Westerbork
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The picture above is taken from a local Dutch newspaper. It is a small article from April 30,1942. Although it is a small notification it gives a wealth of information. The article is about Klara(or Clara) Borstel-Engelsman, born in Amsterdam the piece announces her 100th birthday and how it is celebrated. It tells us she…
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I know some people will criticize me for this article. Because they cannot fathom why anyone would harm a nine-month-old baby, leave alone murder her. Seeing the face of a baby, knowing the child was killed by an evil regime, hits them hard in the gut. But I don’t care, truth is I want people…
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I am not a great fan of statistics because without the full story behind them, they can be manipulated and often they are. However sometimes they can be useful to indicate a scale, In this the scale of death and destruction during the Holocaust. Between July 15,1942 and 13 September 1944 107,000 Jews were deported …
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93 trains left concentration camp Westerbork in the Netherlands between July 1942 and September 1944. All the trains were heading eastbound. Not one single journey would be a pleasant one , The final destination would more then likely result in death. I deliberately call Westerbork a concentration camp, because that’s what it was, It is…
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What a lot of people don’t realize is that Camp Westerbork was actually established as a refugee camp for Jews escaping the Nazi regime in Germany and Austria.and who had illegally entered the Netherlands. It was established by the Dutch government in the summer of 1939. In July 1942, the Nazis took over the camp…
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I don’t know what it is but the last few days I have discovered several accounts of victims of the Holocaust which are very near to me. Not so much that I was related to these people or that I knew them, but I knew the locality and the addresses where they lived. In fact…
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This must be one of the most amazing events I came across, but amidst all the killing, torture, deportations and other horrors in Camp Westerbork, they actually found time to set up a football competition. Initiated in the Spring of 1943, the competition had several teams of Jewish inmates and was a welcome distraction. It…
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The Transport 64 from Westerbork in the Netherkands , was the designated transport number for the moving of 2511 people to Sobibor in Poland, on May 18th 1943.(The transport also had designated number 12, there would often be more numbers for 1 transport) Most of them were residents of the city of Nijmegen. In the…
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This blog will be based on facts and some presumptions, but the presumptions are more then likely correct. I was going over the history of the deported Jews from my birthplace Geleen, south east of the Netherlands. when I noticed the name of the Cohen family. There is not a lot I know or could…
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Ironically Camp Westerbork had been set up in 1939 to house Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands. Following the German invasion of the Netherlands, the Nazis took over the camp and turned it into a deportation camp. From this camp, there was a deportation of 101,000 Dutch Jews and about 5,000 German…
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