by Lila Perl
As they had in Germany in the 1930s, the Nazis now began a program designed to impoverish and isolate the Jews of the Netherlands. In October 1940 all Jewish owners of businesses were required to register with the occupation forces. This was the first step in denying Jews employment and stripping them of any means of livelihood.
The following year Holland’s Jews had their properties confiscated, their children were forbidden to attend any but Jewish-run schools, and curfews and other restrictions on their movements were imposed.
In May 1942, to help enforce the many anti-Jewish decrees, all Jews residing in Holland were ordered to sew the yellow star onto their outer garments. The center of the six-pointed star bore the black-lettered word Jood—Dutch for “Jew”—instead of the German Jude. In Germany the wearing of the star had begun in September 1941.
In July 1942 German Jewish boys and girls, ages fifteen to eighteen, living in the Netherlands began to receive call-up notices. They were to report without delay to “work camps” in eastern Europe. It was at this point that many Jews, both Dutch and German, went into hiding.
At Westerbork the big change took place on July 1, 1942, when the Germans officially took over command from the Dutch. Immediately watchtowers were built and a barbed-wire fence was put up around the entire camp. Also, daily roll calls began. But most ominous was the change in the camp’s name. What had been known simply as the Central Camp for Refugees, Westerbork, was renamed, under German command, Police-Supervised Transit Camp, Westerbork.
The word transit held the key to Westerbork’s future as a feeder camp. For the next two years and some months, Westerbork served as a deportation center from which more than 100,000 Jews were shipped from Holland to Germany’s most notorious concentration camps. At least 60,000 were sent to Auschwitz, in Poland. There most met deaths in the gas chambers. Their bodies were then burned in the crematorium ovens. The Germans boasted that at the peak of its killing activity in 1943 and 1944 the extermination camp known as Auschwitz-Birkenau could dispose of as many as 4,756 bodies every twenty-four hours.
“What did we know of Auschwitz,” Ruth said, “in that summer of 1942? We knew, and we didn’t know. Some people, especially the younger ones, believed that being ‘resettled’ in the East meant they were going to be put to work in German war factories. That didn’t seem so bad to them. But there were rumors of much worse things. For most of us, I guess, the truth was that we didn’t want to know.”
As the Blumenthals suspected, there were worse things. By June 1942 reports of Jews’ being gassed in Poland had already appeared in American and British newspapers and been aired on the BBC. But the horrifying accounts of the slaughter of 700,000 Polish Jews were so monstrous that most of the world refused to believe them.
On July 15, 1942, the first of the ninety-three transports left Westerbork for the East. And almost every week thereafter, sometimes twice a week, a long train of empty cattle cars pulled into the camp siding to take on its human cargo. Most transports averaged a thousand people. But some were as large as three thousand. Men, women, and children, of all ages—some brought on stretchers from the Westerbork camp hospital—were crammed with their belongings into the bare wooden carriages, each carriage provided only with an empty bucket and a pail for sand for toilet functions.
“The street alongside the railway platform,” Ruth recalled, “was the only paved road in Westerbork. It was called the Boulevard des Misères, the ‘boulevard of misery.’ Another name for it was Rachmones Allee or Tsorres Allee, meaning ‘street of pity’ or ‘street of woe.’ We were forbidden by the commandant to watch the transports leaving on those terrible mornings. Some people disobeyed and managed to get a glimpse of the long lines of deportees climbing into the cattle cars. But we never did. At other times, when there was no train waiting there, people strolled on the boulevard.”
As the months went by, Westerbork grew more and more crowded. Dutch Jews from all over Holland were rounded up by the thousands and brought in to be processed. Some stayed only a few days; others remained for months. None had any control over his or her fate. Even the sick and dying were given only a few hours to ready themselves for the journey.
The Blumenthals now had to share their quarters with another family, a couple called the Hamburgers. Mr. and Mrs. Hamburger took over the smaller room with the bunk beds, and Marion and Albert moved into their parents’ room.
“I remember the Hamburgers,” Marion said, “because I loved to sing. But Mrs. Hamburger, a tall woman with black hair, whose first name was Hanna, begged me not to because I couldn’t carry a tune. She would bribe me by telling me stories. So that wasn’t so bad after all. And we were still much better off than the people in the big barracks, so crowded there was hardly room to breathe.”
It was now a little more than a year since the Germans had turned Westerbork into a transit camp. Each week the train continued to roll in, and each week the quota of deportees that the Germans demanded had to be filled. As Ruth put it, “We knew that our time was coming.”
From the very beginning Walter had been trying to find a way to save his family from Auschwitz. Like the other Westerbork inmates, he explored various means of avoiding deportation to the death camp. One possibility that emerged in mid-1943 was to apply to go to Palestine as an “exchange Jew.” The British, who then held Palestine, were not permitting Jews to immigrate freely. But with proper eligibility, Jews living under the Nazis might be exchanged for German prisoners of war captured by Britain and its allies, on a one-to-one basis.
“We believed we could be eligible to go to Palestine,” Ruth said, “because we had relatives there. My sister Ulla had emigrated to Palestine in 1936 as a halutza, a pioneer. So, on August twenty-sixth, 1943, Walter applied through the International Red Cross for an exchange permit that would allow us to go to the camp in Celle, Germany, where the exchanges were arranged. We knew very little about this place, only that there was a special privileged section for those waiting to go to Palestine. We also knew that it was not a camp like Auschwitz, for it had no gas chambers.
“When, on January thirtieth, 1944, we received permission to leave Westerbork for Celle, we were almost joyful. We expected to be in the new camp only a short time before taking the ship for Palestine. The children were especially happy to be going to a new place. Marion was nine years old, and Albert was eleven. They were very bored and were not getting any proper schooling.
“So we set about packing our things. Each of us was allowed to take one knapsack filled with as much as we could stuff into it. Mine contained the old family portraits, letters, and receipts that I had been keeping with me since our arrival in Holland. Our transport to Celle took place on a Tuesday morning in February 1944. We left our quarters in Westerbork, where we had lived for four years, and walked to the Boulevard des Misères, where the train was waiting. There had been so many sad departures from that place, but for us—on our way to Palestine and freedom—we thought it would be different.”
CHAPTER 5
“The Greatest Disappointment”
As the Blumenthals approached the Westerbork railroad station, they began to have feelings of uneasiness. They had heard that exchange Jews going to Celle would not be riding in cattle cars. And it was true that there were many third-class carriages attached to the train. These carriages had rows of bench seats inside and windows instead of horizontal wooden slats through which to look out. But the transport was huge.
Nearly a thousand people stood ready to board the twenty or more cars that waited alongside the platform. As always, the uniformed camp police, the camp commandant, and his officers were on the platform, closely monitoring the operation. And once inside the carriages, the Blumenthals and their fellow travelers were packed in as tightly as in any cattle car.
The carriages with seats were, in fact, more uncomfortable and more lacking in privacy than the freight cars, which had no interior fittings at all. The Blumenthals’ forebodings now turned into a deep suspicion
that there was nothing in the least “special” or “privileged” about being transported to Celle. Nor could they fight back the sickening thought that they were being returned to Germany, from which they had fled five years earlier, this time as prisoners.
With a blast of the whistle the train at last announced its departure. At the camp boundary it stopped once again for a final count of the passengers by the German occupation forces. The total had to be exactly the same as that vouched for by the Westerbork camp commandant. Then, with additional military officers on board to accompany the travelers, the train headed east toward Germany.
The camp to which the Blumenthals were going lay a short distance northwest of Celle, near the small town of Bergen and the village of Belsen, and so it had been named Bergen-Belsen. The journey took about five hours. Although Marion had no idea of its length, she vividly remembered her arrival at the camp itself.
“It was dark, bitterly cold, and raining,” Marion recalled. “All I could see, as I stepped down onto the ground, were the tall, shiny black boots of the SS officers and their dogs—huge, restless, and mean-looking. I was nine years old and small for my age. The jaws and fanged teeth of the barking and leaping police dogs were exactly at my eye level. Albert stayed close to me, protective as always, but I cringed. I was very, very frightened.”
Originally Bergen-Belsen was intended as a prisoner of war camp. But by early 1944 additional sections had been built. They included a camp for Jews with passports from neutral countries such as Spain, Portugal, and Turkey; a camp for Polish Jews, most of whom would soon to be transported to Auschwitz and murdered there; and a camp for exchange Jews like the Blumenthals.
This section was known as the Sternlager, the Star Camp. Star probably referred to the prisoners’ wearing of the yellow star rather than to any “star,” or special status. For although prisoners were allowed to wear their own clothing, and male and female family members could meet briefly during the day, the barracks were crude, dark, and crowded, and the SS and their assistants were harsh and bullying.
“Even the very worst conditions at Westerbork,” Ruth said, “were a heaven by comparison. For Bergen-Belsen was hell. The only way we managed to survive in those early months of 1944—cold, hungry, and completely degraded—was on hope. We were waiting for the Austauch, the exchange of Jews for German prisoners of war, that would take us to Palestine.”
In May 1944, three months after the Blumenthals’ arrival at Bergen-Belsen, the names of the Jews scheduled for exchange were at last announced.
“We stood,” Ruth recalled, “in the Sternlager square, listening carefully as the commanding officer began to read off the list. It was arranged alphabetically, starting, of course, with the A’s.
“When he began to read the B’s, we held our breaths tightly. Before we knew it, however, he had gone on to the C’s and D’s. There was no ‘Blumenthal.’
“Still, knowing we must keep order, we continued to listen. Perhaps there would be some names out of place. Perhaps there would be a few more names after the Z’s. Perhaps there would even be a second list.
“With sinking hearts we heard all the names called. No, there was no Blumenthal. I could tell that Walter was going to go up to speak to the officer in charge. He left his place, approached him respectfully, and saluted as in his army days. Then he asked him politely if our name might have been skipped over.
“‘No’—the answer came back—‘your name is not on the list.’
“Walter held out the certificate from the International Red Cross. ‘But all our papers are in order,’ he pleaded. ‘Can’t you look into this?’
“Already Walter had gone too far. The officer lost his patience. Without warning he struck Walter sharply across the neck and back. ‘Sau Jude [pig Jew],’ the officer shrieked, ‘go back to your place!’”
In that moment all hope died for the Blumenthals. There had been so many disappointments—the failed escape from Germany, the canceled sailing on the Nieuw Amsterdam, the horror of being transferred to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. “But this,” Ruth said, “this refusal to honor the Palestine certificate, was the greatest disappointment of all.”
At a much later date the family learned that of a group of 1,100 Jews who had been sent to Bergen-Belsen for the promised exchange, only 221 ever reached Palestine. The Jews who were chosen left the camp quietly at the end of June 1944, traveled by train to Istanbul, and safely reached Haifa by ship on July 10. For those who remained behind, no further appeals to the Red Cross or to the Bergen-Belsen camp administration had the slightest effect.
“We went on,” Marion said, “with our aimless existence. It was now more important than ever for me to search over and over again for my four perfect pebbles. I knew, even then, that in spite of everything, our family must survive.
“Mama was lucky to keep her job in the kitchen. The women in the camp begged to work there because of the chance to get extra food. Often they mobbed the soldiers who held them back. The rest of the time these women spent hours talking about food and exchanging recipes.
“Papa had brought cigarettes with him from Westerbork to trade for extra rations of bread. When those were gone, he saved the ones that were given to male prisoners at Bergen-Belsen from time to time. But after some months had passed, no more were given out. So he saved bread from his own ration. I remember our birthday presents to one another. They were a portion of our week’s ration of bread.
“One day at Appell a young German guard gave my brother an apple. He must have endangered his own life in doing so. Despite the craving for a crunchy, juicy apple, Albert did not keep it for himself. He divided it into an untold number of pieces. This act of kindness by a German solider was like a flicker of light in the darkness and made our bleak existence more bearable, at least for the moment.”
One of the most frightening ordeals at Bergen-Belsen was being taken once a month to the showers. By now, the summer of 1944, the gas chambers at Auschwitz had been operating for two and a half years. Rumors had long been circulating that a death camp gas chamber looked almost exactly like an ordinary public shower room.
“Even though we had been told,” Marion said, “there were no gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen, how could we ever be sure? We were marched to a special building, just as in Auschwitz, and were made to undress in the presence of the male guards. We folded our clothes neatly, tied our shoes together, and left them outside. Then we were given a piece of soap and pushed inside. The door was slammed shut, and we waited, terrified, to see if water would come out of the overhead nozzles, or—as in Auschwitz—the killing fumes of the gas known as Zyklon B.”
The soap that the prisoners at Bergen-Belsen were given before entering the showers did not guarantee their harmlessness. For it was common practice at Auschwitz to provide soap—and also the promise of hot coffee or warm soup afterward—in order to maintain calm and to deceive those about to be gassed.
The deadly poison the Germans had chosen to use at Auschwitz and other human extermination centers was originally designed for insect and rodent control. Its purpose was to fumigate ships and warehouses and to disinfect clothing. Zyklon (or Cyclon) B, which looked in its solid form like innocent blue crystals, was packed in airtight canisters. When released into the air through the showerlike nozzles of a gas chamber, it turned into a vapor that brought death within fifteen minutes.
After the gas had dissipated, the Auschwitz camp attendants, who were usually prisoners themselves, salvaged the gold from the teeth of the dead, pulled rings from their fingers, and cut off the women’s hair. This booty, along with the clothing of the newly dead and the contents of their suitcases, was sent back to Germany, where it had many uses. The corpses of the gassed prisoners were then burned to ash in the Auschwitz ovens.
Bergen-Belsen, too, had a crematorium. Its high, square chimney was similar in appearance to that of Auschwitz. But its chief use was to burn the bodies of those who had died of natural causes—starvation,
exhaustion, disease. Later, as the camp filled beyond its capacity, the crematorium could no longer keep up with the body count. The dead at Bergen-Belsen were then burned in open pits, tossed into mass graves, or even strewn about aboveground.
“The stench of burning flesh from those open pits,” Marion said, “remains in my nostrils to this day. It was even worse than the foul odors of disease, decay, and lack of sanitation that we drew in with every breath.”
Slowly, starting with the Allies’ D-day invasion of France in June 1944, the war began to turn against the Germans. At the same time the Russians were gradually closing in from the east. But at Bergen-Belsen, in the autumn of 1944, the worst was yet to come. To hide the evidence of Auschwitz and the other death camps in Poland, the SS now began to drive its prisoners back into the interior of Germany. Bergen-Belsen was to receive an especially large influx.
In the Sternlager additional wooden barracks were being built, but they were not ready in time for a transport of more than 3,600 women from Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the cold and wet of autumn the women were crammed into a tent city, with a latrine dug in the mud.
For the Blumenthals and their fellow prisoners, the winter of 1944–1945 proved the most difficult yet. Food had become extremely scarce, and there was no longer enough water for bathing, washing clothes, or even drinking. The cold was intense.
“As I had learned to do the winter before,” Marion explained, “I followed the advice of the older women to prevent frostbite of my fingers and toes. After standing at roll call, sometimes for hours, we would return to our barracks and warm our extremities with our own urine.