Monthly Archives: November 2019

Rotterdam. Memorial monument 1940 – 1945, May 4, 1957. Here, truly, the modern meets the postmodern. This is in a shopping mall. I haven’t the heart to photograph in the other direction. I like the sculpture.

Amersfoort again. When I was here last month I’d thought the tower was just built to dramatize the museum entrance, but it turns out this is the only surviving original tower, which has been periodically refurbished. “Black black” is the … Continue reading →

This is where the SS murdered 117 Dutch as a reprisal for the attack on Hanns Albin Rauter. Here as all over Eastern Europe the enemy is The Germans. At German memorials it’s almost always Fascism, rarely Nazism. Emblematic for … Continue reading →

Her descriptions of Westerbork inmates helping to load families, old people, and infants onto the doomed transport trains are ruthlessly candid and unbearably wrenching. She knew all too well that her survival would mean someone else’s death, and the whole … Continue reading →

July 1942: I catch myself making all sorts of minor but telling adjustments in anticipation of life in a labour camp. Last night when I was walking along the quay beside him in a pair of comfortable sandals, I suddenly … Continue reading →

taz: 80 Jahre sind seit dem Anschlag von Georg Elser vergangen. Am Montag erhielt der Mann in seinem Geburtsort Hermaringen endlich ein Denkmal. Ω Ω Ω Nach der Befreiung wurde Elser ignoriert. Zu sehr hatte der 1945 ermordete Mann den Deutschen einen Spiegel … Continue reading →

A young Dutch tour guide paused his group so people could take photos. I talked to him for a while and then to an Dutch-American tour group without a guide about the issue of there being no connection with Dutch … Continue reading →

This would much more accurately be called National Occupation Museum. It’s very much the story of how non-Jewish Dutch experienced May 1940 to May 1945. The Temporary Exhibition space of the museum at present has “With creativity, reuse and improvisation, … Continue reading →