Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 16/11/1943

On May 21, 1943, Rolf Günther, Adolf 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. By September 1943, the Nazis had rendered the activities of the Joodse Raad (Jewish Council) largely unnecessary and ceased to take it into account. In fact, by May the Sipo (Sicherheitspolizei - Security Police) demanded that 7,000 of its employees be handed over, and on September 29, 1943, the eve of Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year), some 2,000 Jews in Amsterdam—including the members and leaders of the Joodse Raad—were arrested and sent to Westerbork, thus bringing an end to the Council. In the same raid the majority of Jews working in the diamond industry who had been exempt from deportation until then were also arrested. They were first brought to the Hollandse Schouwburg, a former theater which served as an assembly site. According to historian Louis de Jong, the Jews were transferred by busses belonging to the municipal public transport operator (Gemeentelijk Vervoerbedrijf) of Amsterdam to a marshalling yard, for which it received 155 guilders. From there they were deported to Westerbork in two separate transports consisting of passenger trains. About 3,000 Jews who held a certificate for emigration to Palestine were interned in Westerbork and Vught and were registered on ‘Palestine lists’. The intention was to exchange them for Germans living in Palestine and the plan was to transfer them to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. However, in the fall of 1943, 38 of the 40 Palestine lists were annulled. On November 10 Eichmann convened a meeting with the head of the department for Jewish affairs of the RSHA in the Netherlands Wilhelm Zöpf, Commander of the Sipo-SD (succeeding Harster from Sept 1943) Erich Naumann, and camp commander of Westerbork Albert Konrad Gemmeker. At this meeting it was announced that 400 Jews who were initially intended for the Palestine exchange program and 600 ‘criminal cases’ [Straffällige] - mostly people who had been caught in hiding - were to join the transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz....