25 April 2024 at 09:53 History
AMERSFOORT Camp Amersfoort has played a greater role in the persecution and extermination of Jews in the Netherlands than previously thought, reports Fidelity. The World War II penal camp is known as a transit camp for forced laborers and a place where resistance fighters were held. But new research, which lasted six years, shows that Camp Amersfoort was indeed a Holocaust camp.
For example, the camp was already a collection camp for Jews ten months before the opening of Camp Westerbork, according to the book The forgotten story of the Jewish prisoners of Camp Amersfoort by historian Amanda Kluveld of Maastricht University. She discovered that 82 Jews were murdered in Camp Amersfoort, including a baby.
There were also direct deportations, Kluveld discovered. Two trains left for Auschwitz and almost four hundred Jews were transported to Mauthausen penal camp, where they were murdered. “This research puts Camp Amersfoort in a completely different light,” says Floris van Dijk, head of research at National Monument Camp Amersfoort. “In the post-war memory culture, the Jewish prisoners of this camp have been unfairly marginalized.”
