After Yom Kippur - on September 21, 1942 - the German authorities informed the Jewish Council that no Jews would be brought to Germany for the time being and that there would be few or no arrests. This message soon became known to all Jews and it gave great relief. On October 3 and 4, Sukkot would be festively concluded with Simchat Torah, and many people gather on such days.
But the Nazis were gruesomely misusing the Jewish holidays. They had planned raids all over the country. On Friday 2 October in the evening until the next day, they picked up all families whose men were staying in labor camps and transported them to Camp Westerbork. Under the guise of family reunification, the fathers, sons and brothers, who had not been home for more than six months, were taken from the labor camps to Camp Westerbork as well.
The Westerbork population increased with about 13,000 residents in two days, while there was only room for about 3,000 people. Barracks became overcrowded and thousands of people had to sleep on the floor.
The promise that no Jews would go to camps in Germany turned out to be a lie of the Nazis: in October 1942, nearly 12,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz by nine trains.
Westerbork is a transit camp
On 1 July 1942, the Nazis had taken control of the old Westerbork refugee camp. It was fenced off using barbed wire and the camp was now called a ‘Police Transit Camp’ (‘Polizeiliches Durchgangslager’). From 15 July onwards, almost all Jews from the Netherlands were first taken to this camp and then sent on to German concentration and extermination camps. They usually went to Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland, but the trains sometimes stopped along the way to drop the men off at German labour camps.
On 3 October 1942, as many as 24 trains had already made the journey to Auschwitz, together carrying a total of 19,000 prisoners. Most of the prisoners were murdered upon arrival. People in the Netherlands, however, knew nothing about this.
