Heroes – History of Sorts

“We Don’t Do This Sort of Thing”—The Story of a Hero

Nowadays, Amsterdam is known across the globe for several things, primarily for the red-light district. The area is known for its legal prostitution, sex shops, sex theatres, peep shows, a sex museum, a cannabis museum, and many coffee shops selling cannabis.

The city has more to offer than that though, museums, art and football to name but a few things.

The history of Amsterdam is mixed, especially its history during World War II. The majority of the Jewish population of Amsterdam was murdered during the Holocaust, often either by the Dutch Nazis or the German Nazis, who were assisted by Dutch collaborators.

However, some people who risked their lives to help their fellow neighbours, the often-forgotten Dutch heroes. One of these heroes had a military rank—she was a captain in an army—The Salvation Army.

Alida Margaretha Bosshardt was born into a Protestant middle-class family in Utrecht. Already at a young age, she showed independence and a strong will. During her teenage years, Alida came into contact with the Salvation Army and decided to enter the service. In 1932, at barely the age of 19 years, she took the oath, “…with God’s help, I will be a true and faithful soldier of the Salvation Army.”

She then studied at its Salvation Army Welfare and Health Academy to become an officer, a rank she attained in 1934. As a beginning recruit in the Army, Alida started work at the Zonnehoek, a home for children (from broken homes) in the Jewish area of eastern Amsterdam. Among her wards were the Jewish Terhorst sisters, Hendrina, b.1927, Helena, b.1934, and Dimphina, b.1938. In 1941, a newborn baby sister Roosje was accepted into the home. That same year, on the orders of the German occupying authorities, the Salvation Army was outlawed, and its buildings and money were confiscated. The Zonnehoek continued to function for some time as a private home. In the summer of 1942, with the onset of the deportations of the Jews to work in the East, many desperate Jewish parents brought their infants to Alida, begging her to find safe havens for them. In a large number of cases, she was able to do so, sometimes bringing them herself to the eastern parts of the country by bicycle. Some of the Jewish children she kept in the home, among whom were Klaartje Lindeman, Floortje and Doortje de Slechter and two Samson children. When the Germans billeted the home, Alida took as many children as she could to a newly rented apartment in the northern part of Amsterdam. She insisted that the four Terhorst sisters as well several other Jewish children stay under her care. During the move, she removed the yellow stars from the clothes of the older children, saying, “We don’t do this sort of thing.” After a bomb fell next to their new home, Alida again needed to move, making sure the Jewish children were included in the group. This scenario repeated itself several times until Alida had to split up the children and was able to find homes for some of the Gentile children and hide addresses for her various Jewish wards. In order to be able to buy food and other necessities, Alida went out to collect money. She was betrayed and arrested by the German regular police for collecting for the banned Salvation Army. Even though she was held at police headquarters, she managed to escape. She then hid at the orders of her Army superiors. When it was considered that the immediate danger had passed, Alida resumed her resistance and rescue activities. In the Hunger Winter of 1944-1945, she regularly went on food treks to the eastern rural parts of the country—to find food needed in the various children’s homes in the West.

After the war, the Jewish children all went back to their families. She worked at the Army National Headquarters in Amsterdam. She noticed that the Army had no activities in Amsterdam’s red-light district. Through De Wallen, she obtained permission to start working there. Her work for the prostitutes gained her national fame. In 1965, she accompanied Crown Princess Beatrix (later Queen Beatrix) on a secret visit to the red-light district.

Alida Bosshardt (in her nineties) stayed active with the Salvation Army as Majoor Bosshardt and kept in touch with her earlier wartime wards. On 25 January 2004, Yad Vashem recognized and honoured Alida Margaretha Bosshardt as Righteous Among the Nations.

After Alida’s death on 25 June 2007, her friend and colleague Colonel Margaret White wrote a fitting tribute to her in the UK Salvationist magazine. She said of Alida’s later life:

‘”With indefatigable energy and great love, she was the chaplain and social worker to the diverse population of the red-light district. For many years she lived, slept and had her office in one room in the building that housed the Goodwill Headquarters. Through a network of centres, she served the homeless and those with alcohol problems. She was instrumental in helping to formulate laws to safeguard the health of those in the trade of prostitution.

It is not hard to imagine the young Alida in occupied Holland, working to keep safe the 80 children in her charge. At risk to her own life, she would cycle past the Nazi soldiers with Jewish babies hidden in the wicker baskets on her bicycle, taking them to safe houses. For saving the lives of many Jewish children she was honoured with the Yad Vashem Award.

It is hard to imagine what Alida Bosshardt would have been had she not joined The Salvation Army. The Army was the rich soil which nurtured and gave opportunities and fulfilment to her remarkable and gifted life. It matched her and she matched it. To God be all the glory.”

Major Bosshardt was immortalised in a bronze statue on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal in the Red Light District – in front of the Salvation Army, where most of her life took place. It presents this wonderful woman sitting on a bench, in her simple Salvation Army uniform.

^{The inscription on the bench (full photo of the bench is the first photo on the page) reads, “Serving God is serving people, serving people is serving God.”}

Sources

https://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/news/holocaust-memorial-day-reflection-lieut-colonel-alida-bosshardt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alida_Bosshardt

Major Bosshardt

https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/righteous/4442841

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In the Memory of the Valor and the Sacrifices which Hallow this Soil

The title of this post is a quote engraved in the Marble reception hall of the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten in the Netherlands.

The cemetery was created in October 1944 under the leadership of Joseph Shomon of the 611th Graves Registration Company as the Ninth United States Army pushed into the Netherlands from France and Belgium. American casualties from the area and those that fell in Germany were buried there (as Americans could not be buried permanently in enemy territory).

A few years ago, we were allowed to scatter the ashes of our Father here.

In the past, I have written about some of the heroes buried here. This piece is about one of the heroes that dug the graves.

Jefferson Wiggins was 16 years old when he was recruited in his home town of Dothan to go to Europe with the US Army.

He grew up in a peasant home on land that his father rented from a wealthy landowner. He hardly enjoyed any education. The Ku Klux Klan ruled the area where he grew up. Once, he said, about 30 riders came to his house, threatening to kill his father. The crime: trying to sell a bale of cotton belonging to the farm’s owner to get money to feed his hungry family. The family escaped to the next county in a horse and wagon.

For Jeff, the army meant an escape, not just from a poor life without any prospects but especially from the racism he no longer wanted to endure.

Before leaving for Europe, Jeff attended military training courses in, among others, Fort Benning. He took the train to the port of New York and boarded there, along with thousands of others. While waiting weeks for his unit to board, a New York Public Library volunteer helped him improve his reading and writing.

Jeff was 18 and staff sergeant of the 960th Unit of the QMSC when he set foot in Scotland after the troubled nine-day voyage. His unit worked there, along with thousands of other African-American soldiers, in preparation for the major invasion on the European mainland, Operation Overlord, which started on June 6, 1944, D-day. African-American soldiers also landed on the beaches of Normandy, although the American media did not consciously pay attention to it. The US government did not consider that desirable.

In the autumn of 1944, the unit of the Quarter Master Service Company (QMSC), of which he was the first sergeant, was sent to the Netherlands. There he worked for weeks, day in and day out, as a grave digger at the American cemetery developed in Margraten. That was from September 1944 and immediately after the Southern part of the Netherlands was liberated. The American Army, at that time, was completely separated into black and white troops during WWII.

It was an excruciating and gruesome task It was an excruciating and gruesome task, physically and mentally, working in the vast fields filled with corpses. Some people had been dead for a few days, others for months. The bodies were mutilated and sometimes decaying. Every day trucks with new piles of corpses came to Margraten. There were no coffins, dead soldiers were put in mattress covers and buried.

At times they also buried civilians. Jeffery Wiggins later recalled.

“The first of the dead that we buried was a German girl. I remember part of her head was blown off. She had been hit by a grenade and had fifteen bullet holes in her back. According to my estimation, she had also been machine-gunned before or after a grenade attack. We transferred her from the American side of the cemetery to the ‘enemy’ section.”

“It wasn’t a hygienic job at all, and we never got completely clean. The stench hung around us for a long time when we were back in Gronsveld. It was gruesome, dirty work. Sometimes there was hot water in the school, but when there wasn’t, we heated water in our helmets, which we used as washing tubs. That’s how we washed.’

In 2009, as the guest of the Dutch government, Wiggins, then 84 and the last surviving soldier to bury the dead at Margraten, delivered the keynote address at the 65th-anniversary celebration of the liberation of the Netherlands by Allied forces during World War II. He passed away in 2013.

He wrote a book about his time during WW2, titled From Alabama to Margraten.

Dear Sir, I thank you for your services to my country.

sources

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/artikel/vechten-voor-andermans-vrijheid

https://www.bensavelkoul.nl/Jefferson_Wiggins.htm

https://www.bibliotheek.nl/catalogus/titel.383611601.html/van-alabama-naar-margraten/

https://blackliberators.nl/en/stories/jefferson-wiggins?fbclid=IwAR2JzK33de0-hsQMt_FcgwpkaTBlfURNpzA0zoUHb_p1jlhqFIcQnTGOnW0

https://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Jefferson-Wiggins-remembered-for-his-courage-4183600.php

Irena Sendler

Remembering the victims of the Holocaust is extremely important, now probably more than ever, however it is also important to remember the heroes who saved so many from certain death.

Today marks the 111th birthday of Irena Sendler.

Sendler was born Irena Krzyżanowska on February 15, 1910, in Otwock, Poland. Her parents were members of the Polish Socialist Party, and her father, Stanisław Krzyżanowski was a physician, he died of typhus when Irena was still a child. In 1931 Irena married Mieczysław Sendler, and the couple moved to Warsaw before the outbreak of World War II.

During the war, Irena worked at the Department for Social Welfare and Public Health in Poland, as a Social worker. She helped smuggle more than 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust.

As head of the children’s section of Żegota, the Polish underground Council for Aid to Jews, Irena (“Jolonta”) Sendler regularly used her position as a social worker to enter the Warsaw ghetto and help smuggle children out. Hiding them in orphanages, convents, schools, hospitals, and private homes, she provided each child with a new identity, carefully recording in code their original names and placements so that surviving relatives could find them after the war.

In September 1943, four months after the Warsaw ghetto was destroyed, Sendler was appointed director of Zegota’s Department for the Care of Jewish Children. Sendler, whose underground name was Jolanta, exploited her contacts with orphanages and institutes for abandoned children, to send Jewish children there. Many of the children were sent to the Rodzina Marii (Family of Mary) Orphanage in Warsaw and religious institutions run by nuns in nearby Chotomów, and Turkowice, near Lublin.

On 20 October 1943, Sendler was arrested. She managed to stash away incriminating evidence such as the coded addresses of children in the care of Zegota and large sums of money to pay to those who helped Jews. She was sentenced to death and sent to the infamous Pawiak prison, but underground activists managed to bribe officials to release her. Her close encounter with death did not deter her from continuing her activity. After her release in February 1944, even though she knew that the authorities were keeping an eye on her, Sendler continued her underground activities. Because of the danger, she had to go into hiding. The necessities of her clandestine life prevented her from attending her mother’s funeral.

This work was done at huge risk, in October 1941 a law was passed that —giving any kind of assistance to Jews in Poland was punishable by death, not just for the person who was providing the help but also for their entire family or household.

Jews would face the death penalty if they were found outside the ghetto, and those that helped the Jews had the same fate.

After the war, Sendler’s first marriage ended in divorce. In 1947 she married Stefan Zgrzembski, with whom she had three children, daughter Janka, and sons Andrzej (who died in infancy) and Adam. After the death of Zgrzembski, Sendler remarried her first husband, Mieczysław Sendler, but their reunion didn’t last and they again divorced.

Yad Vashem recognized Ms. Sendler with the Righteous Among the Nations medal in 1965. She died in Warsaw, Poland, on May 12, 2008, following a long illness.

sources

https://www.ushmm.org/information/press/in-memoriam/irena-sendler-1910-2008

https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-women/sendler.asp

https://www.biography.com/activist/irena-sendler

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-57601563

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Fatebenefratelli Hospital & Syndrome K.

Initially Italy was an ally of Germany and the other axis powers. during World War 2.

By 1943, Italy’s military position had become untenable. Axis forces in North Africa were finally defeated in the Tunisia Campaign in early 1943. Italy suffered major setbacks on the Eastern Front as well. The Allied invasion of Sicily brought the war to the nation’s very doorstep. The Italian home front was also in bad shape as the Allied bombings were taking their toll. Factories all over Italy were brought to a virtual standstill because raw materials, such as coal and oil, were lacking. Additionally, there was a chronic shortage of food, and what food was available was being sold at nearly confiscatory prices. Mussolini’s once-ubiquitous propaganda machine lost its grip on the people; a large number of Italians turned to Vatican Radio or Radio London for more accurate news coverage.

In July 1943, Allied troops landed in Sicily. Mussolini was overthrown and imprisoned by his former colleagues in the Fascist government. The Italian king replaced Mussolini as prime minister with Marshal Pietro Badoglio.

On September 8, 1943, Badoglio announced Italy’s unconditional surrender to the Allies. The Germans, who had grown suspicious of Italian intentions, quickly occupied northern and central Italy.

The 450-year-old Fatebenefratelli Hospital which is situated on a tiny island in the middle of Rome’s Tiber River, just across from the Jewish Ghetto. When Nazis raided the area on Oct. 16, 1943, a handful of Jews fled to the Catholic hospital, where they were quickly given case files reading “Syndrome K.”

The name Syndrome K came from Dr. Adriano Ossicini, an anti-Fascist physician working at the hospital who knew they needed a way for the staff to differentiate which people were actually patients and which were Jews in hiding. Inventing a fake disease cut out all the confusion, when a doctor came in with a “Syndrome K” patient, everyone working there knew which steps to take. “Syndrome K was put on patient papers to indicate that the sick person wasn’t sick at all, but Jewish.

The name Syndrome K not only alerted hospital staff that the “patients” were actually Jewish refugees in good health but also served as a jab to their oppressors, specifically, Albert Kesselring and Herbert Kappler. Kesselring was a Nazi defensive strategist and the commander responsible for the Italian occupation, while Kappler was an SS colonel.

Hidden away in a separate ward of the facility, those “infected” with Syndrome K were instructed to cough and act sick in front of Nazi soldiers as they investigated Fatebenefratelli. The patients were said to be highly contagious, deterring Nazi officials from coming anywhere near the quarters they were being kept in. Nazi officials became terrified of contracting the mysterious illness, steering clear at all costs.

Credited mainly to doctors Sacerdoti, Borromeo, and Ossicini, the operation was only made possible with the help of the entire staff, who played along with the plan, knowing exactly what to do when confronted with an incoming patient diagnosed with Syndrome K..

“The Nazis thought it was cancer or tuberculosis, and they fled like rabbits,” Vittorio Sacerdoti, a Jewish doctor working at the hospital under a false name, told the BBC in 2004. Another doctor orchestrating the life-saving lie was surgeon Giovani Borromeo.

Initially, the hospital was used as a hospice on the premises of the San Giovanni Calibita Church. Later, it was expanded into a modern hospital by Dr. Giovanni Borromeo, who joined in 1934, with the help of Father Maurizio Bialek.

Besides Fr. Maurizio and Borromeo, other doctors on staff assisted the Jewish patients and helped to move them to safer hideouts outside the hospital. In May 1944, the hospital was raided and five Jews from Poland were detained. However, the ruse saved dozens of lives.

Fr. Maurizio and Borromeo also installed an illegal radio transmitter in the hospital basement and made contact with General Roberto Lordi of the Italian Royal Air Force. After World War II, Borromeo was lauded by Government of Italy for his work and was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. He died in the hospital on 24 August 1961.

If only one person in the Hospital, be it patient or staff, had reported it to the Nazis, then without a shadow of a doubt, all of them would have been killed.

The combined efforts of Sacerdoti, Borromeo, Ossicini, and the entire hospital staff were only revealed 60 years later, and Borromeo specifically was recognized by the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in October 2004, not only for his work with Syndrome K, but for transferring Jewish patients to the hospital from the ghetto long before the occupation of the Nazis.

The Fatebenefratelli Hospital was recognized as a shelter for victims of Nazi persecution, and was named a “House of Life” in June, 2016. The ceremony was attended by Ossicini, 96-years-old at the time, along with some of the very people that his heroic efforts had helped save six decades before.

Fatebenefratelli survivors embrace during a reunion at the hospital on June 21, 2016

Sources

https://qz.com/724169/an-italian-doctor-explains-syndrome-k-the-fake-disease-he-invented-to-save-jews-from-the-nazis/

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/93650/syndrome-k-fake-disease-fooled-nazis-and-saved-lives

https://allthatsinteresting.com/syndrome-k

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May 4 Remembering the dead

May 4 is the designated day in the Netherlands to remember all those who died in WWII and other conflicts.

At 8PM , 2 minutes of silence will be observed across the country. A few yeas ago I saw a picture that really touched me , It was of a pizza delivery boy getting of his bike at 8 and stopped 2 minutes to remember the dead. It still brings tears to me eyes today, not out of sadness but out of joy. It is good to know that the younger generations still know the value of respect. Especially for those who died for them as they did for me.

So many have died, in concentration camps, in battle in Europe and in the pacific, resistance fighters there are just too many to name. It is a task impossible for any one person to do.

I will remember all those millions who died during WWII. They died because of some evil men wanted their ideologies spread all over the world. I say ideologies but they were really idiocrasies.

I will remember them via a few names of brave men who are buried in ‘The Netherlands American Cemetery’ in Margraten.

10,022 names are connected to the cemetery. 8301 who are buried there, the other names are of those who are remembered and whose bodies weren’t found or were returned home. There is one name there that is special to me, Pierre de Klein, my dad. He did not die in WWII, he died in 2015 but he always had wanted to be a professional soldier. He did fulfill his military service, but his mother discouraged him of becoming a full time soldier like his Father before him, his Father was killed in WWII when my dad was only 5. The management of The Netherlands American Cemetery were so kind to allow his to scatter my Father’s ashes at the Cemetery making his remains to be 8302.

Remembering.

Aldy Willie D. Technician Fourth Grade 34139177 U.S. Army World War II Netherlands American Cemetery Mississippi 10th Tank Battalion, 5th Armored Division.

Alston Tullos Private 38416283 U.S. Army World War II Netherlands American Cemetery Texas 2nd Quartermaster Battalion

Zuidema John A. Technical Sergeant 36704981 U.S. Army World War II Netherlands American Cemetery Illinois 120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division

Youngblood Eugene P. Corporal 35600074 U.S. Army Air Forces World War II Netherlands American Cemetery Ohio 316th Fighter Control Squadron

Wright Richard D. Second Lieutenant O-808209 U.S. Army Air Forces World War II Netherlands American Cemetery Massachusetts 367th Bomber Squadron, 306th Bomber Group, Heavy

Wright Richard J. Second Lieutenant O2060633 U.S. Army Air Forces World War II Netherlands American Cemetery Michigan 78th Squadron, 435th Troop Carrier Group

Winters Clinton First Lieutenant O-751514 U.S. Army Air Forces World War II Netherlands American Cemetery Missouri 506th Fighter Squadron, 404th Fighter Group

Winton Merbell C. Technician Fifth Grade 12034147 U.S. Army World War II Netherlands American Cemetery New Jersey 309th Infantry Regiment, 78th Infantry Division

Winzey Patrick M. Staff Sergeant 32983248 U.S. Army Air Forces World War II Netherlands American Cemetery New York 615th Bomber Squadron, 401st Bomber Group, Heavy

Alexander George S. Second Lieutenant O-869037 U.S. Army Air Forces World War II Netherlands American Cemetery Texas 714th Bomber Squadron, 448th Bomber Group, Heavy

Alexander Harry N. First Lieutenant O-767721 U.S. Army Air Forces World War II Netherlands American Cemetery California 566th Bomber Squadron, 389th Bomber Group, Heavy

They gave their today for our tomorrow.

Our tomorrow was sacred to them.

They gave their today for our tomorrow..

Sacrificing their own lives for those they would never meet.

They gave their today for our tomorrow..

A tomorrow which we should cherish even more.

They gave their today for our tomorrow.

Their bravery should forever be remembered and ingrained in our hearts.

They gave their today for our tomorrow.

To those who gave their today for my tomorrow, I bow humbly and respectfully and hope I was worth your sacrifice.

SOURCE

https://www.abmc.gov/Netherlands

The Forgotten heroes of WWII.

Today is World Animal Day and what better day to pick to remember some of the forgotten Heroes of WWII. The animals that often played a very important role.

Pfc. Rez P. Hester of the Marine Corps Seventh War Dog Platoon on Iwo Jima takes a nap while Butch stands guard. February 1945.(courtesy National Archives)

Cpl. William Wende brushes GI Jenny, the burro mascot of an Army unit in North Africa. The interested terrier is named Pito. Ca. 1943.(Courtesy National Archives)

Antis was a dog who received the Dickin Medal in 1949 from the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals for bravery in service in England and North Africa during WWII.

antis

Lin Wang was an Asian elephant who served with the Chinese Expeditionary Force during the Second Sino-Japanese War :1937–1945.

lin

Chinese cavalry during WWII.

Cavalry

William of Orange was a male war pigeon of British military intelligence service MI14. He was awarded the 21st Dickin Medal for delivering a message from the Arnhem Airborne Operation. This message saved more than 2000 soldiers at the time of the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944. Its official name in military record is NPS.42.NS.15125. He received the Dickin Medal in May 1945.

william

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Sources

National Archives

Daily MaiL

Archives MOD.

Would I have the same courage as Benjamin Blankenstein?

Benjamin

What would I do? Or, how much courage would I have? These are questions that haunt me in relation to the Holocaust? Questions which are becoming more and more relevant these days.

There was a time where I would jeopardize my life to defend my principles in relation to justice and the treatment of my fellow man. But now that I have a family of my own and people who depend on me, that dynamic has changed, I am not so sure what I would do now and I would not have an answer for the 2 questions at the start of this blog.

I am sure Benjamin Blankenstein must have asked himself similar questions, but he answered those questions by taking action.

Benjamin Blankenstein was a teacher at the local Christian elementary school in the town of Soestdijk (prov. Utrecht) in the Netherlands.He was married to Maria who stayed at home as a home maker , on Septenber 10, 1940 the couple had a baby girl,Fieke.Benjamin was 26 at the time, Maria was a few years older.

In 1943 Benjamin became an active member of the resistance , part of the countrywide Landelijke Organisatie (LO),Him and his wife also had a 2nd baby daughter,Betty, that year.

Blankenstein familie

The LO was an organization that assisted both Jews in hiding, and non-Jews wanted for resistance activity or evading forced labor in Germany.

Notwithstanding the gave dangers they could face the Blankensteins took the decision to hide Jews in their own home.

It was brought to Benjamin’s attention that the Bernstein family from nearby Soest had been betrayed at an earlier hiding place. Benjamin and Maria gave refuge to Henry Bernstein, his wife Martha and their 14-year-old son Rolf, Jewish refugees from Düsseldorf, Germany.

On September 3, 1942 the Dutch police had issued the following statement.

“The mayor of Soest requested that the stateless Jews Henry Bernstein, his wife and their son Rolf Bernstein, all residing at 35a Kerkpad NZ in Soest and having violated the regulations by changing their place of residence without permission, be located, detained and brought to trial.”

The 2 families got on wonderful.In the evenings Benjamin would school Rolf so he would not fall behind in his education.

Unfortunately the families were betrayed. On June 5, 1944, while Benjamin was at school. The police arrested the Bernsteins and looted the Blankensteins home About half an hour later , Benjamin was arrested at the school, and taken to prison in Amsterdam . Later he was sent to to the Vught concentration camp, aka Herzogenbusch concentration camp.

Vught

On September 5, 1944, with the Allied Forces approaching, Blankenstein was moved to camps in Germany and eventually died

in Bergen-Belsen on February 24, 1945. Nine days earlier hsi 3rd daughter Thea was born.

The Bernsteins were taken from the Blankenstein home and deported. Henry and Rolf were murdered in Auschwitz.

Martha Bernstein survived the war. After her return from the camp, ill and alone, she was again welcomed by Maria Blankenstein.

On March 27, 2005, Yad Vashem recognized Benjamin Blankenstein and Maria Suzanna Blankenstein-van Klingeren, as Righteous Among the Nations.

Benjamin en Maria

On August 6. 2010. De city of Soest placed a Stolperstein, a stumbling stone, which is a memorial to remember Benjamin Blankenstein. The memorial was placed outside their home on the Van Straelenlaan 31.

Stolper stein

In 2006 Henry and Rolf Bernstein also got memorials in the form of Stolper steine in their home in Hilden near Dusseldorf.

Bernstein

Donation

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Sources

Yad Vashem

Joods Monument

.4-5-mei.nl/nieuws/1/4/stolperstein-benjamin-blankenstein

Mercer Greene Abernathy- A hero who gave his life for strangers.

Mercer

One of the definitions of a hero is “a person noted for courageous acts or nobility of character”

Mercer G. Abernathy was such a person and even though I don’t know him it is with a 100% certainty I can state he was a hero.

I know nothing of this man except for his Army records and a page of his high school year book, and that he was born on December 29, 1924. in Texas

football

He doesn’t even have a grave because he died in Germany or the Netherlands missing In Action as navigator on a B17 Flying Fortress.

All that he is remembered by is his name on a memorial marker in the Netherlands American War Cemetery in Margraten near Maastricht in the Netherlands.

Memorial

He died in a foreign land trying to liberate strangers from evil.

At the entrance of American War Cemetery in Margraten there is a text on a building which says

“In Memory of the Valor and sacrifices which hallow this soil”

Earlier this year I visited the cemetery and said a prayer for all of those buried there and remembered there and said a few separate prayers for a few, Mercer Greene Abernathy was one of those few for I owe so much to those men.

Dear Sir I salute you.

Valot

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8301

8301, not just a number or mathematical equation.

8301 sacrifices made for the freedom of others.

8301 young lives ended by violence

8301 heroes

8301 reasons why we should never forget what hate,ignorance and intolerance can do.

8301. although a large number it is only a small percentage of the overall sacrifices made.

8301 men whose future was taken.

8301 who found their final resting place in Margraten,the Netherlands.

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Sgt Rosenkrantz

I started this website and my blogs to find answers. Answers to how exactly my paternal Grandfather died. all I know is that he died during WWII when he was serving with the Dutch military and that he died early om in the war. But the circumstances how he died are somewhat vague,so I have resigned to the fact that I probably will never find out exactly what happened, for all those who could shed some light on it are now also gone. But I will learn how to live with that.

That’s why this brings so much joy in my heart. Last Saturday,my siblings and I visited the American War Cemetery in Margraten in the Netherlands. It is a place of contrast because it is both a very sad place but also in equal measures a beautiful place. It is surrounded by a beautiful hilly country side, and the cemetery is extremely well maintained.

unnamed

8,301 souls are buried here.Stretching along the sides of the court are Tablets of the Missing on which are recorded 1,722 names. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified.

unnamed (1)

All of these 10,023 men are not just names on a cross or star, or a name carved in a wall, they are all heroes, each with a separate story to tell.

As is the story of Sgt David Rosenkrantz.

On 28 September 1944, Rosenkrantz an his platoon was occupying a farm, near Groesbeek, the Netherlands, when they were attacked by an overwhelming force. The isolated paratroopers hid among sparse trees and buildings. As Rosenkrantz rose from his position, enemy gunfire erupted and killed him. Due to enemy fire and the proximity of enemy troops, his remains could not be recovered.

It took decades before the family could have closure in 2012 Sgt David Rosenkrantz’s dog tags were found and only in February 2018 where his remains finally found.

He now no longer is a name on the wall for those who are missing in action. The final chapter of the book of his life was closed.

https://www.adoptiegraven-margraten.nl/en/

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