Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 09/02/1943

An internal Joodse Raad report from February 9 stated that on Monday, February 8, some 220 Jews, mostly ill or in convalescent homes (rusthuizen), had been arrested and taken to the Borneokade freight station in Amsterdam and thence to Westerbork. According to a daily report from February 9, 1943 produced by a member of the OD (the Ordnungsdienst, the Jewish Order Police in the Westerbork camp), the 10th transport comprising of sick Jews had reached Westerbork from Amsterdam. This transport was part of Zöpf’s aforementioned program concerning the deportation of ill Jews from the Netherlands which had reached its climax with the infamous deportation of the Jewish psychiatric hospital in Apeldoorn (het Apeldoorn Bosch) on January 22, 1943. Transport 47 (marked with the Roman numerals ‘IIIL’) departed from Westerbork for Auschwitz on February 9, 1943, with 1,184 persons on board. 98 passengers were classified as prisoners (Häftlinge, a term that usually denoted Jews who had been arrested in hiding or violated anti-Jewish laws such as the yellow-star stricture or the 8:00 p.m. curfew). Andries Kollem (b. 1914), a survivor of this transport, gave testimony to the NIOD (Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie—Dutch Institute for War Documentation) in 1947 in Amsterdam. He reported that he had been arrested on April 25, 1942 at his workplace and taken to the De Vecht camp in Dalfsen. On August 8, 1942 he was released and worked as a painter at the hospital in Apeldoorn. On January 21, 1943, SS operatives arrived at the hospital and placed it under curfew. Those admitted to the hospital were deprived of their ID cards due to their dire mental state. Some, however, received their cards back before their deportation, probably in order to allow the Nazis to track and supervise them. 50 doctors and nurses were also admitted to the patients. As a member of the hospital’s technical staff (Technische dienst), however, Andries Kollem was not included in this operation; instead, he was taken to Westerbork along with the rest of the hospital staff and the Jewish inhabitants of the city of Apeldoorn. These deportees were included in the original manifest of the transport that set out on February 9, 1943, and they were deported to Auschwitz together....