Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 12/12/1942

On Saturday December 12, 1942, the 42th mass transport from the Netherlands departed from Westerbork for Auschwitz. After this transport there was a pause in the deportations from the Netherlands to the East due to the allocation of German trains for German soldiers returning home from the frontlines to celebrate Christmas. However, on January 11, 1943 the deportations resumed. 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 10 cars and carried 757 deportees. According to Guus Luijters, the author of ‘In Memoriam’, a work dedicated to the deported and murdered children from the Netherlands, there were 95 children on this transport, the youngest was a boy born on October 21, 1942. Based on the transport list of the Liro (the local branch of the aryanized Lippmann, Rosenthal and Co. bank in Westerbork that robbed Jews of their last possessions before they were deported) there was an unusual large number of 200 Häftlinge (convicts) on this transport. Convicts were Jews who for various reasons were separated from the regular deportees. They may have been caught hiding, or trying to escape, or they may have been suspected of participation in resistance activities....