It’s a pitch black day in history. Exactly 80 years ago, the first train to Auschwitz departed from Camp Westerbork. After the first transport, many more deportations followed. Today relatives, Holocaust survivors and, among others, State Secretary Maarten van Ooijen come together at the former camp Westerbork.
“1137 men, women and children. The largest part were Jews from Germany and Austria who had fled to the Netherlands before the occupation,” says Van Ooijen. “They had hoped to be safe here, to have a future here or to travel on from here to build a future elsewhere. But eighty years ago today, the future ended for them.”
One of the other speakers during the commemoration is René de Vries. His father, Herman de Vries, was summoned in 1942 to report to the station in Groningen and that was the last moment that the two saw each other. “We see the train drive by, but cannot discover my father in it. I do remember very well the flowing applause that traveled with the train as a wave of sympathy from the city of Groningen saying goodbye to its Jewish inhabitants. My mother was standing to cry. And that was my father’s last sign.”
Heman de Vries was one of the 1,137 Jews who were on the first transport to Auschwitz. He died there, shortly after his arrival.
Relatives and Holocaust survivors come together to commemorate: