Two historic train carriages have been parked at the entrance of National Monument Kamp Vught since Thursday afternoon. Similar wagons were used in World War II to transport prisoners from the concentration camp to extermination camps in Germany. Engineers hoisted the two carriages into place.
“It’s millimeter work between the trees,” says Sergeant Major Noureddine while his colleague Corporal Kas commands a handful of soldiers how the lifting should be done. Placing the wagons is done by 101 Engineer Battalion from Wezep.
The two historic freight cars will be placed at the museum, on the former route of the camp railway. The wagons are a worldwide symbol of the persecution and deportation during the Second World War. They mark the historic landscape around the museum as an eye-catcher.
“You have to imagine that around eighty people were on their way to Auschwitz for three days and nights in such a wagon,” says director Jeroen van den Eijnde of the National Monument when the wagons arrived in Vught in September. The wagons still had to be restored at that time. This happened on the site of the Van Brederode barracks, the Genie Education and Training Center of the Royal Netherlands Army.
The railway to the former Vught camp was mainly used to transport aircraft wrecks. That scrap was reused in the war industry. In early 1944, prisoners built the 3.5-kilometre railway line for the supply of heavy equipment. Every month, 350 to 400 wagons with scrap went in and out of the camp. Only the last four transports of prisoners left via this railway to Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück.
“Most victims left during the war years from the station in Vught to the east, but there are also four transports that were transported directly from camp Vught to the extermination camps. Some threw notes from the train at the last minute,” says Van den Eiden.
The intention is that the wagons can also be viewed from the inside from 4 May. Steel sleepers will also be provided with information about the transports.
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