Westerbork

Monument at the former Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands. Each stone represents a person who stayed at Westerbork and later died in a Nazi concentration camp or extermination camp.

Westerbork, small refugee camp and transit camp for Jews during World War II, located near the village of Westerbork in the rural northeastern Netherlands. The Dutch government originally set up the camp in 1939 to accommodate Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, but, after German forces conquered the Netherlands in July 1940, Westerbork functioned as a transit camp where Jewish inmates performed forced labour before being shipped east to concentration camps or extermination camps. With transportation arranged by Adolf Eichmann’s office, the Nazis transferred about 100,000 Jews from Westerbork to Auschwitz beginning on July 15, 1942. Trains left every Tuesday, and the camp went into a panic Monday evenings. The Nazis imprisoned Anne Frank and her family at Westerbork between their arrest in August 1944 and their transfer to Auschwitz the following month.