Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 03/09/1944

Many of the deportees who were transported in the last transports to Auschwitz-Birkenau were Jews who had been caught in hiding. In a letter, dated March 2, 1944 to SS chief Heinrich Himmler, Higher SS- and Police-leader (HSSPF, Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer) Hanns Albin Rauter estimated that between 9,000 and 10,000 Jews lived ‘illegally’ [had gone into hiding] in the Netherlands and that about 600-700 of them were arrested monthly. One such arrest took place on August 4 in the Annex of a warehouse at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam. Here 15 year old Anne Frank, who would become known worldwide for her diary, had lived in hiding with her family for two years together with the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer (named Alfred Duffel in Anne Frank’s diary). The arrest was conducted by SS-Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer, who was aided by local police. The families in the Annex were all taken to the Euterpestraat, where the headquarters of the Sipo-SD were located. From here they were deported to Westerbork. Like all arrested Jews, they were housed in the ‘S’ barracks [punishment barracks]. Gabriel Italie mentions in his war-diary that at the end of August about 800 people stayed in the punishment barracks. Rumours about the advancing Allied forces had reached Westerbork. Italie writes: ‘everyday our spirits rose higher. However, the news that the Allied forces had advanced to the Maas [river] and that Dinant [in Belgium] had already been reached, was soon overshadowed by the fact that in Westerbork the provisions of flour had to be baked into loafs of bread and that suddenly a punishment transport was announced for Sunday September 3.’...