Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Sobibor, Extermination Camp, Poland on 17/03/1943

Very little is actually known about the train journey itself from the Netherlands to Sobibor. Out of a total of nearly 34, 000 Jews deported from the Netherlands to Sobibor during the spring of 1943, only 19 survived till the end of the War. This extremely high death toll was due to the nature of this site which was designed solely as an extermination camp. Following the arrival of a transport, most deportees were rapidly stripped of their clothes, Women's hair was cut and then they were forced into gas chambers camouflaged as showers, and murdered. The Third transport destined for Sobibor departed from Westerbork on March 17, 1943. It consisted of 964 deportees. It arrived on March 20th. Elias (Alex) Cohen, the only known survivor from this transport, estimated in a post war testimony to RIOD, the number of deportees slightly higher at around 1050....