Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Bergen Belsen, Camp, Germany on 11/01/1944

On November 19, 1943, rumours about a transport to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp spread through the Westerbork camp and, shortly after, the deportation was announced for the 23rd of the month. There were no volunteers for the transport from the Westerbork inmates who were eligible for Bergen-Belsen. Finally, after Slottke forced those eligible to register around 1,000 Jews were listed for the transport to Bergen-Belsen on the day before its planned departure. On November 23, the deportees were ready for transport and a third-class-passenger train arrived at the camp. According to diarist Philip Mechanicus, a journalist by profession who was imprisoned in Westerbork, the train was equipped with "real passenger coaches, for Jews, as if they [were] going on a pleasure trip." But a transport freeze (Waggonsperre) and quarantine (Polio) had been imposed on Westerbork, and it was shortly announced that the transport was not leaving and everyone was ordered to go back to work. In the evening, the train left Westerbork empty and on December 11 Siegfried Seidl, in charge of foreign Jews at Bergen-Belsen, was informed by Zöpf that the transport from Westerbork was postponed probably to January 11, 1944. Finally, on January 11, following the lift of the transport freeze and quarantine, the deportees were taken with the first mass transport to Bergen-Belsen....