Before the outbreak of World War II, Westerbork in the North-East of the Netherlands served as a transit point for Jewish refugees from Germany attempting to enter The Netherlands. After the occupation of Holland and the beginning of Jewish deportations, Camp Westerbork was a concentration camp used to collect and transport all the Dutch jews (as well as gypsies and resistors) to other concentration and death camps. A total of 107 000 people passed through the camp on 93 trains, only 5000 of which survived. Anne Frank and her family were on one of the last trains to leave Westerbork, headed for Auschwitz in late 1944.
After the war, Westerbork was used as a refugee camp for Dutch and Indonesians, as well as immigrants from the South Moluccan Islands to Holland. It was demolished in the 1970s.
Today some barracks have been partially reconstructed. Some original buildings remain: the commander's house, a storage building, and a guard tower.
Several monuments have also been erected.
Each of these stands for a camp to which Weserbork residents were transported. Of the 58,380 persons deported to Auschwitz from Westerbork, only 854 survived. Of the 34,313 deported to Sobibor, 19 survived. Of the 4,894 deported to Theresienstadt, approximately 1,980 survived. Of the 3,751 deported to Bergen Belsen, about 2,050 survived. And of the 150 deported to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück, fewer than 10 survived.
This memorial was designed by Dutch holocaust survivor Ralph Prins (who also designed the Amnesty logo).
(tour guide)
This engraved Jerusalem stone was donated by Israeli President Chaim Herzog in 1993.
This memorial, which stands on the former 'role-call' grounds, is made of small rectangular stones, embossed with a silver flame insignia for Roma and Sinti, and Star of David for Jewish victims. The stones make up the shape of the map of the Netherlands. There is one stone for the 102 000 people who passed through the camp to their death.
The grounds also partially house the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescopes.
