How to Flee the Gestapo

May 8, 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich to the Allies and therefore the end of the Second World War in Europe. It […]

Over the fifteen years that I’ve been keeping this blog about Dutch-Paris and grassroots resistance, many people have reached out to me from across the globe asking questions and offering […]

Eighty years after the American Army liberated his hometown of Maastricht on September 13-14, 1944, my father still remembers the day. This is his story of his liberation. Only six […]

In a previous post I mentioned the possibility of false resisters making claims to having been in the resistance during the uncertain period of the Liberation.  It happened. Not often, […]

There are lots of heart-warming stories about soldiers making their own bit of Christmas during WWII by doing things like dressing up as St. Nick and having parties for the […]

Let’s continue our discussion of how private citizens have influenced the public memory of the Second World War. We began with Memorial naming the victims of the Soviet regime in […]

It goes without saying that the stakes over public memory in Western Europe are nowhere near as high as they were when the private citizens of Memorial were challenging the […]

Memory slips and shifts depending on the person and the time. Ask any five people what happened at a particular place and time and they will all have a slightly […]

An extraordinary woman of incredible courage passed away on 11 December 2022. At only 19 and 20 years old, Joke (pronounced Yo-ka) Folmer guided hundreds of fugitives including downed Allied […]

I recently had a wonderful conversation with a Dutch woman and her mother. They’re trying to piece together the story of their father/grandfather. He was arrested on the Franco-Swiss border […]