Polizeiliches Judendurchgangslager
KAMP WESTERBORK
Drenthe Province
130 kilometers north of Amsterdam
OCCUPIED NETHERLANDS
Former Jewish refugee camp now under the control of the SS Security Police and SD
After their arrest on that hot day in the first week of August, they are confined in the cellar of the SD headquarters in the Euterpestraat, before being transported to the House of Detention I in the Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen. There they spend two terrible nights suffering from the stench of a polluted canal before being taken to Centraal Station under a Dutch police guard and boarded onto a scruffy passenger train with the shades closed and the windows nailed shut. The train bumps down the tracks of the Staatslijn C with the carloads of other captive Jews, branching off at Hooghalen to the final leg of track leading to the so-called Polizeiliches Judendurchgangslager: the Jewish Transit Camp isolated in the mosquito-infested moorland of Drenthe Province.
This is Kamp Westerbork, a barbed-wire enclosure of more than a hundred barracks. Once it had been a refugee camp for young, unmarried German Jews pouring over the border to escape their Fatherland. But when the Nazi occupation began, the SS were delighted to find that such a facility had so conveniently been established for them in the Dutch lowlands, and with only a few alterations in the amenities, such as the electrification of the fencing, they transformed the camp from a refuge into a prison.
In a large hall filled with the clatter of typewriters, the Franks wait in one of many long queues. They have, at the moment, lost track of the van Pelses and Pfeffer, but the family is still together. Anne notices that after so long in hiding, their skin has turned as white as bleached flour from lack of sunlight. They have become living ghosts.
“Mother,” Margot suddenly announces, “you’re shivering.”
And so she is. Both Margot and Pim move to comfort her, but Edith takes a step away.
“Please don’t,” is all she can squeeze from her lips as she hugs herself, quaking, eyes boring into nothing. But she does not resist when Pim alone takes her into his embrace, and Anne is struck by a bolt of guilt. To see her mother so far from comfort, untouchable by her daughters. She cannot help but feel that she is responsible. How many times did Mummy try to get close to her, and how many times did Anne shove her away?
Their assignment vouchers are clear. The place where all eight of them are billeted is a barracks with its own barbed-wire enclosure, because all Jewish onderduikers are interred in the camp within the camp: the so-called S-Block. S for Straffe. The Punishment Barracks. Punishment for the crime of having tried to save themselves by going into hiding. Because, of course, in the eyes of the Grossdeutsches Reich, onderduiker Jews are criminal Jews. Criminal Jews are forced to wear red patches on their dungarees and rough wooden clogs instead of shoes. They are assigned to the dirtiest work details. Men have their heads shaved and dig latrines in labor Kommandos, while women are sent to Section XII to salvage depleted batteries, splitting them with a mallet and chisel. The battery tar sticks to Anne’s skin. The carbon bars turn her fingers a muddy red color. Everyone chokes on the chemical dust; the coughing is like an underrhythm to their work. But at least there are people to talk to and jokes to tell. Sand blows everywhere, driven by the moorland winds. It grits her teeth, and the mosquitoes leave welts the size of pennies, but the air is fresh and the sunlight unrationed. It is livable.
Except for Tuesdays.
There is a long, straight road that bisects Kamp Westerbork—the only paved road in the flat mud plain. The Jews call it the Boulevard des Misères, because of the stretch of graveled railbed that runs beside it. Every Saturday a train of boxcars enters the camp, between eight and eleven in the morning, and comes to a steaming halt on the track. And there it sits until Tuesday morning, waiting to be filled with human freight. The metal signs bolted to the side of the boxcars tell the story:
WESTERBORK—AUSCHWITZ
AUSCHWITZ—WESTERBORK
Inside the barbed-wire boundaries of Westerbork, the Jews administer themselves. They police themselves. The Jewish Kommando charged with keeping order is known as the Ordnungsdienst, or more simply as the OD. They are often thuggish and brutal in their duties, these men, but luckily the head OD man for the S-Block has a reputation for decency, so Anne takes this as a good sign. Perhaps God is watching over them still.
Men and women are separated during the night. The Frank women share a three-tier bunk bed, with dirty burlap sacks filled with straw for mattresses. Mummy is still speechless most of the time. Numb, though she cried when a brute with a visored cap and the Magen David on his arm stole her wedding ring. It must have hurt her so much to lose that ring, and to think that it was another Jew who stole it from her!
One night after lights-out, Anne is struck by a nightmare even though she is still awake. Risking the abuse of their barracks elder, she slips out from the bottom bunk and presses her chin to the second tier, where her sister sleeps. A thin glow from the camp lamps seeps through the poorly mended shutters on the windows.
“Margot,” she whispers. She can feel needles of fear heating the back of her neck. It will mean some very bad trouble if she is caught out of her bunk. “Margot, wake up.” Anne prods her.
Margot does not move. She wakes without any kind of a start or surprise, her eyes simply open, reflecting a wet light. “What is it?” she hisses at Anne.
“Margot, I’m afraid Mummy and Pim are going to die,” Anne breathes.
Margot’s eyes widen enough to show that perhaps she, too, has had such a fear herself. “Anne . . .” she whispers.
“Promise me you’ll stay with me, Margot,” Anne begs her. “Promise me that whatever happens to us, you’ll stay with me. I couldn’t stand being alone any longer. I think I would die.”
“I promise,” Margot tells her, reaching out from under the dirty blanket and taking her sister’s hand. “I promise I will always stay with you, Anne. I will always stay with you.”
At that moment Anne loves Margot entirely. Loves her like she has never loved her before. Perhaps that makes it so much harder when the news comes. First as a rumor, then as a fact. There’s to be special transport. Not on Tuesday but this Sunday. And so, on the night of the second of September, their barracks elder makes the announcement to the entire population of the S-Block. “On the orders of the SS-Obersturmführer und Lagerkommandant, all inmates of Punishment Barracks, men and women without exception, will assemble for transport tomorrow.” Including Anne. Including Margot. Including Mummy and Pim and all the other former inhabitants of the Achterhuis.
Morning comes to the Boulevard des Misères. The OD Flying Column in their fluttering capes and brown coveralls are brusque but not exactly brutal, since it’s known that the Herr Kommandant prefers to keep things orderly. No panic. No violence, no untidiness. The Herr Kommandant is oh, so very humane, you see. Oh, so very handsome is the Herr Kommandant. Oh, so very polite. He ranges up and down the length of track in his immaculate SS uniform, trimly tailored, perfectly coiffed, confirming that all is in order. All is well. Assisting the elderly. Handing an infant up to a mother. Waving to the children. Anne sees their little faces, the children from the camp school, lined up by their teachers, loaded into the rail cars by the Ordedienst, cooperative and unafraid, like good little boys and girls.
When it’s their turn, two OD men lift Anne up like she is nothing, and she has the briefest sensation of weightlessness before she stumbles forward into the car. Margot is right behind her, and then Mummy, and then Pim, and then they are shoved deeper into the mass of people before the doors of the freight car are rolled shut and Anne hears the heavy, irrevocable clang of the lock.
Inside, she and Margot are huddled together, gripping each other’s hand. Only the narrowest cracks of light interrupt the darkness that encloses them all. A day earlier they were eating thin but edible broth with a short ration of hard-crusted brown bread. They were walking in the open air, absorbing the sunlight. The precious sunlight. But now they are all packed into this murky darkness. With so many sardined inside a freight car, the communal act of breathing takes on the low-pitched rhythm of a bellows. Mummy and Pim are trying to protect them with their bodies from the crush of people, though Mummy is whimpering, and not even Pim can comfort her. There’s a heavy rumbling noise. Metal clanks. The carriage lumbers forward, and Anne feels its sudden lurch in the pit of her belly. It grabs her like a hook, and a claw of utter, helpless terror snags her. The locomotive lets go with a high, mournful howl as it leaves the camp perimeters.
The journey will be hideous. No space, no air, no food, no place to use the toilet. The wailing. The stench of shit and vomit. The sobs and moans. A trainload of Jews rolling into the unknown horror. But in a gruesome way, Anne will treasure the memory. It will be the last time they are all together as a family. Pim, Mummy, Margot, and Anne. The last of the Franks.
Three days hence cars and cargo arrive at their destination, a converted cavalry garrison in the marshlands of southern Poland near a village that the Germans call Auschwitz.