Transport XXIV/7 from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia on 04/09/1944

The 7th transport from Westerbork to Theresienstadt, which departed on September 4, 1944, was the largest to leave the Netherlands. It comprised 2,074 Jewish deportees which accounted for around 40 percent of the 5,000 or so Dutch Jews who were sent to Theresienstadt. The transport was composed of five groups, each with unique characteristics. One was the Stammliste (veterans of Westerbork), a list familiar from previous transports to Theresienstadt, and was usually the largest group. In this transport, the Stammliste included employees of the camp administration along with members of the Joodse Raad (Jewish council) and their families. One of these members was Walter Süsskind who, during his term as manager of the assembly site at the Jewish Theatre (Hollandsche Schouwburg), rescued hundreds of children and placed them in villages outside Amsterdam. Another member of the Joodse Raad who was swept up in this transport was the council’s secretary, Jacob Brandon. An additional group (approx. 774 persons) comprised the entire staff of the camp hospital and the members of the Bühne (“Stage”), a theatre group set up in the camp that had organized performances of famous artists. The third group consisted of some 196 Jews who had managed to obtain exemptions from deportation until then (Rückstellungsgruppen). The two last groups were new: one comprised 493 Protestant baptized Jews and the other comprised 654 Jews known as the Barneveld group. David Cohen, Chair of the Joodse Raad, also joined the list of last group in Westerbork. A slightly expanded discussion of these two new groups follows....