The young grass, the swollen brown chestnut buds, and the radiant sun that was growing more glorious with every passing day seemed to promise new life. But the Earth was covered with the chill of death. It was spring 1943.

The Germans were deep in Russia and the fortunes of war had yet to turn.

In the West, the Allies still hadn’t set foot on the Continent.

The terror raging over Europe was taking fiercer and fiercer forms.

The Jews were the conquerors’ playthings. It was a game of cat and mouse. Night after night, motorbikes roared through the streets of Amsterdam, jackboots stamped and orders snarled along the once so-peaceful canals.

Then, later, in Westerbork, the mouse was often released for a moment. People were allowed to move freely around the camp, packages arrived and families stayed together. Everyone wrote an obedient “I am fine” letter to Amsterdam, so that others in turn would also surrender peacefully to the Grüne Polizei.

In Westerbork the Jews were given the illusion that everything might not turn out too badly, that although they were now excluded from society, they would one day return from their isolation.

“When the war is done and everyone

Is on the way back home…”

was the start of a popular song.

Not only did they not see their future fate, there were even some who had the courage—or was it blindness?—to start a new life, to found a new family. Every day Dr. Molhuijsen came to the camp on behalf of the mayor of the village of Westerbork, and one magnificent morning—from April’s quota of nine fine days—Hans and Friedel appeared before him.

They were two idealists: he was twenty-seven and a well-known doctor at the camp; she was just eighteen. They had got to know each other in the ward where he held sway and she was a nurse.

“Because alone we are none,

But together we are one”

he had written in a poem for her, and that was exactly how they felt. Together they would win through. Maybe they would manage to stay in Westerbork until the end of the war, and otherwise continue the struggle together in Poland. Because one day the war would end and a German victory was something nobody believed in.

They were together for half a year like this, living in the “doctor’s room,” a cardboard box in the corner of a large barracks with one hundred and thirty women. They didn’t have the room to themselves, but shared it with another doctor and, later, two other couples. Definitely not the appropriate surroundings for establishing a young married life together. But none of that would have mattered if there hadn’t been any transports: one thousand people every Tuesday morning. Men and women, young and old, including babies and even people who were ill.

Only a very small number were allowed to stay behind, when Hans and the other doctors were able to prove that they were too sick to spend three days on a train. Also exempt were those with a privileged status: the baptized, the mixed marriages, alte Kamp-Insassen who had been interned since 1938, and permanent members of staff like Hans and Friedel.

There was a staff list of a thousand names, but there was also a steady influx of new arrivals from the cities who needed to be protected, sometimes on German orders, sometimes because they really had been worthy citizens, but mostly because of longstanding connections with the notables on the Jewish Council or with the alte Kamp-Insassen, who had a firm grip on the key positions in the camp. Then the list of one thousand would be revised.

This was how it came about that an employee of the Jewish Council came to Hans and Friedel on the night of Monday, September 13, 1943 to tell them that they had to get ready for deportation. Hans dressed quickly and made a round of all the authorities, who worked under high pressure on the night before the weekly transport. Dr. Spanier, the head of the hospital, was furious. Hans had been in the camp for a year. He had worked hard; there were many others who had arrived later and never done a thing. But Hans was on the Jewish Council staff list and if they couldn’t keep him on it, the health service couldn’t do anything about it either.

At eight o’clock they were standing with all their belongings next to the train, which ran through the middle of the camp. It was tremendously busy. The camp police and the men of the Flying Column were carrying baggage to the train and two wagons were loaded with provisions for the journey. The male nurses from the hospital came trailing up with the patients, mostly elderly, who couldn’t walk. That wasn’t sufficient reason to let them stay—next week they would be no more mobile than they were now. Also present were friends and family who were staying in the camp; they stood behind the cordon, twenty or thirty yards away from the train, often crying more than those who were leaving.

At the front and back of the train were carriages with SS guards, but they were very fair, and tried to keep people’s spirits up, because it was essential to keep the Dutch from finding out how “their” Jews were really being treated.

Half past ten: departure. The doors of the goods wagons were bolted on the outside. A last goodbye, a last wave through the hatches in the roof of the wagon, and then they were on their way to Poland, exact destination unknown.

Hans and Friedel had been lucky and were in a wagon with only young people, old friends of Friedel’s from the Zionist group she had belonged to, friendly and accommodating. Altogether there were thirty-eight of them. That was relatively few and, with a little reorganization, hanging baggage from the ceiling, there was room for them to all sit down on the floor.

The fun and games started during the trip. At the first stop, SS men came into the wagon demanding their cigarettes, and later their watches. The next time it was fountain pens and jewelry. The lads laughed it off, giving them a few loose cigarettes and claiming it was all they had. A lot of them were originally German; they’d had dealings with the SS often enough before. They’d come through it alive then too, and they weren’t going to let themselves be bullied around this time either.

They weren’t given any food in those three days and they never saw the train’s provisions again. But that didn’t matter! They still had enough with them from Westerbork. Now and then a couple of them were allowed to leave the wagon to empty the small and overflowing toilet barrel. They were delighted when they saw signs of bombing raids in the cities, but otherwise the trip was uneventful. On the third day they found out their destination: Auschwitz. It was just a meaningless word, neither good nor bad.

That night they reached the Auschwitz railway yard.