Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 31/08/1943

One of the main issues that Harster raised in his letter concerned the policy toward Jews living in “mixed marriages.” Harster mentioned the possibility of forcing them to undergo voluntary sterilization so they could avoid deportation to the East. In a meeting on May 18, 1943, at the Central Office in Amsterdam, attended by Wilhelm Zöpf, Ferdinand aus der Fünten, SS Sturmbannführer Dr. Eduard Meyer, and others, the question of how to relate to this group of Jews was discussed at length and Harster's plan was indeed put into effect in the Netherlands. In the Reich, however, Jews living in mixed marriages were still exempt from deportation and remained untouched. On May 21, 1943, Rolf Günther, Eichmann’s deputy at the Department for Jewish Affairs and Evacuation at the RSHA (Department IV B4), passed on an order to deport all other remaining Jews in the Reich to the East or to the Theresienstadt ghetto. On August 24, 1943, 21 Jews were transported by train from Groningen. According to a police report issued by the local police in Leeuwarden the train stopped at 23:00 in Meppel, in the province of Drenthe. One deportee who tried to escape was shot. The report mentions that the escapee was presumed dead; however he was returned to the train and transported further. On August 26, about 350 Jews from Amsterdam were detained in the ‘Hollandse Schouwburg’, a former theater used as an assembly site, prior to their transport to Westerbork. Besides these two transports, several other smaller ones arrived at Westerbork in the days leading up to the large transport of August 31, 1943....