwise. In the vicinity of the village, across from the local train station and a few miles from the frontier river Bug, the Germans constructed an extermination camp in the spring of 1942 in a remote, wooded and swampy location which was to give Sobibor a sinister place in history.

Article by Gerd Van der Auwera
Published on September 27th, 2017

Concentration camp Buchenwald

Weimar, summer 1937, a pretty, picturesque town in Thüringen. The town where people such as Goethe, Schiller. Liszt and Bach have spent a considerable part of their lives. Three miles away lies Ettersberg, where one of the first Nazi concentration camps was established. On July 16, 1937 the first batch of 300 prisoners arrived in Konzentrationslager Ettersberg, from August 6, 1937 onwards better known as concentration camp Buchenwald. Initially, it was intended for political opponents of the Nazi regime, hardened criminals, anti-socials, Jehovah witnesses, Jews etc.

Article by Gerd Van der Auwera
Published on September 7th, 2017

Concentration camp Auschwitz

In September 1939, the German army invaded Poland. The Poles could not cope with the German attacking power and were forced to retreat time and again. During their withdrawal, they destroyed as many bridges as possible to slow the advance of the Wehrmacht. That way, they also blew the bridge across the Sola near Oswiecim. Their efforts were in vain as the German troops advanced relentlessly. At the end of September Oswiecim was captured. The synagogue was burned down but would be rebuilt in 1941. In October 1939, certain parts of Poland, including Oswiecim and surroundings, were absorbed into the Third Reich. The name was changed to Auschwitz. The hitherto unknown small town was to play a role in the coming years that would evoke sentiments of horror for years afterwards.