Westerbork transit camp: Difference between revisions

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*[http://www.max-ehrlich.org Cabaret Behind Barbed Wire: Max Ehrlich & the Westerbork Theater Group]
*[http://www.max-ehrlich.org Cabaret Behind Barbed Wire: Max Ehrlich & the Westerbork Theater Group]
*[http://www.edwardvictor.com/Holocaust/Netherlands.htm Netherlands: Westerbork]
*[http://www.edwardvictor.com/Holocaust/Netherlands.htm Netherlands: Westerbork]
*[http://www.numismondo.com/pm/wbk Westerbork Paper Money]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20060209094022/http://www.numismondo.com/pm/wbk/ Westerbork Paper Money]
*[http://www.ehri-project.eu/transit-camps Transit Camps in Western Europe During the Holocaust]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20141129031940/http://www.ehri-project.eu/transit-camps Transit Camps in Western Europe During the Holocaust]


{{The Holocaust}}
{{The Holocaust}}

Revision as of 04:46, 23 December 2017

"Westerbork" redirects here. For other uses, see Westerbork (disambiguation).
Kamp Westerbork
Judendurchgangslager Westerbork
Selma Wijnberg-Engel, Max Ehrlich, Wilhelm Mautner, Ellen Burka
Notable booksThe night of the Girondins by Jacques Presser
Websitewww.westerbork.nl

The Westerbork transit camp (

concentration camps
.

Establishment and history of the camp

Opening of the Central Refugee Camp

Since the establishment of the National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany in 1933, the Netherlands had been managing a steady flow of Jewish refugees across its border with Germany. On 15 December 1938, the Dutch government closed its border to refugees; there had been a substantial increase in the refugee flow from Germany following the Kristallnacht pogrom there on 9–10 November. In 1939, the Dutch government erected a Central Refugee Camp (Dutch: Centraal Vluchtelingenkamp) near Westerbork. The Committee for Jewish Refugees (Dutch: Comité voor Joodsche Vluchtelingen), which had been managing the support of the German refugees since 1933, had been required to underwrite the Camp's expenses with a one million guilder fund. The first 22 refugees took up residence at the Camp in October 1939.[1]

Under German control

Following the

Gypsies in the camp and, at the very end of the War, some 400 women from the resistance movement. [citation needed
]

Between July 1942 and September 1944, almost every Tuesday a

Theresienstadt (9 train-loads totalling 4,894 people, some 2,000 of whom survived the war).[2]
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.

Some notable prisoners

Parts of a rebuilt hut at Westerbork, which once held Anne Frank

Anne Frank stayed in the hut shown above from August until early September 1944, when she was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau. 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 3 September 1944 for Auschwitz, arriving there three days later.

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

Etty Hillesum was interned in this camp from 30 July 1942 until 7 September 1943, when she and her family were put on a train to Auschwitz.[3]

Professor Sir William Asscher survived the camp when his mother secured his family's release by fabricating English ancestry.[4]

Liberation

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

The South Saskatchewan Regiment.[2][5]

Post-World War II

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
).

In 1950, the Dutch government appointed the Jewish historian Jacques Presser to investigate the events connected with the massive deportation of Dutch Jewry and the extent of the collaboration by the Dutch non-Jewish population. The results were published fifteen years later in The Catastrophe (De Ondergang). Presser also published a novel, The Night of the Girondins, which was set in Westerbork camp itself.

Between 1950 and 1970, the camp was renamed Kamp Schattenberg and used to house refugees from the Maluku Islands.

Nazi concentration camp
.
Model of the Westerbork concentration camp.

In 1969, the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) was partially constructed on the site of the 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.

References

  1. OCLC 12978293
    .
  2. ^ a b Hans Vanderwerff. "Westerbork - Portal of Auschwitz". Archived from the original on 2002-02-02.
  3. ^ Frank, Evelyne. Avec Etty Hillesum: Dans la quête du bonheur, un chemin inattendu. Une lecture d'une vie bouleversée et des lettres de Westerbork, Genève: Labor et Fides, 2002.
  4. ^ Gulland, Anne (15 November 2014). "William Asscher" (PDF): 22. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. 8th Reconnaissance Regiment

Herbstrith, W. (1983). Edith Stein: A biography (5th rev. ed.) (Trans. B. Bonowitz). San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row Publishers.

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kamp Westerbork.
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