Figure 1.--
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Figure 1.-- |
The Jews arrested by the NAZIs were assembled at the Westerbork camp. The usual procedure was to start boarding the sealed cattle cars at 7:00 am on Tuesday. The trains left at 11:00 am. The NAZIs over the course of the deportations dispatched 93 trains from Westerbork. The first one departed on July 15, 1942 and the last was dispatched September 6, 1944 as the British were moving into Netherlands. The trains were mostly routed to Auschwitz, about one-third went to other camps, primarily Sobibor. The transport to Auschwitz usually lasted about 2 1/2 days, passing through Germany to the Polish Camps.
The ever-creative German propaganda machine ran newspaper articles claiming that Dutch Christians were "attacking" the Jews who had asked for protection from the German authorities, who were providing them a "place of refuge" in Poland. The grateful Dutch Jews were donating their possessions to the German people who they knew were having a "rough time of it" because of the Allied bombing campaign.
Jews were arrested by the NAZIs and their Dutch collaborators. I'm not sure to what extent the Wehrmact and the regular Dutch police were used to arrest the Jews. After their arrest, the Jews were assembled at the Westerbork camp in the northern Netherlands. This meant that there was always a ready supply of victims that could be loaded on the transports. The amount of time spent at Westerbork varied greatly. One the deportations began in mid-1942, the average time spent at Westerbork was about 2 weeks, but this could vary substantially.
The usual procedure was to start boarding the sealed cattle cars at 7:00 am on Tuesday. The trains left at 11:00 am. We have an image of what we believe to be a family preparing to board the transports at Westerbork. They seem to be having their possessions checked.
The deportees were shipped in cattle cars lacking the most basic ammenities. The transport to Auschwitz usually lasted about 2 1/2 days, passing through Germany to the Polish Camps.
The NAZIs over the course of the deportations dispatched 93 trains from Westerbork. The first one departed on July 15, 1942 and the last was dispatched September 6, 1944 as the British were moving into Netherlands.
The transport trains were mostly routed to Auschwitz, about one-third went to other camps, primarily Sobibor. The NAZIs between July 1942 and November 1944 dispatched over 104,000 Jews and 250 Roma (Gypsies) from Westerbock and Vught.The destination was not labor camps in Germany, but death camps in Poland. There were 65 trains with 58,380 people entrained to Auschwitz II (Birkenau). The NAZIs dispated 19 train loads with 34,000 people to Sorbior. The sorbibor camp was especially deadly. Only 13 Dutch Jews survived. After the Red Army overran Poland in 1944, the NAZIs could no longer had the death camps. Even so, deportations of Duth Jews continued. The NAZIs dispattched nine trains 4,894 Jews to Theresienstadt, an Internment camp and Transit camp north of Prague . Of these about 2,000 survived. The remaining 4,413 Jews were shipped to Bergen-Belsen near Hannover in Germany. [Vanderwerff]
Anderson, Anthony E. "Anne Frank was not alone: Holland and the Holocaust" [Online], October 24, 1995.
Vanderwerff, Hans. Journey's End, accesed October 19, 2002.
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