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

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 also commented that the transport that left the camp on April 5, 1944 consisted of 37 Romanian Jewish women and their children. 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. It is known that some of the deportees to Ravensbrück were married to men who were deported on the same day to Buchenwald....