Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 29/01/1943

On January 29, 1943 another mass transport left the Westerbork transit camp for Auschwitz-Birkenau. According to the transport list, 659 women, men and children were deported with that train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. This list used by the Zentralstelle was copied by representatives of the Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co Bank, who worked at Westerbork and who passed it on to Hans Fischböck, General Commissioner for Economic Affairs in the Netherlands to whom the bank was directly accountable. The deportees comprised whole families as well as many infants, children and elderly people. There were 114 children under the age of 18 on the transport. The youngest deportee, a baby girl, was not even three months old when she was shipped away with her family. The oldest deportee we know of was 90 years old. 49 deportees were added on short notice and 33 deportees were listed as "Häftlinge" (prisoners; this term was applied to Jews who were arrested while in hiding or caught violating an anti-Jewish law such as not wearing the yellow star or disobeying the 8 p.m. curfew). This transport also included several Jews with foreign citizenship: Leon Greenman from Rotterdam's Jewish quarter, one of the only two survivors from this transport, had been taken from his home on October 8, 1942 together with his wife Esther (Else), their two year old son Barney and his wife's 83 year old mother by police and at least one Dutch Nazi party (NSB) member with wearing a black uniform. They were transported by bus to Hangar 24, the main assembly site at Rotterdam, and after two days to Stieltjesplein, where the tracks were running and where they boarded the train. From Rotterdam they drove overnight to Hooghalen train station where the train arrived in the morning, and from there they had to march the approximately 5 kilometers to Westerbork camp. After more than three months of detention in the camp, Leon Greenman and his family boarded the transport to Auschwitz. The Greenmans had English citizenship but had lost their passports. When their papers finally arrived at Westerbork, the camp commander, Konrad Gemmeker, ignored them: Leon and his family were marked like Dutch Jews and included in the transport. Their fate was shared by the former right-wing player of the Amsterdam football club Ajax, Eduard (Eddy) Hamel, who was also on board the train. He was a US-American citizen who also lost his wife and their twin sons after their arrival at the camp. According to Simon Kuper's book about the Ajax club during the Second World War, Eddy himself was murdered in April 1943. The Jewish camp staff (Ordnungsdienst) noted on the day of departure in the camp log book, that the whole Ordnungsdienst, all medical orderlies and 30 additional men were signed in for duty for this transport and that 71 sick people had to be carried to the train. After the Jews at Westerbork selected for this transport had been registered, searched and expropriated, they had to board the deportation train on the camp grounds. Fred Schwarz, who had been imprisoned in Westerbork with his brother from July 1940 onwards, describes the departure of the trains in his memoirs. He recalls that the barrack leaders would typically call the deportees, and the men, women and children had to carry their luggage to the train. The Ordnungsdienst and the "flying column" (inmates in charge of taking the deportees to the train) helped the people onto the train. Food was distributed by the kitchen personnel and nurses usually took the invalids to the train on stretchers. Then the camp commandant would give the sign for departure. Leon Greenman describes the transport in his post-war memoires: "As we boarded the train, orders were shouted for those not leaving on the transport to go into their barracks and not come outside again… There were eight of us in our train compartment, sitting opposite one another in two rows… It was nearly 11 o'clock in the morning when the train steamed out of the camp…We had been told that we were being sent to Poland to work for the Germans. We thought that we would work during the week and be allowed to visit one another on the weekends. We thought that we would get through it and start our lives anew after the war… We talked and talked during the 36-hour trip to Poland. The train moved slowly and stopped at various places along the way. We could not see out as the windows were covered up. We were not permitted to go outside our compartment and we had nothing to drink or eat, nothing for the babies… " There was one escape from this transport. Nathan Wijnperle was arrested outside his hiding place in Amsterdam by the collaborating removal company Abraham Puls. He was taken together with his mother Elsa by police to the SD headquarters in Euterpestraat (a former school building) and from there to a prison in Amstelveenseweg. In Vught, where Nathan was subsequently transferred, he met his mother again who had arrived on a transport from the Hollandse Schouwburg assembly camp. On January 28, both were taken on this first transport leaving Vught camp via Westerbork and further to Auschwitz the next day. According to historian Tanja von Fransecky, when the train set in motion, Nathan Wijnperle pressed his knee against the closing train door, so that it did not lock. En route, after a short stop in the dark, he and his mother jumped out of the train and subsequently found shelter with the help of a catholic priest. In all likelihood, the train, which comprised 20 cars, passed the border into Germany at Nieuweschans, and went through Bremen, Hamburg (or Hannover), Berlin and travelled further through occupied Poland, passing Liegnitz (Legnica), Breslau (Wroclaw), Oppeln (Oppole), Cosel (Koźle) and Katowice (Kattowitz). The train arrived at Auschwitz on January 31, two days after its departure from Westerbork. According to Danuta Czech's Auschwitz Chronicle, some 659 Jews (240 male and 419 female) arrived at the extermination camp from Westerbork. Only 50 men and 19 women were admitted into the camp for slave labour and were tattooed with the serial numbers 96516-96520 and 98274-98318 and 33253-33271 respectively. The overwhelming majority, the approximately 590 remaining deportees, were immediately murdered in the gas chambers. Leon Greenman about his arrival at Auschwitz: "Eventually, the train stopped… There was silence. Then a loud voice shouted in German: 'Raus, raus! Alles lassen liggen [Alles liegen lassen!" [Out, out! Drop everything here]. Again and again, the voices went [sounded] along the train... There were heaps of snow several feet high all over the platform, as far as the eye could see... The women were separated from the men: Else and Barney were marched about 20 yards away to a queue of women... I could see a lorry coming our way, full of women and children. It stopped in front of us and I saw Else standing in the middle, holding our baby in her arms... The lorry moved away." Only two persons, Leon Greenman and Leon Borstrock, survived the transport.