NAZI TRANSiT CAMPS

Thesis:
In the years of 1941 to 1943, transit camps were at a all time high, being used as rest stations for Jews and soldiers who were on their way to death camps like Auschwitz.

Transit camps like Theresienstadt and Westerbork were being used for resting stops for both soldiers and Jews. Most of the camps were just a two story building surrounded by barbed wire fence.

Theresienstadt Transit Camp

• Theresienstadt was different because it had no buildings. Prisoners were forced to live in the elements. Poor conditions played a part in many of their deaths.
• Jews slept on the ground and in tents surrounded by barbed wire.

The Westerbork Transit Camp

• The Westerbork transit camp was put in the Northeastern part of the Neatherlands, and it served as a transit camp for Dutch Jews before they were deported to death camps in German occupied Poland. The Nazis deported from Westerbork: 54,930 to the Auschwitz death camp, 34,313 to the Sobibor death camp, 4,771 to the Theresienstadt ghetto, and 3,762 to the Bergan Belsan concentration camp. Most who were deported to Auschwitz and Sobibor were killed when they arrived.

Mechelen Transit Camp

• The camp was one three-story building surrounded by barbed wire. Each day, about 1000 Jews left for Auschwitz-Birkenau from Mechelen. The Nazis sent several trainloads of Roma from Mechelen to Auschwitz in 1943 and in early 1944.

Drancy Transit camp

• The camp was a three story U-shaped building that was a police station before the war. Barbed wire surrounded the building and its courtyard. The Nazis began deporting Jews from Drancy to Death camps in German occupied Poland.

Death March:
Close to the end of the war, prisoners were forced to walk for miles in the snow to the rail stations. If they lived through the march, they were relocated to another camp.

Jews were moved by the thousands between camps on supervised trains.

CONCLUSION

• It was transit camps where hundreds of thousands of Jews escaped during World War II. It's was transit camps where hundreds of thousands of Jews were sent to their demise, and it was transit camps where we Americans liberated the millions of Jews captured for the Holocaust.