Out of Chaos: Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust

Westerbork, 1943: Monday Night in the Big Barracks

172 Westerbork, 1943: Monday Night in the Big Barracks Judith Levy Straus A single railroad track bisects Camp Westerbork in Holland. It was the main transit camp for Dutch Jews. From there they were sent to concentration and extermination camps, east. Regularly, every Monday I saw the arrival of a long train composed of cattle cars—their doors wide open—all empty. When people were finished with their work assignment, they would see the train, and the expressions on their faces would change. The mood and noise level in our barrack was different, too: more tense, more urgent, more anxious. Every Monday night after curfew, when everyone had to be in their own barrack , some men in ordinary clothes would enter. They held sheets of paper in their hands. These men were not Nazis, nor Dutch police: they were part of the Jewish Council of the camp, and we all knew why these men were there and what was on their papers. When the men arrived, the noise level in the barrack changed—then all sound stopped, as though turned off by a switch. It became so quiet I could hear people breathe! Then the men would start to read from the sheets of paper. They read names—only names. They read the list of names of the people from our barrack who were to be at the train early Tuesday morning. The men added that those named would go to a work camp and that they could take only one suitcase or rucksack and a blanket roll. The men added that if someone did not show up, a substitute would be selected at random. These were not work camps; they were death camps, Auschwitz and Sobibor. Some transports went to Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt. To go on these was considered a privilege. The first few transports to Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt even went in regular passenger trains rather than cattle cars, and people actually volunteered for these transports. The dreadful silence continued as long as the men were there, but after they left, pandemonium broke out. I will never forget the indescribable combination of crying, shouting, and wailing. I was ten years old at the time. We were very lucky: none of our names—my father’s, my mother’s, or mine—were called during the four months we lived in the big barracks, but I remember being terrified and bewildered on each of these terrible Monday nights. Those whose names were not called tried to console and help the ones who were to be on a transport by giving them some of their own hoarded food for the journey and helping some of the young mothers with the packing and dressing their children. By morning everyone was drained, exhausted. And then it was time for the train to leave. Those not on a transport were not allowed near the train, even if they had family on it. Once from a different barrack, I could see what was going on: How people were shoved into the cars. How the cars were overloaded with their human cargo. How the doors were closed and locked. I still remember hearing the loud clang when the doors were shoved closed. In Concentration Camps 173 Every Tuesday, in the morning, the train left. Filled beyond capacity—with more than a thousand human beings. Those remaining went back to their work. And by Wednesday the mood seemed to have changed again. Westerbork, at least outwardly, returned to its “normal ” pace. We consoled one another and ourselves. We had a reprieve—at least until next Monday night. Figure 55. The star Judith Levy wore in Westerbork, Holland, and in Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, from April 1942 to the liberation. 174 Out of Chaos Figure 56. Judith Levy’s identification card in Westerbork, Holland. In Concentration Camps 175 Figure 57. Theresienstadt food card and camp money. ...