Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 11/01/1943

The transport that set out on January 11, 1943, from Westerbork to Auschwitz was the first of those deportations and the 43rd (VIIL) to leave the camp. From lists reconstructed by the NIOD (Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Dutch Institute for Historical Documentation) after World War II, it is known that 751 people were deported on this transport and that 194 of them were Häftlinge (prisoners). A pamphlet published by the Dutch Red Cross about the deportation of Dutch Jews to Auschwitz in 1943 presents detailed statistics on the age and sex of the passengers; the number of survivors—four men and four women—is mentioned as well. One of the survivors was teenager, Maurits Wolder (b. 1925); his story is retold in Tanja von Fransecky’s book according to which, Wolder’s escape together with Juda Arnold Toff (b. 1914) was the first from a deportation train in the Netherlands. Wolder had been arrested on December 17, 1942 by the Gestapo and taken to the lockup on the Amstelveenseweg in Amsterdam. There he met Juda who had been captured on December 22, 1942. The two decided to escape but abandoned the idea when they were sent to Westerbork on January 9, 1943 because now they hoped to make contact with their families. However, on the train that headed from Westerbork toward Auschwitz on January 11, Wolder and Toff divulged to other passengers their intention to flee and proposed that the others give them messages for their families. Indeed, they received several letters to pass on. The train consisted of passenger cars that were separated into different classes by locked doors. Maurits leaped from the train just before it reached Haren where the train stopped for a police inspection. Maurits avoided discovery by crawling under one of the cars. After the train resumed its journey, a Dutch farmer helped him to make his way to Amsterdam. Juda was captured after returning to Amsterdam where he had met up with Maurits. He was sent to Auschwitz in September 1944. From there, he passed through several camps and perished on March 16, 1945 in the Ebensee labour camp in Austria. Both men’s names appear on the reconstructed deportation list. Another survivor from this transport, Jonas Pront (b. 1905) testified in 1949 to the researcher J.R. de Jong that he had been arrested on October 22, 1942 by Dutch in German uniforms. He was taken to the Central Office for Jewish Emigration building on the Adama van Scheltemaplein in southern Amsterdam and was also interned in the lockup on the Amstelveenseweg. From there, he was taken to the camp in Amersfoort, and was sent to Westerbork on December 21 (approximate date) where he was placed in Block 65 as a prisoner (Straffall). The head of the Central Office, Ferdinand Aus der Fünten, Pront testified, subjected him to a severe beating before he boarded the train. Pront added that the train reached Auschwitz on January 14, 1942. On arrival he and four other men were selected for admission to the camp and required to undress in the cold (it was snowing at the time), step into a hot shower, and then race naked to a barracks a good distance away. There they received underwear, trousers, and a shirt. Pront was placed in Block 8, a quarantine block, where he spent two days without being examined by a doctor, and then was transferred to the “Kanada Kommando,” the detail of prisoners that sorted the belongings of Jews who reached Auschwitz....