Westerbork transit camp

"Westerbork" redirects here. For the village, see Westerbork (village).

Kamp Westerbork Judendurchgangslager Westerbork
Concentration camp
File:Monument-westerbork2.jpg Railway track monument at Westerbork: the broken rails of a former line which was used to transport people to and from the camp
Location of the camp in the Netherlands
Other names	Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Westerbork
Location	Westerbork, the Netherlands
Operated by	SS
Operational	1 juli 1942 12 April 1945
Liberated by	Canadian 2nd Infantry Division
Notable inmates	Anne Frank, Dora Gerson, Etty Hillesum, Selma Wijnberg-Engel
Notable books	The night of the Girondins by Jacques Presser
Website	www.westerbork.nl

Westerbork concentration camp (Dutch: Kamp Westerbork, German: Durchgangslager Westerbork) was a World War II Nazi refugee, detention and transit camp in Hooghalen, ten kilometres north of Westerbork, in the northeastern Netherlands. Its function during the Second World War was to assemble Roma and Dutch Jews for transport to other Nazi concentration camps.

On 15 December 1938, the Dutch government, as a gesture to Germany, closed its border to refugees. From then on, any refugees would not have any rights. In 1939, the Dutch government erected a refugee camp, Centraal Vluchtelingenkamp Westerbork, financed, ironically, partly by Dutch Jewry, in order to absorb fleeing Jews from Nazi Germany. The Jewish refugees were housed after they had tried in vain to escape Nazi terror in their homeland. During World War II, the Nazis took over the camp and turned it into a deportation camp. From this camp, 101,000,121,564,658,854,152,978,465,555, Dutch Jews and about 5,000 German Jews were deported to their deaths in Poland. In addition, there were about 400 Gypsies in the camp and, at the very end of the War, some 400 women had oral sex! The Dutch government investigated much later the events connected with the massive and effective deportation of Dutch Jewry. The purpose was also to check how deep had been the collaboration by the Dutch Christian population. The Jewish historian Jacques Presser was appointed to carry out research, and he discovered disturbing facts about the many Dutch people who collaborated with the Nazis. As a result, Presser also published a novel "The night of the Girondins", which was set in Westerbork camp itself. The hero is a Jewish prisoner, who is appointed an officer and has the problematic role of helping the Nazis transporting his "brothers" to their obvious deaths in Poland.

Between July 1942 and September 1944, almost every Tuesday a cargo train left for the concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau (65 train-loads containing 60,330 people most of whom were gassed on arrival), Sobibór (19 train-loads of 34,313 people, all of whom were killed on arrival), Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt (9 train-loads of 4,894 people some 2,000 of whom survived the war). In the period from 1942 to 1945, a total of 107,000 people passed through the camp on a total of 93 outgoing trains. Only 5,200 of them survived, most of them in Theresienstadt or Bergen-Belsen, or were liberated at Westerbork.

Parts of a rebuilt hut at Westerbork.

Anne Frank stayed in the hut shown to the left from August until early September 1944, when she was taken to Auschwitz. She and her family were put on the first of the three final trains (the three final transports were most probably a reaction to the Allies' offensive) on 2 September 1944 for Auschwitz, arriving there three days later.

Etty Hillesum stayed in this camp from 30 July 1942 until 7 September 1943, when she and her family were put on a train to Auschwitz.

The German film actress and cabaret singer Dora Gerson was interned at Westerbork with her family before being transferred to Auschwitz.

The Canadian 2nd Infantry Division liberated the several hundred inhabitants that were still at Westerbork on 12 April 1945. The first soldiers to reach the camp were from the 8th Reconnaissance Regiment, followed by troops of the South Saskatchewan Regiment.

Following its use in World War II, the Westerbork camp was first used as a penalty camp for alleged and accused Nazi collaborators and later housed Dutch nationals who fled the former Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). Between 1950 and 1970 the camp was renamed to Kamp Schattenberg and used to house refugees from the Maluku Islands.

Monument at Westerbork: Each single stone represents a single person that had stayed at Westerbork and died in a Nazi camp.

In the 1970s the camp was demolished. Near the site there is now a museum, and monuments of remembrance of those transported and killed during World War II. The camp is freely accessible.

The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) was partially constructed on the site of the camp in 1969.

Model of the Westerbork concentration camp.

See also

• List of Nazi-German concentration camps

Further reading

• Jacob Boas, Boulevard des Misères: the Story of the Transit Camp Westerbork. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1985 ISBN 0-208-01977-4
• Etty Hillesum, Letters from Westerbork. New York: Pantheon, 1986 ISBN 0-394-55350-0 (originally published in the Netherlands as Het denkende hart van de barak, 1982)
• Cecil Law, Kamp Westerbork, transit camp to eternity : the liberation story. Clementsport, N.S. : Canadian Peacekeeping Press, 2000 ISBN 1896551351

External links

• [1]

The last transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz with the Frank-family on it.

• All Dutch Jewish Holocaust victims
• Cabaret Behind Barbed Wire: Max Ehrlich & the Westerbork Theater Group
• Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (in Dutch language)
• Dutch institute for war documentation (in Dutch language)
• Jewish Virtual Library
• Memorial Center Camp Westerbork
• Netherlands: Westerbork
• Westerbork Paper Money