Finney Goes To Kamp-May 3,2025 continued

So today was a very busy travel and discover day for Mr. Fin. He started to get fussy so Gramma just happened to have a Bueno bar in her backpack. Guess Fin liked it.

One of the things I never really thought about was how the Germans moved Jews etc to the concentration camps. Yes I knew they were deported. Yes I knew they were treated terribly and I have been to different places emphasizing the Holocaust. So the extent of the horror that happened to these people really hit home when we visited Kamp Westerbork. We arrived later in the afternoon and totally missed the museum but what we got to see was vast. Kamp Westerbork was originally built in 1939 as a refugee camp for Germans and Austrians who fled to the Netherland to escape Nazi persecution. In May of 1940 the invaded the Netherlands and by 1942, Kamp Westerbork was repurposed as a staging ground for deportation. It was considered a humane camp by Nazi standards as families lived in 200 interconnected cottages with 2 rooms, a toilet, a hot plate and a small yard. Single people were assigned to same sex barracks. There was even a school, orchestra, hairdresser and restaurants to give the people a sense of hope and therefore control them. over 2ooo inmates were the camp labour force.

We also missed the shuttle bus but the 2.5 kilometre walk was worth it. All along the road were these posts about 50 metres apart. On each post was the date, place the train was going to and how many people were on it.

These tomb like structures represent the number of people sent to the different camps.

Sobibor, 19 train-loads, 34,313 people. Killed immediately upon arrival.

Bergen-Belsen 9 train-loads, 4,894 people.

Theresienstadt, 4870 people sent here on their way to Auschwitz.

Auschwitz 65 train-loads, 60,330 people exterminated upon arrival.

From 1940 to 1943, a Dutchman was the commander of the camp. Some say he was brutal to Jewish inmates but others said he was strict but organized. He was anti-German and knew that the best way to keep the Germans out of the camp was be organized. Of course by 1941 he was considered to lenient and he was replaced by a German commander and deportations began under the authorization of the Gestapo. Over 107,000 people were deported of which on 5,000 returned.

The commonders house.

The area around Kamp Westerbork is a quiet zone. No cellphones are allowed and there are 13 of these radio telescopes for listening in space.

Barrack 56. This is an example of the 24 large barracks that were constructed for the camp. They came prefabricated with a wooden floor.

Trains left every Tuesday to various concentration camps.

There were for guard towers, one at each corner of the 50 acres connecting the barbed wire fence.

This is the National Westerbork Monument. It was designed by camp survivor Ralph Prins. The upturned rails express despair. At the end, the rails are treated as if they had been shot at. The 97 railway sleepers symbolise the transports to concentration camps: 93 from Camp Westerbork and 4 from elsewhere. The wall of Drenthe boulders looks like a pile of skulls.

Kamp Westerbork is the story of 102,000. Each of these stones represents a mother, a grandfather, an aunt or uncle, a brother, a daughter, a cousin, a girlfriend, a neighbour, a classmate. For each of them there is a stone here on the former roll call area of the camp. The black background in which the stones are placed, shows the contours of the Netherlands. In addition to Jews, approximately 200 Sinti and Roma and a few dozen resistance fighters were deported and murdered from here.

Most of the stones have the Star of David on them but 245 have flames on them for the Sinti and Roma people and 100 have no symbol to represent the resistance fighters.

On our way back we chose to walk this lovely path that lead us through the woods. Because the radio telescopes were in this area they had made the distances between the planets scales to the 3 km walk. 

Along the way there were activities to do such as this. On each end were parabolic dishes with a post on which a metal circle was attached. Here Kesa is whispering to Griffin and he could hear her clear as day. They were about 35 metres apart.