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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 16h

October 4, 1939: Adolf Hitler issued a secret decree granting amnesty to all crimes committed by German military and police in Poland between September 1 and October 4. The decree justified the crimes as being natural responses to "atrocities committed by the Poles." #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Photo: September 1939, Polish peasants led to execution. A burning village in the background

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

October 3, 1943: The village of Lingiades, in northwestern occupied Greece, was arbitrarily chosen as a target for reprisals by the Wehrmacht due to the killing of a German officer by the Greek Resistance. The vast majority of the victims were children, women and elderly. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Soldiers of the German 79th Field Battalion (1st Mountain Division) commanded by Major Hans Mayr arrived in Lingiades on that Sunday morning. Of the town's 287 inhabitants, most adults were in an neighboring town for the walnut harvest. Villagers who could not run away were dragged by German soldiers to the central square of the village. After all dwellings were searched and looted, all civilians were divided into small groups and driven into the cellars of various homes. There they were shot down by machine guns. Apart from the church and the village school, all buildings in the village were set on fire.
The majority of the 92 victims were children, infants, women, and the elderly. Thirty-two of the dead were between six months and 11 years. Five civilians managed to survive, two adults and three children. They feigned death among the corpses and then escaped from the burning buildings by ascending via the fireplace chimney.
No one was ever held accountable for the atrocity in Lingiades.
Photo: German mountain troops after destroying a village in Epirus.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

October 2, 1944: 659 men from Putten arrived at camp Amersfoort, where they were held until October 11 after which, the majority were sent on to #Neuengamme concentration camp and its satellite camps. #RememberHistory #USAtoday @nmkampamersfoort.bsky.social @neuengamme-mem.bsky.social

On the night of September 30th 1944, a car carrying two officers and two corporals of the German Army was ambushed by members of the Dutch resistance near the Oldenallerbrug bridge between Putten and Nijkerk. In the attack, a resistance fighter named Frans Slotboom was wounded; he later died. One German officer, Lieutenant Otto Sommer, was also injured, and escaped to a nearby farmhouse to raise the alarm; he died the following day. The two German corporals fled while the second officer, Oberleutnant Eggart, was injured and captured. Due to his wounds, the resistance fighters abandoned him in a place where he could be found by the Germans.
The German reprisal raid was conducted the following day. At the command of General Friedrich Christiansen, Putten was surrounded by German forces. The women and men of the village were captured and separated, and over 100 houses in the village were set on fire. Six men and a woman were shot dead during the raid. The women were held at the church until 9 pm, while the men and boys were detained separately nearby at the village school. On 2 October, 661 men between the ages of 18 and 50 were taken to Amersfoort concentration camp, where 59 older or unfit men were released. The remaining 602 men left Amersfoort on 11 October and taken to Neuengamme concentration camp as forced labour. During the transportation, 13 men escaped by jumping off the train. From Neuengamme, some were moved to other camps or sub-camps, including Ladelund, Bergen-Belsen, Meppen-Versen, Beendorf, Wöbbelin and Malchow.
Only 48 men returned after the end of the war, but another 5 died, due to their mistreatment in the camps, after they arrived home. Some people returned crippled, as they had been kept in small cages they could not stand in. As further repri.
Photo: German soldiers transporting prisoners from Amersfoort train station to the camp.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

October 1, 1941: Majdanek concentration and extermination camp became operational. #RememberHistory #USAtoday @majdanekmuseum.bsky.social

It was built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland. It had three gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps.
Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, it was used to murder an estimated 78,000 people during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. In operation from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, it was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove the most incriminating evidence of war crimes.
The camp was nicknamed #Majdanek ("little Majdan") in 1941 by local residents, as it was adjacent to the Lublin ghetto of Majdan Tatarski. Nazi documents initially described the site as a POW camp of the Waffen-SS, based on how it was funded and operated. It was renamed by the Reich Security Main Office as "Konzentrationslager Lublin" on April 9, 1943, but the local Polish name remained more popular.
After the camp's liberation in July 1944, the site was formally protected by the Soviet Union. By autumn, with the war still raging, it had been preserved as a museum. The crematorium ovens and gas chambers were largely intact, serving as some of the best examples of the genocidal policy of Nazi Germany.
Photo: The remains of victims at Majdanek.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

September 30, 1938: Munich Agreement. Four powers in Munich agreed that Czechoslovakia would cede the Sudetenland to Germany by October 10. The territorial integrity of the rest of Czechoslovakia was guaranteed by all signatories. Czechoslovakia was not invited. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy agreed with the German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, where three million people, many ethnic Germans, lived. The pact is known in some areas as the Munich Betrayal. Czechoslovakia was not invited.
On his return to London British, Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain declared "Peace for our time...!", concerning the Munich Agreement and the subsequent Anglo-German Declaration.
Sadly Chamberlain and his French counter part were very wrong and WWII would officially start 11 months later. WWII had an estimated total of 70–85 million deaths, representing about 3% of the global population of 2.3 billion in 1940.
Photo: From left to right: Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Galeazzo Ciano pictured before signing the Munich Agreement (1938).

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

September 29, 1943: 292 inmates of the #Syrets concentration camp, Kyiv, Ukraine, rose up against their German captors. For 6 weeks, the prisoners had been working to destroy the evidence of the massacre at Babi Yar, when the SS murdered nearly 34000 people over two days. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

September 29, 1943: The 292 Jewish inmates of the #Syrets concentration camp, located in Kyiv, Ukraine, rose up against their German captors as their work assignment was drawing to a close. For six weeks, the prisoners had been directed to destroy the evidence of the massacre at Babi Yar, when the Germans murdered nearly 34,000 people over two days, on September 29 and 30, 1941.
The group had labored at excavating and burning the bodies of the victims, then grinding and scattering the cremains. As it became clear that they, too, would be executed when the work was finished, the inmates, led by Vladimir Davydov, staged a mass race to the prison walls at dawn. The German guards, who delayed firing their machine guns until they realized what was happening, killed 280 of 292, but Davydov and eleven other men were able to escape, and would later reveal what had happened.
Photo: Syrets concentration camp.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

September 28, 1942: After a 5 km walk from #Westerbork, 610 Jewish men, women and children were herded onto the train at Hooghalen station that was standing ready with destination #Auschwitz-Birkenau. After selection on arrival 562 of them were taken to the gas chambers. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

On this train was Bertha Louise (Betty) Bloemendal. She was the daughter of Abraham Bloemendal and Jochwet Feige Beder. She had an older brother, Philip Eduard Bloemendal. She grew up in De Baarsjes. At the Jewish Lyceum in Amsterdam, Betty was a classmate of Anne Frank.
Betty was one of the classmates invited to Anne’s thirteenth birthday. Together with Henny Metz, she gave Anne the book Lydia’s Difficulties as a gift. According to Anne, she looked rather poor and lived in Jan Klasenstraat in the western part of the city, “but none of us knows where that is.” Anne also wrote that Betty was an intelligent girl, “but that’s because she is so diligent, since her cleverness already leaves a little to be desired.”
In the summer of 1942, Betty was taken from her home together with her mother and brother and deported to Westerbork, where they arrived on 9 September 1942. Her father was allowed to stay behind thanks to a doctor’s certificate stating that he had tuberculosis. He would die of the illness in early 1944 while in hiding. On 21 September 1942, Anne wrote in her diary that she had heard from Bep Voskuijl about the arrest of her former classmate. On 28 September 1942, Betty, her mother, and her brother were deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered immediately upon arrival on 1 October 1942.
Photo: Betty and Philip.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

September 27, 1933: Ludwig Müller was elected as the 1st Reichsbischof of the Nazi-controlled German Church. The same day the assembled ministers voted to approve the Aryan paragraph for the church bylaws, expelling any Protestant minister who had a Jewish ancestor. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Photo: Speech of Ludwig Müller after his formal inauguration as Reichsbischof in Berliner Dom, 23 September 1934.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

September 26, 1941: 1608 Jews in Kaunas, German occupied Lithuania, were loaded into trucks, driven to the outskirts of the city and killed. “It happened, therefore it can happen again. It can happen and it can happen anywhere” (Primo Levi, Survivor of #Auschwitz). #RememberHistory #USAtoday

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

September 25, 1944: Eugeniusz Lokajski, 34, a Polish athlete, gymnast and photographer was killed by an artillery barrage during the Warsaw Uprising. He is the creator of more than 1000 photos documenting the Warsaw Uprising. #RememberHistory #USAtoday #WarsawUprising

Photo: Lokajski during the Warsaw Uprising.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

September 24, 1941: The first wave of the remaining 1,600 Jews of the Grodziec and Rzgow ghettos were forced into trucks and taken to the Niesłusz-Rudzica forest where they were murdered by soldiers with machine-guns. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

September 24, 1941: Transport from Grodziec, Ghetto, Nazi occupied Poland to Niesłusz-Rudzica, Murder Site, Nazi occupied Poland
The first wave of the remaining 1,600 Jews of the Grodziec and Rzgow ghettos were forced into trucks and taken to the Niesłusz-Rudzica forest where they were murdered by soldiers with machine-guns. This action was repeated on September 25, 26, and October 3, which suggests that approximately 400 Jews were deported on each of these days.
In February 1944, the corpses of the victims were dug up and burned by Sonderkommando Legath (also called Wetterkommando), named after Hauptsturmführer Dr. Johannes Legath from the Gestapo in Hohensalza, one of two special units formed at the end of 1943 to obliterate all traces of mass murder in the Wartheland. This exhumation was part of Sonderaktion 1005 aimed at destroying any evidence that people had been murdered by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland and Russia.
Photo: German guards and Ukrainian militia shooting a Jewish family in Miropol, Ukraine, in 1941.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

September 23, 1943: The liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, began with the removal of 5,000 people, mostly women, children, and elderly people, who were sent to the #Majdanek extermination camp. #RememberHistory #USAtoday @majdanekmuseum.bsky.social

Photo: Zyklon B stored in Majdanek concentration camp.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

September 22, 1943: In the afternoon of the 21st, Elena Mazanik went into her employers bedroom, Nazi Generalkommissar Ostland, Wilhelm Kube, and placed a timed bomb under his mattress. At 1:20 am on 22 September the bomb under Kube's bed went off, killing him. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

September 21, 1943: A transport departed #Westerbork to #Auschwitz carrying 979 deportees. After selection, 303 men and 288 women were led into the camp. 100 women were chosen for Block 10 (experiments). only 14 men and 44 women survived this transport. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

The transport reached Auschwitz on September 23, 1943, with 979 Jews - 60 children, 384 men and 394 women aged 50 and below, and 141 persons aged 51 and above. The deportees were required to remove their luggage from the train by themselves and were told that they would receive it later. Most of the survivors remember the first time they saw Jewish prisoners in “striped suits” and SS men with dogs clutching whips behind them.
After selection, 303 men and 288 women were led into the camp. The men were tattooed with the serial numbers 151852–152154, and the women received the numbers 62984–63271. The other deportees were murdered in the gas chambers immediately after reaching the camp.
One hundred of the women who had passed the selection process were chosen for Block 10 - the barracks at Auschwitz where experiments were conducted. Out of the 2,685 Jews who had been deported in this transport and in the transports that had set out from Westerbork to Auschwitz on August 24 and September 14, 1943, 244 women were assigned to this block. After being threatened with death, 240 of them agreed to undergo the surgical procedures and 110 survived the war. Theresia van Praag was selected for medical experiments and survived the war.
In their testimonies, the Dutch women survivors from this transport describe the humiliation that they felt as male prisoners shaved their body hair, given that their block was part of the men’s camp. Only married women were placed in this block. Theresia managed to see her husband from a distance but was not allowed to speak with him; about two months later, he died.
Of the 979 deportees in the transport that left Westerbork for Auschwitz on September 21, 1943, only 14 men and 44 women are known to have survived.
Photo: The Black Wall (execution wall), between Block 10 (left) and Block 11 (right) in Auschwitz.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

September 20, 1933: Albrecht "Ali" Höhler was summarily shot by several Nazi SA members while on a transport in-between prisons. He was convicted of manslaughter (the murder of Horst Wessel) and sentenced to six years and one month imprisonment. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Höhler was convicted of manslaughter (the murder of Horst Wessel) and sentenced to six years and one month imprisonment at Wohlau Prison in Lower Silesia.
On 11 August 1933, Höhler was transferred to Berlin by the new Nazi administration for interrogation at the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße. On 20 September 1933, the RSHA stated that Höhler had been sent back to Lower Silesia, allegedly to be returned to prison. In reality, the transport had been rerouted under orders of SA-Gruppenführer Karl Ernst. Besides the three prison officers in charge of the transfer, also involved were two SS officers, Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels and Richard Fiedler, and three SA men, Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, Walter von Mohrenschildt [de], Willi Schmidt [de], and Willi Markus [de]. He was transferred from the police prison at Alexanderplatz on the basis of a Gestapo-signed delivery order. Near Potsdamer Platz, several more vehicles approached the prisoner van. The vehicle column drove towards Frankfurt an der Oder.
About 12 km from Frankfurt, the column stopped on the Berlin-Frankfurt Chaussee, Höhler was ordered to leave the transport and was led by a group of at least eight people away from the road to a nearby forest. There, Gruppenführer Ernst gave a short speech, in which he condemned Höhler to death as the murderer of Horst Wessel. Höhler was then shot by several of those present. The body was buried on the spot in a shallow grave; the remains were found in August 1934.
Photo: Mugshot of Höhler in 1930

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

September 19, 1936: Nazi authorities ordered all German churches to eliminate the word "Hallelujah" from prayers because it was "Hebrew and alien." #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Photo: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, 1939

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

September 18, 1942: The 20th transport from #Westerbork left for #Auschwitz-Birkenau. There were 1004 men, women and children on board and after selection 829 people were send straight to the gas chambers. Only 2 people of this transport would survive the war. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

One of the survivors was Leendert Van Sister, his wife and two children were killed in the gas chambers on arrival at #Auschwitz. His parents would be murdered in #Sobibor in 1943. Leendert passed away in Amsterdam on March 08, 1996 at the age of 81.
Photo: Westerbork transit camp

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

September 17, 1941: Listening to foreign radio in the German Reich became punishable by death. #RememberHistory #USAtoday “It happened, therefore it can happen again. It can happen and it can happen anywhere” (Primo Levi, Survivor of #Auschwitz).

In the 1930s Joseph Goebbels had introduced the Volksempfänger (people’s receiver). Its purpose was to make radio reception technology affordable to the general public. Goebbels realized the great propaganda potential of this relatively new medium and thus considered the widespread availability of receivers highly important.
The Volksempfänger was designed to be produced as cheaply as possible and as a consequence they generally lacked shortwave bands and did not follow the practice, common at the time, of marking the approximate dial positions of major European stations on its tuning scale. Only German and (after the 1938 annexation) Austrian stations were marked, and cheaper models listed only arbitrary numbers.
Sensitivity to receive weak signals was limited, to reduce production costs further; so long as the set could receive Deutschlandsender and the local Reichssender (the German national station and local government station), it was considered sensitive enough. However, foreign stations could be received after dark with an external (home-made) antenna, particularly as stations, such as the BBC European service, increased their transmission power over the course of the war.
Listening to foreign stations became a criminal offense in Nazi Germany when the war began. In contrast, in some occupied territories, such as Poland, all radio listening by non-German citizens was outlawed (later in the war this prohibition was extended to most other occupied countries coupled with mass seizures of radio sets). Penalties ranged from fines and confiscation of radios to sentencing to a concentration camp and starting September 17 1941, capital punishment.
German family listening to a Volksempfänger.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

September 16, 1945: Theresia Wagner, 17, waits alone on The Hague's Veenkade for her family. They were all taken in May 1944 by a Nazi raid on Sinti/Roma. Deported to #Auschwitz where she last saw any of them, she survived - the only one of her family who did. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Theresia "Crasa" Wagner, a 17-year-old Sinti girl, has become a familiar sight along The Hague's Veenkade canal, walking back and forth as if searching for someone. Her neighbors have taken her in, and the reason for her wandering has become clear: she is waiting for her parents, brother, and four sisters, hoping they will return to the spot where the family agreed to reunite once the war ended. So far, she is the only one who has come back.

The Wagner family left Germany for the Netherlands in 1938, at a time when Sinti and Roma communities there, especially in The Hague, were generally well regarded — admired for their musical talent, so much so that Sinti and Roma musicians were even permitted membership in the Dutch Culture Chamber, an institution otherwise closed to Jews. That relative safety ended with an order from Heinrich Himmler in late 1942, setting in motion the persecution of Sinti and Roma across Germany and then the occupied territories.

In the Netherlands, this culminated in a coordinated raid on May 16, 1944. Starting at 4 a.m., Dutch police, acting on German orders, rounded up anyone deemed "gypsies" by appearance or way of life. The Wagners were seized from home, given no time to dress or pack, and told varying stories about medical checks, resettlement, or labor in Germany.

At Westerbork, the family realized the truth: watchtowers, barbed wire, and Jewish prisoners marked with stars. After degrading "medical" processing, 245 Roma and Sinti, including 110 children, were deported to Auschwitz on May 19. Theresia recalls arriving to music but immediate violence and corpses in view. She was separated from her mother and siblings, saw her father sent to Buchenwald, and was sent herself to Ravensbrück, reportedly under Dr. Mengele's orders, before ending up in Dachau, liberated in April.

Back in The Hague as promised, Theresia waits, fearing she is the sole survivor of her family.
Photo: Sinti and Roma camp in Haarlem, 1940

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

September 15, 1935: In Nuremberg, the Reichstag convened for a special session and passed the Nuremberg Laws. Marriage between Jews and Aryans was forbidden and three new classes of German citizenship were created that excluded Jews. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

The two Nuremberg Laws were unanimously passed by the Reichstag on 15 September 1935. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour prohibited marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans, and forbade the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households. The Reich Citizenship Law declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were classed as state subjects, without citizenship rights. The wording in the Citizenship Law that a person must prove "by his conduct that he is willing and fit to faithfully serve the German people and Reich" meant that political opponents could also be stripped of their German citizenship. This law was effectively a means of stripping Jews, Roma, and other "undesirables" of their legal rights and their citizenship.
Over the coming years, an additional 13 supplementary laws were promulgated that further marginalized the Jewish community in Germany. For example, Jewish families were not permitted to submit claims for subsidies for large families and were forbidden to transact business with Aryans.
Photo: Members of the SA picketing in front of a Jewish place of business with placards saying "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews!" during the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, 1 April 1933

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

September 14, 1944: A transport left #Westerbork to #Auschwitz-Birkenau, The train arrived on September 16. After selection 626 people, including 4-year old Elly Frank, were murdered in the gas chambers that day. #RememberHistory #USAtoday @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social @kampwesterbork.bsky.social

Maurits Broeks and his wife were arrested in their home and transported to Westerbork.
In the camp Broeks was asked by Kurt Schlesinger, the German Jewish Oberdienstleiter to take a 4 year old girl named Elly Frank under his wing: Elly’s parents had gone into hiding but, under the assumption that young children would not be hurt, they left Elly in the care of her non-Jewish babysitter. The mayor of Lienden, Cornelis Kamp, notified the German authorities about the Jewish girl and they ordered her immediate transfer to The Hague from where she was sent to Westerbork. Since Maurits Broeks was together with his wife, Schlesinger thought it better to hand the little girl over to them to look after during the transport on September 14 to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The train, that contained 902 deportees, halted on a dead-end siding near Cosel for a day. There, a selection of able-bodied men was carried out for slave labour and they were forced off the train while being beaten and whipped. About 200 men including Maurits had to squat until the train left. They were then loaded onto 2 trucks with trailers and were taken to Gogolin, a slave labour camp located in Upper Silesia. After a stay of almost three weeks in Gogolin all the inhabitants of the camp were transferred to Johannsdorf, another forced labour camp in the area.
Mozes Koster recounted later that the guards took great pleasure in telling the men who had left the train in Cosel that all those who had continued onward were to be murdered in gas chambers in Auschwitz, and that they, the able-bodied men, would be put to work until they too dropped dead.
The train arrived on September 16 in Auschwitz. 47 men and 29 women were admitted to the camp. The remaining 626 people, including 4-year old Elly Frank, were murdered in the gas chambers that day.
Only 8 men, who had disembarked in Cosel, survived this transport. Non of the people that were send on to Auschwitz survived.
Photo: Esther (Elly) Frank on the right.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

September 13, 1944: The final deportation train left #Westerbork on this Wednesday. It carried two transports: one to #Bergen-Belsen with 268 deportees and another to #Auschwitz, carrying 11 passengers. #RememberHistory #USAtoday @belsenmemorial.bsky.social @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social

aboard this transport, Mary Andriaansz-Groen, related that she had been deported with a group of children on a train consisting of freight cars. To provide for the youngsters, straw had been placed on the floors as mattresses and makeshift tables and small benches had been provided. “We received milk bottles that contained water and milk from the Dutch,” as well as an “old-fashioned” laundry basket filled with sandwiches. However, she continued, the Germans advised the deportees to throw these provisions out because they were told: “You’re going to a camp where you’ll have everything better.” They did not know the journey would be so lengthy and regretted having done so. Aboard the train, Andriaansz-Groen continued, the passengers sang songs and told stories. The children were tired and ill; several had not yet learned to control their bodily functions. Thus, the situation was dire.
“The important people who dealt in diamonds,” in contrast, sat in a passenger compartment. It was impossible to see out of the sealed freight cars because the only light that entered came through slots in the roof. The passengers had no idea where they were going. When the doors were opened on the only one occasion after the train had stood for hours under a sizzling sun the adults tried to protect the children and conceal them from the Germans who had promised them fresh water and were actually keeping their word. The water that they had brought, however, was of no use to the infant Henriëtte Delia (Jetje) Hamburger (b. December 24, 1943), who died mid-journey, probably of dehydration. “I couldn’t give her a thing,” Andriaansz-Groen explained. “The milk we’d received from Westerbork went bad after only one day.”

Apart from the baby, whose place of burial is unknown, at least 4 children from this transport died by the middle of June 1945.
Photo: Henriëtte Delia (Jetje) Hamburger.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

September 12, 1924: In Italy, Armando Casalini, a Fascist Party member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, was assassinated by Communist activist Giovanni Corvi to avenge the killing of Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteotti. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

In Italy, Armando Casalini, a Fascist Party member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, was assassinated by Communist activist Giovanni Corvi to avenge the June 12 assassination of Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteotti. The shooting, combined with the June 26 walkout of opposition deputies, would serve as a pretext for a Fascist position.
Already a volunteer in the 1915-18 war despite a physical handicap that would have exempted him from conscription, Casalini was a trade unionist and founder of the Republican Party.
In 1922, after embracing Mussolini’s ideas, he founded the pro-fascist Unione Mazziniana Nazionale with other former republicans. In 1924, as a candidate on the fascist ticket, he was elected to Parliament.
On September 12 of the same year, Casalini was assassinated on a tram in Rome, shot with a revolver in front of his daughter Lidia. The murderer, communist Giovanni Corvi, attacked him shouting, “Revenge for Matteotti!”
Italian Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti battered body was found buried in a wood on the outskirts of Rome on August 16, 1924. He had been missing since June 10, when a group of fascists assaulted and kidnapped him. At the end of May, Giacomo Matteotti, an early opponent of Mussolini’s Fascist Party, denounced the violence and irregularities that took place during the national elections that led to the establishment of the first fascist government. While Giacomo Matteotti’s assassination initially threatened to overthrow Mussolini, the Duce overcame the crisis using the killing of Armando Casalini.
Photo: #Matteotti with fellow supporters during 1920s.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

September 11, 1942: On this Friday the 18th transport of Jews from the Netherlands left #Westerbork transit camp for #Auschwitz-Birkenau with 874 Jewish men, women and children on it. Only 10 men survived this transport. #RememberHistory #USAtoday @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social

The train halted in Cosel on September 12 at about 14.00 and approximately 200 able-bodied men under the age of 50 had to get off the train. From Cosel they were taken by three or four trucks to forced labour camps in Upper Silesia: Niederkirch, Gogolin or Annaberg and would be transferred to other work camps.
There they were awaited by “a bunch of brown shirts with swastikas” according to Jonas Pampel, one of the survivors who was deported together with his wife and 2 daughters (13 and 15 y/o). He added that the train travelled straight from Westerbork to Cosel and that when the men had left the train and it resumed its journey, there was terrible wailing and crying. The train with the remaining deportees arrived in Auschwitz later that day.
Pampel's wife and children were murdered on arrival.
According to Guus Luijters, the author of ‘In Memoriam’ where he documents the deportation and murder of children from the Netherlands, there were 175 children on this transport. The youngest was Willy Henny Scheffer, 5 months old. He was gassed on arrival together with his mother. His father died two years later in Auschwitz sub(work)-camp Blechhammer.
As with all these transports, whole families were take and murdered. Barend Buitenkant (9 years old) was send on this transport together with his two brothers of 11 and 13 and their parents. Barend ,his brothers and his mother were gassed on arrival and their father died in Seibersdorf concentration camp in 1943.
When the 18th transport from Westerbork arrived at Auschwitz at selection, 26 men and 34 women were admitted into the camp. The other deportees were murdered within hours in the gas chambers.
10 people survived this transport.
Photo: Meijer Buitenkant and his wife Susanna Buitenkant-Coster with their children, Abraham, Barend and Maurits

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

September 10, 1943: The "Solf Circle", a gathering of more than 75 Berlin citizens who were opposed to the Nazi German government, was betrayed by Dr. Paul Reckzeh. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Photo: Hanna Solf as a prosecution witness at the Nuremberg trials (1947).

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

September 9, 1942: This Wednesday was the deportation date for the children and elderly who had been arrested since the September 5 Gehsperre (a week-long general curfew). Jews from the Łódź ghetto would be transported to, and murdered in #Chełmno extermination camp. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

On September 9, Leon Dafner, a ghetto resident, recorded the tragic events that led to the death of his daughter Mary (Mari), nicknamed Mucha:
"Yesterday, I lost my sweet little daughter. I lost her through my own fault, cowardice, stupidity, and passivity. I gave her up defenseless. I deserted her, I left the five year old child, did not save her, and I could have done it so easily.… The Germans were deporting, it was chaotic…I walked off with Anya, but left Mucha behind. Instead of hiding with her in the cellar or in the toilet, I put her in a clothes basket and she gave herself away with crying. Naked, barefoot, miserable, my dear child, it's me, your father who betrayed you…. After an hour they were no longer in the hospital…they left as soon as they arrived.… "

There are no known survivors from this deportation.
Photo: Family members say goodbye to a child through a fence at the ghetto's central prison where children, the sick, and the elderly were held before deportation to the Chełmno killing center. Łódź, Poland, September 1942

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

September 8, 1939: German Wehrmacht soldiers massacred some 300 Polish prisoners of war near the village of #Ciepielów (Ciepielów massacre). One of the largest and most documented war crimes of the German Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

One of the largest and most documented war crimes of the German Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland. On that day, the forest near Ciepielów was the site of a mass murder of Polish prisoners of war from the Polish Upper Silesian 74th Infantry Regiment. The massacre was carried out by soldiers from the German Army's 15th Motorized Infantry Regiment, 29th Motorized Infantry Division, under the command of Colonel Walter Wessel.
This event has been described as the "most infamous" war crime committed by Germans during their invasion of Poland.
The massacre was documented in photos and memoirs of an anonymous German soldier, who witnessed an engagement in which Polish soldiers ambushed and killed over a dozen German soldiers from the 11th Company of the 15th Regiment, including the company's commander, Captain Lewinsky. A number of Polish soldiers were then captured, and Oberst (Colonel) Walter Wessel, commander of the German 15th Motorized Infantry Regiment, 29th Motorized Infantry Division, ordered them stripped of their uniforms and declared partisans and had them taken to a secluded location near the village of Dąbrowa (itself near a larger village of Ciepielów), where they were shot. The anonymous author of the memoirs arrived at that location after hearing gunfire, and counted approximately 300 bodies in a roadside ditch. Those documents were received by the Polish Military Mission in Germany in West Berlin in 1950.
Photo: Polish POWs and German soldiers shortly before the massacre.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

September 7, 1943: On Tuesday, the 75th transport from the Netherlands departed from #Westerbork for #Auschwitz. The train comprised 27 cattle cars and carried 987 deportees. There were 96 children on this transport. The youngest was born in Westerbork on August 8. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Every transport has its special tragic cases. The latest transport saw the disappearance of a young and gifted pianist called Mischa Hillesum.

Photo: Mischa Hillesum at the piano (I talked about his sister Etty on August 24).

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

September 6, 1930: The editor of the German newspaper Morgenpost was sentenced to 3 months in prison for libeling ex-kaiser Wilhelm. The paper claimed that he enriched himself before the war by investing in armament firms which gained monopolies through his influence. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

The editor of the German newspaper Morgenpost was fined and sentenced to three months in prison for libeling ex-kaiser Wilhelm II. The paper had published a statement claiming that the kaiser enriched himself before the war by investing his private fortune in armament firms which gained monopolies through his influence.
Photo: Kaiser Wilhelm II and his dog in exile. Doorn The Netherlands, 1938.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

September 5, 1941: The Pavoloch massacre occurred when the Einsatzgruppen shot 1,500 Jews in the Ukrainian shtetl of Pavoloch. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

When World War II began, the Jews population of Pavoloch lived in fear of the Nazi death squads, which had killed so many of their brethren in German-occupied countries. They had heard of the terrible things that the Nazis did to the Jews. On September 5, 1941, during Operation Barbarossa, their fears were justified, when an Einsatzgruppen squad drove into the shtetl.
The Nazis had orders from SS-Brigadeführer Otto Rasch to exterminate any Jews they found, and the Nazis obeyed the order to the letter. They rounded up all of the 1,500 Jews and took them to the Jewish cemetery, located outside of Pavoloch.
The Nazis forced all of the Jews to dig a mass grave and made them kneel next to the grave. The Nazis shot all 1,500 of them, and the bodies fell into the mass grave. The Einsatzgruppen quickly filled the pit to exterminate any evidence of the slaughter and drove away.
Photo: "The Last Jew in Vinnitsa" an unknown Jewish man—probably on 28 July 1941 in Berdychiv (not Vinnitsa) — about to be executed by Jakobus Onnen, a member of Einsatzgruppe C, a mobile death squad under the command of Otto Rasch

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

September 4, 1942: The 16th transport departed from #Westerbork carrying 714 men, women and children to #Auschwitz. in the town of Cosel, 80 kilometers west of Auschwitz, men between the ages of 15 and 50 were violently pulled from the train and used for slave labor. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Around 200-300 men left the train at Cosel. From there they were transferred to different forced labour camps run by the Schmelt Organisation. Some of the men who arrived on September 5 at Cosel were transferred by truck to the Annaberg labour camp (Gora Swietej Anny) and others to Niederkirch (Dolna). One of the survivors of this transport, Maurits Schenkkan left the train in Cosel. In his statement of February 19, 1947 to the NIOD (The Institute for War and Genocide Studies in the Netherlands) he reported the following:
“On August 28 I was taken from my house to the Hollandse Schouwburg. I stayed there for a few days and was transferred from there to Westerbork. On September 4, 1942 I left Westerbork. Our transport consisted of 900-1000 persons: men, women and children. We traveled in passenger cars. On the way we stopped now and then, but the first people to leave the train were men between 16 and 50 who got off at Cosel. The remainder had to stay on the train and, I assume, went directly to the gas chambers. There were several persons above age 50 in our group. We were beaten off the train by the SS. Obersturmbannfuhrer Heinrich Lindner was present and partly for this reason we were treated badly. From there we were transported by two trucks to Annaberg. I estimate that we went with 200-300 men. We were there for a week to learn the work. All our possessions were taken, only few managed to keep something. All our Jewelry, money etc. was confiscated. “From Cosel the train continued and passed through Katowice (Kattowitz) and arrived at its final destination in Auschwitz on September 5. 714 Jewish men, women and children arrived. After the selection, 53 women were admitted to the camp and were tattooed with the serial numbers 19117-19169. The other 661 deportees were murdered in the gas chambers.
There are four known survivors from this transport, all of whom left the train at Cosel.
Photo: Forced laborers at work in Kraków-Płaszów camp in German-occupied Poland.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

September 3, 1944: 15 year old Anne Frank is send on the last transport from #Westerbork to #Auschwitz-Birkenau, together with her father, mother and sister Margot. Also on this train were the sisters and Jewish resistance fighters Lientje and Janny Brilleslijper. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

15 year old Anne Frank is send on the last transport from #Westerbork to #AuschwitzBirkenau, together with her father, mother and sister Margot. Also on this train were the sisters and Jewish resistance fighters Lientje and Janny Brilleslijper, known from the book ’t Hooge Nest (“The High Nest”). From this transport, seven people managed to escape before arriving at Auchwitz.
Janny and Lientje were later sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Anne and Margot were also transported in October 1944. Janny, who was made a nurse in the camp, took care of the ill prisoners. Around February/March 1945, Margot and Anne died within a day of each other, Janny and Lientje buried them in the mass graves at the camp. Janny and Lientje were one of the last people to have talked to Anne and Margot.
The train carried 1,019 people. 256 men between the ages 15-50 were selected and tattooed with the serial numbers B-9109 - B-9364. Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank received number B-9174. 221 women were selected and tattooed with the numbers A-25069 - A-25260 and A-25262 - A-25290. 127 survived.
The selected people were used for slave labor, medical experiments or used as sex slaves.
The remaining deportees, mostly mothers, children and elderly people, were immediately murdered in the gas chambers.
Both Janny and Lientje survived the war. Janny passed away on 15 August 2003 (aged 86)
Amsterdam, Netherlands. Lientje passed away on 31 August 1988 (aged 75) East Berlin, East Germany.
Photo: Dutch resistance members Marianne "Janny" Brandes-Brilleslijper and her husband Bob Brandes, who, together with her sister, sheltered people during World War II at their safehouse ['t Hooge Nest] in Naarden, The Netherlands.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

September 2, 1939: A day after the invasion of Poland the Nazis establish #Stutthof prison camp near Danzig. The first 150 inmates, imprisoned that day, were selected among Poles and Jews arrested in Danzig immediately after the outbreak of the war. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

September 2, 1939: A day after the invasion of Poland the Nazis establish #Stutthof prison camp near the former territory of Danzig. In January 1942 it would be re-designated a concentration camp.
The first 150 inmates, imprisoned on 2 September 1939, were selected among Poles and Jews arrested in Danzig immediately after the outbreak of the war. The inmate population rose to 6,000 in the following two weeks.
Until 1942, nearly all of the prisoners were Polish. The number of inmates increased considerably in 1944, with Jews forming a significant proportion of the newcomers. The first contingent of 2,500 Jewish prisoners arrived from Auschwitz in July 1944. In total, 23,566 Jews (including 21,817 women) were transferred to Stutthof from Auschwitz, and 25,053 (including 16,123 women) from camps in the Baltic states.
When the Soviet army began its advance through German-occupied Estonia in July and August 1944, the camp staff of Klooga concentration camp evacuated the majority of the inmates by sea and sent them to Stutthof. Other sources say that the camp staff shot most remaining inmates in a mass murder.
Stutthof's registered inmates included citizens of 28 countries, and besides Jews and Poles – Germans, Czechs, Dutch, Belgians, French, Norwegians, Finns, Danes, Lithuanians, Latvians, Belarusians, Russians, and others. There were also those classed and condemned as "vagrants who travel around after the manner of the gypsies", a category that included Romani, Sinti and Yenish people.
Stutthof held approximately 110,000 inmates of which 65,000 were murdered, including 28,000 Jews.
Photo: Stutthof concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1945.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

September 1, 1939: World War II breaks out in Europe with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. 4:44 AM: Nazi SA and SS supported by Danzig Police, tried to take control of the city of Danzig, by capturing the Polish post office. Its personnel defended it for 15 hours. #RememberHistory #USAtoday #WW2

4:44 AM: The German SMS Schleswig-Holstein (Deutschland-class battleships) opened fire on a garrison in Westerplatte (harbour of the Free City of Danzig), the first cannon shots of World War II.
After the battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish-controlled harbor of Danzig, Nazi Sturmabteilung and SS Heimwehr Danzig supported by Danzig Police, immediately joined the offensive to take full control of the city, by capturing the Polish post office. Polish Post Office personnel (56 postmen & families, 43 armed with pistols and grenades).
About 11:00 AM: Hitler appeared before the Reichstag to explain his decision to invade Poland. Hitler was wearing a field-gray uniform instead of his usual brown jacket, and he declared toward the end: "From now on I am just the first soldier of the German Reich. I have once more put on that coat that was the most sacred and dear to me. I will not take it off again until victory is assured, or I will not survive the outcome."
About 1:00 PM: A second German attack on Westerplatte is repulsed with heavy German losses.
7.00 PM: The Polish Post Office in Danzig surrendered after fighting for 15 hours. Its director, Jan Machoń, carried a white flag but was shot anyway. All but four of the defenders, who were able to escape from the building during the surrender, were executed or died while in custody (including children).

Photo: Captured Polish postmen being led away under SS escort, while SA men and Danzig Police look on.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

August 31, 1943: The 72nd transport left #Westerbork for #Auschwitz-Birkenau with 1004 deportees. 259 men and 247 women were selected, all others were killed in the gas chambers. Five men survived this transport. #RememberHistory #USAtoday @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social

Survivor Alexander Roodveldt reported the following in his post-war statement:
"On September 2 we arrived at Birkenau. We saw the SS with their rifles ready and we were forced off the train. We took our packages and blankets and intended to continue walking, but then the order was given that we had to leave all our belongings behind. I took my children by the hand and ran forward to get them and my wife a place in the car (the survivor refers to the trucks that transported elderly, mothers and children to the gas chambers). They were among the first to get a seat. The children waved to me and were obviously looking forward to their ride. I myself was one of 259 men who were told to walk to the camp. I was marching on one side of the column and asked an SS man about my wife and children. He told me that I would be allowed to see them on Sunday."
Roodveldt would soon find out that his wife and children had been murdered in the gas chambers.

Photo: Hartog, Alexander Roodveldt's 11 year old son who was murdered along side his mother and his 7 y/o brother.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

August 30, 1932: Hermann Göring was elected President of the Reichstag #RememberHistory #USAtoday “It happened, therefore it can happen again. It can happen and it can happen anywhere” (Primo Levi, Survivor of #Auschwitz).

Photo: Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goring relaxing on Haus Wachenfeld's terrace.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

August 29, 1944: The final transports from #Łódź, Ghetto, Poland started with destination Auschwitz-Birkenau. #RememberHistory #USAtoday @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social

On the ramp, a “selection” process was conducted. Ruth Tauber recalled her friend Edith, who chose to go with her baby to death. Simultaneously, Józef Alfred Chimowicz, head of the Metal-Resort, explained to the Germans that there was an entire factory with 500 members on board, and gave them a list of their names. Following that, the names were read out, checked, and the men and women were separated.
During the selection process, Chaim Rumkowski is said to have approached the Germans, handing them a letter from Biebow. He, together with his family, wife, brother, sister-in-law, and their adopted children, were taken in a truck, and were most probably gassed immediately. Another deportee, Leon Rozenblat, former Head of the Jewish Ghetto Police, was murdered on that day by a Jewish inhabitant of Auschwitz, who came to the camp at the end of 1942, and wanted to take revenge on Rozenblat.
About 48,000 of the 67,000 deportees from Łódź to Auschwitz-Birkenau were sent directly from the train to the gas chambers. The remainder, some 19,000, were taken to the camp itself, to its subcamps, or other forced labor sites, after being shaved and sometimes registered. Among the arrivals in Auschwitz-Birkenau were two brothers, Majer (b. September 7, 1919) and Jakub Nirenberg (b. December 6, 1909), who were registered on September 2, and tattooed respectively with the numbers B-8938 and B-8939, on their arms.
It appears that the majority of the deportees from the Metal-Resort spent a few days in Auschwitz-Birkenau, before being deported to the #Stutthof Concentration Camp, where they were registered on September 3. On the transport to Stutthof, at least one died. From the entire Metal-Resort group, 400 at the most survived the Holocaust.
Photo: Jewish prisoner Henryk Ross, who worked as an official photographer in the ghetto, secretly took this photo of Jews being deported from the Łódź ghetto to Auschwitz in August 1944.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

August 28, 1942: A transport left #Westerbork with over 800 people for #Auschwitz. This was the first time men ages of 15-55 were taken from the train in Cosel in Upper-Silesia and sent to labour camps. Only 11 survived. All people that arrived at Auschwitz were gassed. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Beginning with the train that left Westerbork on August 28, 1942, male deportees between the ages of 15-45 (some reports indicate between 15-55) were taken from the train in Cosel in Upper-Silesia and sent to labour camps in the area. This procedure lasted until December 12th and is known as the Cosel period because a number of transports from Belgium and France also stopped in Cosel, 80 km west of Auschwitz where all able-bodied men had to disembark and were taken to various labour camps in the area.
Simon and Esthella Cohen together with their children Josephine, Henny and Frieda were gassed on arrival. from their family only Gerrit survived.

In August 1942, the Cohen family was summoned to report for the 'Arbeitseinsatz' (labor deployment). The summons applied to men between 16 and 65 years old, including their wives and children. As in many families, this led to intense discussions within the Cohen family. Son Gerrit, whose friends urged him to go into hiding, argued fiercely in favor of this, but at the explicit wish of his law-abiding father, he waited on August 25, 1942, together with the whole family, for the arrival of the police. When the dreaded knock on the door was finally heard, Gerrit fled after all. Through a skylight he reached the flat roof and the attic of the neighbors. He then went into hiding. Rumors of Gerrit's suicide may have been deliberately spread so that the police would not search for him.

Of all those that continued to Auschwitz none were admitted to the camp and all were killed in the gas chambers.
11 of the men, who had disembarked in Cosel, survived this transport.

Gerrit passed away in 1998 at the age of 76 in Geleen, Limburg, The Netherlands.

Photo: Henny, Gerrit, Josephine, Esthella en Frieda Cohen, circa 1936.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

August 27, 1941: The Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre began. In the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa , the German Police Battalion 320 along with Friedrich Jeckeln's Einsatzgruppen, Hungarian soldiers and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police began mass shooting of Jews. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Photo: Jews marched through Kamenets to their execution site on the outskirts of town

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

August 26, 1944: Rüsselsheim massacre: Six American airmen were lynched and killed by townspeople of Rüsselsheim am Main two days after their Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber was shot down. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Two days after a Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber of the United States Army Air Forces was shot down by heavy anti-aircraft fire over Hanover. All nine crew members of the aircraft (2nd Lt. Norman J. Rogers, Jr., pilot; 2nd Lt. John N. Sekul, copilot; F/O Haigus Tufenkjian, navigator and bombardier; Sgt. William M. Adams, nose gunner, S/Sgt. Forrest W. Brininstool, top turret gunner and flight engineer; S/Sgt. Thomas D. Williams Jr., radio operator; Sgt. William A. Dumont, belly gunner; Sgt. Sidney E. Brown, tail gunner; Sgt. Elmore L. Austin, waist gunner) parachuted to the ground, where they were captured and held by German Luftwaffe personnel.
Unable to transfer the downed aircrewmen to a prisoner-of-war camp due to the train tracks being heavily damaged by bombing the night before, they forced the Americans to march through the devastated town of Rüsselsheim to catch another train.
The townspeople, already angered by damage caused to their town by a Canadian bombing raid the previous night on the Opel automobile factory, which was manufacturing airplane parts during the war, attacked the crew members with rocks, hammers, sticks, and shovels, killing six of them.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

August 25, 1944: While Paris was liberated by allied forces, 300km to the south the German 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division committed the Maillé massacre. 124 of the 500 residents were murdered, 48 children were among the dead. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

August 24, 1943: The 51st transport from #Westerbork left for #Auschwitz-Birkenau with 1001 Jewish men, women and children. On arrival, after selection, 780 were immediately send to the gas chambers to be killed. A year earlier the 13th transport had left with 551 people. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Etty Hillesum, who became known for her diary and letters to friends from Camp Westerbork, describes the afternoon of August 23 in the camp’s hospital where she worked. At that moment the prisoners of #Westerbork did not know whether they were on the transport lists for the next day. She wrote about the fear, sadness and despair of the people.
On the morning of the transport Etty Hillesum watched the scene of the deportation from the barrack opposite the train: ‘Slowly but surely six o’clock in the morning has arrived. The train is due to depart at eleven, and they are starting to load it with people and luggage. Paths to the train have been staked out by men of the Ordedienst. Anyone not involved with the transport has to keep to the barracks. I slip into one just across from the siding. “There’s always been a splendid view from here,” I hear a cynical voice say. The camp has been cut in two halves since yesterday by the train: a depressing series of bare, unpainted freight cars in the front, and a proper coach for the guards at the back. Some of the cars have paper mattresses on the floor. These are for the sick. There is more and more movement now along the asphalt path beside the train.’
There were 1,001 deportees. Among them were about 300 ‘criminal’ deportees (a reference to Jews who were usually caught in hiding). Apart from the criminal deportees there were many sick people on this transport. Most likely some of the sick were patients from the Nieuw Israëlitisch Ziekenhuis, a Jewish hospital in Amsterdam which was evacuated on August 13, 1943. There were also 121 children below the age of 16 and 384 deportees above the age of 50.
The train arrived at Auschwitz on August 26. 188 men and 48 women were selected for slave labor.44 women were selected for medical experiments. The remaining 721 deportees were murdered in the gas chambers. 12 men and 16 women survived. from the 13th transport no one survived.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

August 23, 1939: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed not to attack each other and to remain neutral if attacked by a third power. Secret clauses divided up other countries, including a partitioning of Poland. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

August 22, 1939: Hitler gave the #Obersalzberg Speech to commanders of the Wehrmacht, detailing the pending invasion of Poland and plans for extermination of the Poles. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

One paragraph stated: Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command – and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?

Original German: Unsere Stärke ist unsere Schnelligkeit und unsere Brutalität. Dschingis Khan hat Millionen Frauen und Kinder in den Tod gejagt, bewußt und fröhlichen Herzens. Die Geschichte sieht in ihm nur den großen Staatengründer. Was die schwache westeuropäische Zivilisation über mich behauptet, ist gleichgültig. Ich habe den Befehl gegeben – und ich lasse jeden füsilieren, der auch nur ein Wort der Kritik äußert – daß das Kriegsziel nicht im Erreichen von bestimmten Linien, sondern in der physischen Vernichtung des Gegners besteht. So habe ich, einstweilen nur im Osten, meine Totenkopfverbände bereitgestellt mit dem Befehl, unbarmherzig und mitleidslos Mann, Weib und Kind polnischer Abstammung und Sprache in den Tod zu schicken. Nur so gewinnen wir den Lebensraum, den wir brauchen. Wer redet heute noch von der Vernichtung der Armenier?

Photo: Hitler with Göring and von Schirach at Obersalzberg.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

August 21, 1942: The 12th transport from #Westerbork left for #Auschwitz-Birkenau with 1003 Jewish deportees. Only 6 people survived. At the same time a transport also left from Camp #Drancy, France with 1000 people, half were children. Only 7 known survivors. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

August 21, 1942: The 12th transport from #Westerbork left for Auschwitz-Birkenau with 1003 Jewish men, women and children on board...
On arrival at Auschwitz on August 23, men and women were separated. 375 of the deportees were killed in the gas chambers and 628 men and women passed the selection and were taken into the camp. After a period of quarantine, those who passed the selection were usually put to work in different commandos. Only 6 people survived from this transport.
Esther Swart and her two children Frouwke and Levie were murdered that day.
Esther 's husband Markus Swart worked as a merchant. On July 6, 1938, he and Esther Sacksionie married. Esther worked as a rag sorter. The couple had two children: a daughter, Frouwke, born 22 October 1939 and a son, Levie, born 6 February 1942 in Amsterdam. At the time of Levie’s birth, Markus had already been deported.
Markus was murdered in Auschwitz a month after his wife and children.
On this same Friday, August 21, a transport also left from Camp #Drancy, France to Auschwitz Birkenau. This transport included approximately 1,000 Jews. Over 500 were children who had been transferred to Drancy on August 19 from the Beaune-la-Rolande camp where they had been detained since the Vel d’Hiv roundups a month earlier. Most of these children were French nationals whose parents had been deported in the previous weeks, separated from their children.
This transport arrived on the same day as the transport from Westerbork, at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 90 men and 18 women were selected for slave labour. The remainder of the transport, consisting mostly of children, were immediately gassed. There are only 7 known survivors from this transport.
Photos: Esther and Markus, 1941. And Frouwke and Levie.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

August 20, 1942: A transport left #Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia to Riga, Rigas, Vidzeme, Latvia with 1,000 deportees. On arrival in Riga, all of the deportees were shot or murdered in gas trucks in the forests near the city. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

A transport left #Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia to Riga, Rigas, Vidzeme, Latvia with 1,000 deportees. No records exist indicating the exact route or time of the train.
The transport had been designated as being intended for “harvest workers”, to mask the true purpose of the train.
After their arrival in Riga, all of the deportees were shot or murdered in gas trucks in the forests near the city. Afterwards, their luggage and clothing were brought to the Riga ghetto.
Photo: Theresienstadt, Ghetto.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

August 19, 1934: The referendum on merging the posts of Chancellor and President was held in Nazi Germany. The referendum passed with almost 90% approval. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

The referendum on merging the posts of Chancellor and President was held seventeen days after the death of President Paul von Hindenburg. The German leadership sought to gain approval for Adolf Hitler's assumption of supreme power. The referendum was associated with widespread intimidation of voters and significant electoral fraud.

Hitler used the resultant large "yes" vote to claim public support to succeed Hindenburg as the de facto head of state of Germany, though he had assumed presidential powers in addition to his own powers as Chancellor immediately upon Hindenburg's death. The referendum was meant to legitimize that move and allowed Hitler to take the title Führer und Reichskanzler (Führer and Reich Chancellor).

photo: Banner with the campaign message "Yes to the Führer!" on a school building in Fürth. (a city in northern Bavaria, Germany)

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

August 18, 1939: The Reich Interior Ministry ordered all physicians, nurses and midwives to report children under the age of three who showed signs of severe mental or physical disability. This was the first step in Nazi Germany's child euthanasia program. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

The Reich Interior Ministry ordered all physicians, nurses and midwives to report children under the age of three who showed signs of severe mental or physical disability. This was the first step in Nazi Germany's child euthanasia program.
In over 30 so-called "special children's wards", mentally and physically disabled children and teenagers up to 16 years old were systematically murdered and often underwent medical experiments before being killed. At least 5,000 children were victims of the program, which was a precursor to the subsequent murder of children in the concentration camps.
photo: Group of children at the Katharinenhof Großhennersdorf hospital near Dresden, 1939-40. The children in this photo were mostly killed as a part of the child euthanasia program.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

August 17, 1942: The 11th transport from #Westerbork left for #Auschwitz-Birkenau with 510 Jewish men, women and children on board... On arrival, 319 men and 40 women were selected for slave labor. 147 deportees were murdered in the gas chambers. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Franz Robert Spier was one of the people murdered that day.
He was arrested together with his wife Justine Leonie (Tineke) Spier-Bendien and their foster child on a bus from Tilburg while attempting to flee to England. From December 9, 1941, they were imprisoned in the #Oranjehotel (Scheveningen prison).
While there, Justine embroidered her name on a handkerchief. On September 28, 1942, she was transported to #Ravensbrück concentration camp. She spent time in the Bunker (camp prison), but it was not known that she was Jewish. In early March 1945, she was deported to #Mauthausen, where she died of kidney poisoning shortly before the liberation.
Franz was first send to Camp Amersfoort from where he was transported to Westerbork and immediately on to Auschwitz where he was killed on arrival.
Justine was 24 and Franz was 29. There is no information on their foster child.
Jaques Premselaar, the only survivor of the transport of August 17, recalls in his statement to the RIOD the arrival in Auschwitz: “On August 20, if I am not mistaken, the train […] arrived in Birkenau. […] All young men and young women were set apart, while women with children and elderly were carried off together. […] We went to Birkeanu, were shaved, tattooed and I received number 59905. The first days were horrible, luckily I stayed there for just under two weeks, or else I would not have survived. In Birkenau both men and women had to build the crematoria, which did not yet exist.”
photo: Franz and Justine.

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Through the Looking-Glass @ramonfliek.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

August 16, 1945: With official speeches, fanatical banzai shouting and the striking of a gold-colored rivet, the Pakan Baroe railway line has been opened on Sumatra. The Japanese have not yet told the slave laborers here that the war is over. #RememberHistory #USAtoday

Japan wanted at all costs to open the train connection. And to still deploy the forced laborers to finish the railway further. On this death railway approximately 4000 Dutchmen have worked; presumably 700 of them died.
The line — more than 200 kilometers long — was the missing link between West and East Sumatra. The Japanese wanted to use the route for the transport of troops and weaponry. It now becomes ready on the day that it has become definitively superfluous. In recent years, under barbaric circumstances, the Allied prisoners of war and romusha's (Javanese slaves) have worked on the railway in the jungle of Sumatra.
As a result of the heat, contagious diseases, the heavy work, malnutrition and mistreatment, it was especially the romusha's who died in droves. They, unlike the prisoners of war, received no medical care at all. More than 80,000 Javanese are said to have died.
"The Japanese regard the romusha's as inferior," says the Dutch prisoner of war Han de Bruine. "They let us, for instance, bury our dead, but the sick Javanese were simply left behind. You saw their corpses lying along the track, but you closed yourself off from that.”
More than 15,000 prisoners of war died from exhaustion, malnutrition and illness. Among them almost 3000 Dutchmen, KNIL soldiers and people who lived in the Dutch East Indies. In September 1942 the Japanese began the construction of the railway, 16 months later it was ready.
Photo: Camp Pakan Baroe

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