Camp Westerbork: 97,776 Jews deported to German and Polish concentration camps
Top left: the bent rail track. Top right: Hauptsturmführer Albert Gemmeker and Frau Hassel’s Green Villa overlooking the camp. Bottom left: the only original barrack. Middle: every deported and killed Jew has a stone with a starBottom Right: the original cattle train that deported the Jews and Sintis/Roma’s with the tour guide.
Camp Westerbork was a Nazi transit camp in the province of Drenthe in the Northeastern Netherlands. Transport trains arrived at Westerbork every Tuesday from July 1942 to September 1944; an estimated 97,776 Jews were deported during the period. Anne Frank and her family arrived in Westerbork on 4 August 1944 and the family was put on a transport to Auschwitz on 3 September.
During World War II, Camp Westerbork, situated in the Northeastern Netherlands, was known as the ominous "gateway to Hell." Originally established in 1939 as a refugee camp for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany and Austria, its purpose drastically changed when the German forces invaded the Netherlands in 1940. It was then repurposed as a transit camp, used to stage the deportation of Jews to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Sobibor.
Although not designed for industrial murder like extermination camps, Camp Westerbork played a significant role in the Nazi's horrific agenda. The camp covered only half a square kilometer and was considered "humane" by Nazi standards. Jewish inmates with families were housed in interconnected cottages, while single inmates resided in oblong barracks.
Number of Jewish communities in Netherlands before and after WW2
The deportation process involved regular transport trains arriving at Westerbork every Tuesday between July 1942 and September 1944. Around 97,776 Jews were deported during this period, destined for concentration camps where the vast majority faced immediate death upon arrival.
Surprisingly, Camp Westerbork featured various facilities and activities designed to give inmates a false sense of hope and maintain order during transportation. These included a school, orchestra, hairdresser, and restaurants.
Among the notable prisoners at Westerbork were Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum, both of whom documented their experiences in diaries later discovered after the war. Sadly, Anne Frank was deported to Auschwitz from Westerbork and perished there.
The camp's leadership changed over time, with Jacques Schol, a Dutchman, serving as the commander initially. However, in 1942, German authorities took control, and Albert Konrad Gemmeker became responsible for sending thousands of Jews to their deaths.
The camp's dark chapter finally came to an end in September 1944, as transports ceased, and Allied troops approached. The camp was liberated by Canadian forces on April 12, 1945.
In retrospect, Camp Westerbork serves as a haunting reminder of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust, and its story continues to bear witness to the resilience and courage of those who suffered under its oppressive regime.
Camp Westerbork and The Crystal Butterfly
Though Westerbork wasn't per se a camp where Dutch resisters were held, as I say in my video, some of our brave WW2 heroes and heroines were taken there usually to be immediately killed n front of a firing squad somewhere in the province of Drenthe. Edda Van Der Valk ends up in Westerbork in August 1944 together with her neighbour Tante Riet. To read more about Edda’s uncommon treatment by Hauptsturmführer Albert Gemmeker read chapters 39 to 44 of The Crystal Butterfly.
Here’s the snippet where Edda meets Gemmeker for the first time….
She placed the brown leather suitcase, with its reinforced metal corners, on top of the table. Still somewhat weak yet with her legs feeling surprisingly strong, Edda gazed outside, trying to come to terms with her captivity, her aloneness, the mission Doctor Samuels had given her. “Stay alive”. Why had this never seemed a mission before? One breathed in and out, one lived, but getting orders to stay alive, seemed odd, unnatural. And yet there had been an urgency in the old psychiatrist’s voice, as if commissioned by God to deliver this message to her. “Stay alive!”
Edda gasped. She suddenly understood. The epiphany made her sink down on the chair, open-eyed, horrified. She was the witness of a secret, inconceivable, inhumane act of barbarity. Far worse than the occupation, far worse than bombs and casualties of war. Her sixth sense had tried to tell her every day but she hadn’t listened, couldn’t listen. Hitler was massacring all the Jews he could get his hands on. They were not coming back from the East. Not coming back. Ash would not come back. Not come back.
And she? She had to stay alive to bear witness to the times her people were living through. She would testify to the rest of the world what the anti-Semites had done in Holland during the war. Find evidence, bring to justice those who’d systematically extinguished the Jewish race—innocent people, families, husbands, wives, siblings, children, babies, and grandparents.
“Miss Van der Valk?” A German-laced voice said behind her. Edda turned gracefully, as a ballerina would, tears in her eyes but her heart full of confidence in her mission. Before her stood an attractive German high official, whom she immediately recognized as the Camp Commander, Albert Gemmeker, who was better known by his nickname, the ‘Gentleman Crook’.
She’d heard the talk he lived with Frau Hassel, who apparently doubled as his mistress and his secretary in the big green villa overlooking the camp. Opulence starkly contrasting with the hand-to-mouth existence in the barracks.
He stretched out his hand, well-manicured but ringless. Edda hesitated. It was against her principles to shake hands with Nazis, but Doctor Samuel seemed to whisper in her ear, ‘Stay alive!’ so she snapped to attention without words of greeting but with a curt nod.
“I heard you’ve been quite ill, Miss Van der Valk. Was the treatment in our hospital satisfactory?” The tall German with his open face and polite manners looked at her frankly with what seemed a genuine smile of interest on his lips.
You’re an enigma, shot through Edda’s mind, but you’re not who you pretend to be.
“Quite satisfactory, Sir. Doctor Samuels is an excellent doctor.”
“He is,” Gemmeker replied with a sigh. “The great doctor will be sorely missed here but his expertise was needed elsewhere.”
Then why did you let him go? Edda wanted to shout but bit her tongue.
“Anyway, Miss Van der Valk, I came here to personally invite you to dinner with my secretary and me tonight. My housekeeper, Frau Asch, is an excellent cook and Doctor Samuels advised me you had not been eating well before you came here.”
Monument at Camp Westerbork for some of the killed Dutch Resistance fighters
