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The Nazis eventually discovered the main perpetrators and sent two senior SS officers to arrest them. A gun battle followed during which the two SS officers were killed. In a fit of anger, the Nazis mounted a reprisal attack and on the night of April 30th 1942, the town was razed to the ground.
Some of the townsmen, suspected of being involved with the operations there were executed and the rest were sent to concentration camps in Germany, of which about half perished there. The woman and children of the town were shipped out to Bergen and the Nazis planned to further separate the children from their parents (seems that Trump is merely copying old dictatorship habits) as a further act of barbarity.
However, a cunning plan by a local doctor foiled the attempt - he injected diphtheria bacterium into some of the captured woman, having first determined who were naturally immune. The Nazis were convinced that there was a looming epidemic on their hands so, concerned about the health impact on themselves, they changed the plan and decided to imprison their captees for two years in an isolated school.
by Paul Kaye, on Flickr
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