Tag: Genocide
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Not to forget
Not to forget At the beginning of the 2nd World War there were 17.000 Jewish residents in the part of Amsterdam where I live. During the war 13.000 of them were deported and murdered in the concentration camps. When I walk through my neighbourhood I can ‘stumble’ sometimes upon little brass plates in the pavement.…
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Anne Frank
Anne Frank There she stands, Anne Frank, on Merwedeplein in Amsterdam where she lived 9 years of her short life till 1942. On 6 July of that year she went with her family into hiding on the Prinsengracht in what now is known as the Anne Frank House. Sculptor Jet Schepp has portrayed her all…
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Oswiecim
Oswiecim Having come into being at the end of the war and been born in a Netherlands that had regained its freedom, the horrors of the Second World War have been etched into my consciousness through harrowing images and stories.One morning in 2007, on the train from Kraków to Prague, we made a stopover in…
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Auschwitz
Auschwitz (…) Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng (…) (…) he yells play sweeter for death Death is a German-born master…
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Derailment of the mind
Derailment of the mind This is how I tend to look at people who are guided in their thinking and actions by extreme fanaticism. But one might as well say that the fanatic mind is not derailed; on the contrary, it perceives only one rail, only one track to a certain end which it follows…
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Killing Fields
Killing Fields Chamkar Krauch30 burial pits 450 bodies Me Chbar 1 prison burial pit 300 bodies Veal Batt Kanga rice field 500 bodies Tuol Roung Chrey 1 mass grave 400 bodies Banteay O Ta Krey 35 burial pits 4000 bodies Phlauv Meas30 burial pits 200-250 bodies Wat Samdech Muny 6 mass graves 5-6000 bodies Chumnik5-6…
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Democratic Kampuchea
Democratic Kampuchea or the invention of hell Angkar, the mysterious name (meaning ‘the Organisation’) behind which Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime hid, had changed the name of Cambodia to Democratic Kampuchea. During their four-year totalitarian rule, the population was forcibly ‘re-educated’ and indoctrinated according to Angkar’s radical communist ideology. A collection of slogans and orders…
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Angkar, Angkor
Angkar, Angkor Two similar images, two similar words, but referring to two very different memorable episodes in the history of Cambodia. Angkar (“the organisation”), being the name the Khmer Rouge used for its own leadership. Between 1975 and 1979, Angkar’s regime of terror caused the death of approximately one quarter of the total population of…
καιρός remembered 