Herrinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork

Westerbork itself was first and foremost a transit camp, from which deportations took place to Auschwitz, Sobibor, and in a select few cases to Theresienstadt or Bergen-Belsen. On the 15th of July 1942, the first deportation train left the station. From then until the last train on the 13th of September 1944, more than 100.000 people had been deported with 93 trains.

Important to stress is that while the majority was Jewish, Sinti and Roma were also brought and deported from Westerbork. On the 16th of May 1944, the Nazis issued a decree that all Sinti and Roma were to be arrested and brought to Westerbork, which was followed by a large nationwide raid. On the 19th of May of the same year, 245 Sinti and Roma were deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

From the 26th of April 1945 to 1948 it was used as an internment camp for Dutch collaborators. In September of 1945, around 8.000 collaborators were imprisoned there. In 1949 it was shortly used as a military training space, before, in July of 1950 receiving the name ‘De Schattenberg’ and being used to house repatriates from the former Dutch-Indies. In 1952 the population of the camp changed once more to house former soldiers and their families with a Moluccans descent that had served in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. This social group was isolated from the rest of society, and when the Dutch government started to focus on policies of integration at the end of the 1950’s, attention stopped being paid to the upkeep of the houses in the camp, making them less and less liveable. This process of integration, however, did not evolve without protests from the Moluccan population for whom this had been a home.

After the Moluccan population had left the Camp, the old houses were destroyed. The remembrance center Camp Westerbork wasn’t opened until the 12th of April 1983. It has been renewed many times since then.

Currently the Memorial center hosts a multiplicity of memorial activities and exhibitions. Attention is placed on personal stories and experiences, emphasizing the individual within the larger context of the Second World War. At the entrance of the museum, the Jewish migrations starting in 1933 is connected and surrounded by those of the Belgian refugees of 1915, the Hungarian refugees of 1956, Chechslovakian refugees of 1968, Vietnamese refugees of 1979, refugees from the former Jugoslavia of 1992-1995, Muslim refugees of 1995, and todays’ Syrian refugees, all symbolised by a packed bag.

The emphasis of the individual is furthermore present in a continious reading of all the names of the deported on the camp site, and exhibitions such as ‘De Namen’ (The Names), in which the Amsterdam artist Bart Domburg has written down every single name of those Jews, Sinti, and Roma deported from Westerbork.  Every last Sunday of the month the memorial center furthermore hosts a talk with an eyewiteness of the Camp,  to tell about their experiences in the Second World War. During official commemorations such as those on Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 4th and 5th of May (Remembrance & Liberation Day in the Netherlands) the center hosts additional commemorations and moments of silence. Additionally, a sculptore garden host pieces dedicated to the Sinti and Roma children deported from the camp, a Jerusalem stone, an artwork symbolizing the meaning of freedom, and a homage to the artist Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman, who was murdered by the Nazi’s. The Remembrance center furthermore hosts a set of educational programs directed mainly at primary and highschool level, and works together with schools to create educational materials for teaching. The center also works together with a provincial radio station and airs monthly radioprograms dedicated to personal stories linked to the Camp.

Source: EUROM.