page_title: Westerbork transit camp
section_title: Notable prisoners
hierarchical_section_title: Westerbork transit camp / Purpose of Camp Westerbork / Notable prisoners
caption_attribution_description: Own photograph Parts of a rebuilt barrack at Dutch Nazi camp Westerbork. Anne Frank stayed in this barrack from August till early September 1944, before she was taken to Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen.
context_page_description: Camp Westerbork was a transit camp in Drenthe province, northeastern Netherlands, during World War II. Established by the Dutch government in the summer of 1939, Camp Westerbork was meant to serve as a refugee camp for Jews who had illegally entered the Netherlands.
context_section_description: Notable prisoners in Westerbork included Anne Frank, who was transported to Camp Westerbork on August 4, 1944 and Etty Hillesum, each of whom wrote of their experiences in diaries discovered after the war. Anne remained at the camp in a small hut until September 3, when she was deported to Auschwitz.
  Etty Hillesum was able to avoid the Nazi dragnet that identified Jews until April 1942. Even after being labeled a Jew, Hillesum began to report on antisemitic policies. She took a job with Judenrat for two weeks and then volunteered to accompany the first group of Jews sent to Westerbork. Hillesum stayed at Westerbork until September 7, 1943, when she was deported to Auschwitz. She died there three months later.
  Camp Westerbork also housed German film actress and cabaret singer Dora Gerson, who was interned there with her family before being sent to Auschwitz, and Professor Sir William Asscher, who survived the camp when his mother secured his family's release by fabricating English ancestry. Jona Oberski wrote of his experience as a small child at Westerbork in his book, Kinderjaren ("Childhood"), published in the Netherlands in 1978 and later made into the film, Jonah Who Lived in the Whale.
  Maurice Frankenhuis chronicled his family's experiences while interned in Westerbork and in 1948 conducted an interview with its Commander Albert Gemmeker while awaiting trial. The published interview in Dutch and English became the basis for a docudrama created in September 2019. The film features colorization of original video of transports from Westerbork by photographer Rudolf Breslauer.
caption: Parts of a rebuilt hut at Westerbork, which once held Anne Frank
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