Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 03/03/1944

The deportation list for the transport of March 3, 1944 was compiled in Westerbork. It consisted of 732 persons. Among them were 94 children under the age of 18. The majority of the deportees were most likely Jews who were caught in hiding. Members of the pioneer movement (Vereeniging tot Vakopleiding van Palestina Pioniers) in the Netherlands were included in this transport. This was a movement engaged in training Jewish youth to be pioneers in Palestine and in various resistance activities such as arranging safe houses and escape routes from the Netherlands. Based on Jacques Papier’s post-war testimony to the NIOD (The Institute for War and Genocide Studies in the Netherlands), 132 deportees were registered on a ‘Sonderliste’ (special list). This was a list of deportees consisting mostly of half Jews (those with only two Jewish grandparents), but also non-Jews who had been arrested helping Jews. Six deportees managed to escape before they entered the train. They were members of the pioneer movement. In her post-war testimony Lotti Siesel reported the following about the escape: ‘At the beginning of March 1944 I was again on the deportation list to Auschwitz. […] Like everyone else I handed in my papers in the barrack and then went to the train. While my friends who worked at [the department] ‘Aid to Deportees’ (Hulp aan vertrekkenden) carried my suitcase, I quickly wrapped one of the bands which all the helpers wore around my arm. I had already decided in advance where I would hide. I went to the school building. There I found two other friends who had escaped the same way.’...