In our collective memory, all deported Jews from the Netherlands were transported like animals to the extermination camp. Historian Bart van der Boom nuances this.
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The first train from Westerbork to Auschwitz-Birkenau left eighty years ago today. Of the 1,137 on board, mainly Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Poland who came to the Netherlands in the 1930s, only about eight probably survived the war. This group was transported to Eastern Europe in freight cars. And in the collective memory it always went like this, until the 101st and very last transport from Westerbork, on September 3, 1944.
But that image is not correct, says Dirk Mulder, former director of the Kamp Westerbork Memorial Center in his book presented on Thursday. Extraordinary transports. Deportations of Jews, Roma and Sinti from the Netherlands, 1940-1945. More than 60 percent was transported in third-class passenger carriages.
‘Stereotypical image of the transport of Jews to Westerbork is not correct’ was the news in some media on Thursday, referring to the goods or cattle wagons. But it has long been known that passenger carriages were also used, says Bart van der Boom, who teaches history at Leiden University and made a name for himself with books such as We know nothing of their fate. Ordinary Dutch and the Holocaust (2012) and the recently published The politics of the lesser evil. A History of the Jewish Council for Amsterdam, 1941-1943.
Protests of the Jewish Council
“In The politics of the lesser evil I describe how the Jewish Council protested against the use of freight wagons during the first transport. Passenger carriages were then used.”
On Thursday, Mulder mainly emphasized the degree of use of passenger cars that has become clear as a result of his research. And on the number of people per wagon: approximately 47 instead of the usually assumed between 55 and 75. He emphasizes that his findings do not detract from the suffering of the more than 100,000 Jewish Dutch deported.
The image of the transports from Westerbork is that of a skinny child with a headscarf who looks out from a freight car one last time before a big, gruesome journey. The fragment from a film made by order of the Germans of Westerbork transit camp is featured in countless war documentaries.
The still has been given a place in countless history books. “The helpless girl, in agony before the doors close,” wrote historian Jacques Presser in 1965 in his influential work Demise. The persecution and extermination of Dutch Jewry 1940-1945.
‘The Mangy Train’
Two widely used sources also mentioned freight wagons. Etty Hillesum noted how packed they were. Philip Mechanicus wrote of the train: ‘The mangy train shuffles away with a stuffed pack.’
According to Van der Boom, the persistent image is easy to explain. There is no moving image within the extermination camps. So we often go back to that one fragment. “And what happened in those camps is of course very bad. The image of those freight wagons, as a symbol for all bestiality, fits better than that of passenger cars.”
Remembrance Center Kamp Westerbork recently wanted to exhibit a passenger carriage in the new museum alongside freight wagons. But after an in-depth investigation, it could not be definitively established that this copy was actually used for deportations from Drenthe to the extermination camps in eastern Europe.
The passenger car has now been given a place on the rails at the station on the railway in Groenlo, Gelderland, which is no longer in use.
In 1995 research already made it clear that the child referred to by Presser as a ‘Jewish girl’ was not Jewish. The Sinti girl Settela Steinbach (9), who was born in Buchten in Limburg, was hidden behind the face that had become famous. She was gassed two months after her arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau.