Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Sobibor, Extermination Camp, Poland on 11/05/1943

Very little is actually known about the train journey itself from the Netherlands to Sobibor. Out of a total of nearly 34,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands to Sobibor during the spring of 1943, only 19 survived the War. This extremely high death toll was due to the nature of this site which was designed solely as an extermination camp. Following the arrival of a transport, most deportees were rapidly stripped of their clothes, women's hair was cut and then they were forced into gas chambers camouflaged as showers, and murdered. The 11th transport bound for Sobibor departed from Westerbork transit camp on May, 11, 1943. It consisted of 2,511 deportees. Josef Wins is the only known survivor from this transport. In a post war interview he recalled: “I was arrested on March 12, 1943 after having been betrayed and was first taken to the basement in the Euterpestraat (Headquarters of the Sipo-SD in Amsterdam). From there I was transported to the Amstelveenseweg [prison] on the same day. I stayed there for eight weeks. You were relatively left alone, especially compared to later....