Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 30/11/1942

On Monday November 30, the 39th mass transport from the Netherlands left Westerbork for Auschwitz. During the period between July 24 1942 and March 10, 1943 old passenger trains were used to deport Jews from the Netherlands to Auschwitz. The Nederlandse Spoorwegen (the Dutch Railways) provided the trains and sent a bill for every transport to Wilhelm Harster. The Nederlandse Spoorwegen made an estimated profit of more than 400,000 Dutch guilders from the transports. The train comprised 12 cars and carried close to 1,000 deportees. According to Guus Luijters, the author of ‘In Memoriam’, a work dedicated to the deported and murdered children from the Netherlands, there were 104 children on this transport. Men, women and children, mostly former employees of Hollandia-Kattenburg and their families, sat together except for the group that had been to the Scheveningen jail and a few Jews who were caught hiding and were also considered criminals. They sat in a separate car, the ‘S-car’ at the rear end of the train. A young nurse who was part of this transport left a detailed account of the journey. Her identity is unknown, nor is it known whether she survived. According to her report the heating was turned on soon after departure in the late morning. Near the Dutch-German border the deportees threw letters and postcards from the windows and people who stood waving at the train caught them. The train passed through Beilen, Winschoten, Nieuweschans, Bremen and Hamburg. She comments on the appropriate attitude of the German police on the train, but also states that they received no food until the next morning when the wagon leaders distributed bread and jam. She reports that one woman died as a result of chest pains. She also comments on the beauty of the landscape and the fact that it had snowed....