As in large parts of West-Europe, the population of Amsterdam also grew in the beginning of the 20th century. This increase was reflected in the housing: the small labourers’ houses where large families lived in, were bursting at the seams. These families often lived a poor life. Because of this, there was a huge need for social housing.
Extermination camp Chelmno – Kulmhof in German – was part of the systematic killing machine that the Nazis created in occupied Polish territories between 1939 and 1945. After the war, there was little evidence of the camp’s existence, and it was a long time before the events that unfolded there became known.
In 1972, the French speleologist Michel Siffre spent 205 days without interruption in a cave in Texas. With this he set an official record, because never before would someone have lived for so long underground. Living so long in constant darkness and isolation, without any sense of day or night, requires unimaginable perseverance, both mentally and physically. Nevertheless, several Jewish people in hiding in Ukraine during World War II would have lived continuously underground for much longer, namely 344 days. The American speleologist Chris Nicola discovered their remarkable story of survival.
How Jewish patients survived the war in a Jewish hospital in Berlin
In Okegem, like in every other municipality, personal drama’s happened: prisoners of war and employees who were sent to Germany for forced labor, escaped young men in the south of France, the daily attempts to make a living, occasional passages of German soldiers... And yet remarkable things happened that only few people were aware of...