Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Buchenwald, Camp, Germany on 05/04/1944

On September 23, 1943, the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, introduced guidelines regarding the treatment of Jews who held foreign nationality and forwarded them to all Gestapo headquarters and to the commander of Sipo-SD (BdS— Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des Sicherheitsdienst) in the Netherlands, Wilhelm Harster. According to the instructions, it had been decided in conjunction with the Foreign Ministry that Jews holding citizenship of any of ten countries including Hungary, Romania, Spain, and Turkey could be deported. Müller added that this measure was being implemented subsequent to “Operation Repatriation” (Heimschaffungsaktion), the window of opportunity in which Nazi Germany allowed these countries to repatriate their Jewish nationals to spare them from deportation. Müller also noted that for “external political reasons” (aus außenpolitischen Gründen) these Jews could not be deported to “the East” at the present time. Instead, Jewish males aged 15 and above would be sent to Buchenwald, and women and children to Ravensbrück. He added that while there was no need to fill out a special detention application (Schutzhaftantrag), the camp commander should be advised that the said detention was one of the “deportation measures” (Abschiebungsmaßnahmen). On Wednesday, April 5, 1944, five separate transports departed from Westerbork in one deportation train consisting of several types of cars. It was neither the first nor the last time that several transports out of the Netherlands had been combined into one train, but this was the largest of such deportations. 240 Jews were deported in freight cars to Auschwitz. Passenger cars were used to deport 101 people to Bergen-Belsen (two cars), 289 to Theresienstadt (two cars), 41 to Ravensbrück (one car), and 28 men to Buchenwald (one car). These aside, additional freight cars carrying 625 Jews from Belgium in a transport to Auschwitz, designated Transport XXIV, were coupled to the train at Assen station en-route to the German border. The identity of the deportees to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück is known from a letter written by Gertrud Slottke, secretary to Wilhelm Zöpf, head of Department for Jewish Affairs (Referat IVb4). In the missive, sent on April 15, 1944 to the Department for Jewish Affairs of the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt—Reich Main Security Office) in Berlin, headed by Adolf Eichmann, Slottke talks about the Romanian Jews residing in the Netherlands: After “Operation Repatriation” (Heimkehraktion), she wrote, all Romanian Jews not living in “mixed marriages” (Mischehe) had been sent to Westerbork. Slottke writes that the transport that left the camp on April 5, 1944 consisted of 21 Romanian Jews, one Spanish Jew, and one Hungarian Jew who were sent to Buchenwald, and 37 Jewish women and their children who were dispatched to Ravensbrück. The Romanian Jews, Slottke continues, submitted “a request to be returned to Romania” (Heimschaffung nach Rumänien); such an application represented a last attempt to avoid deportation to the East. In contrast, a document found in the records belonging to Hanns Albin Rauter, Higher SS- and Police-leader (HSSPF, Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer in the Netherlands, dated April4, 1944 details the return of 133 foreign Jewish nationals to their “homelands” (Heimatländer), but mentioning none from Romania....