Camp Westerbork

[george013]

The end of the year we spent in a house close to Camp Westerbork.
The camp has been build in 1939 to accommodate German fugitives, mostly Jews. They had to build and pay for it themselves. In 1942 it became a concentration camp for the Jews to be deported to the destructions camps like Auswitch. After the war it was used to accommodate the Molukkian people who had to leave Indonesie after the independence war. In 1971 it was broken down. Now it's a place to remember.
http://www.kampwesterbork.nl/en/gesc...ex.html#/index

Several cards that where written in the camp.
It says:
Dear family Scholten. We're with all the family on the train. We're leaving. We're very grateful to miss ..... With gods help we meet again. Goodbey.


Personally I like this one. Showing 2 worlds.


A link to this time.
It says:
Imagine you had to flee.


George

[rpcrowe]

What always makes me sad is the plight of the Jewish people who escaped from Germany to neighboring countries only to be rounded up when the Nazi's took over nations like the Netherlands and France...

[madcrow]

I hope we'll never forget. No matter how bad an atrocity is, someone can always find a reason to justify it. Great images but very sad story.

[george013]

Some more about Westerbork. It was broken down in 1971 to give place to a group of radio telescopes. It's a silence area, meaning no cars and mobiles that could disturb the working of the telescopes. A 2km walk or by bus to the place where the camp was. The only building left is the commanders house, which is totally surrounded by a glass cube.

Some more about concentration camps in general.
The first "inhabitants" of the German concentration camps where the communists and socialists.
The concentration camp in a "modern" way was an English invention, used during the Boer War in South Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War

George

[Shadowman]

Thanks for link.

[rpcrowe]

After getting their bottoms soundly spanked by the Boers in the First Boer War and during the first portions of the Second Boer War, the Crown forces gathered the women and children from the Boer farmsteads and placed them in concentration cams so that the Boer Commandos had no support throughout the land. The casualties from disease in the camps were horrendous.

[george013]

After getting their bottoms soundly spanked by the Boers in the First Boer War and during the first portions of the Second Boer War, the Crown forces gathered the women and children from the Boer farmsteads and placed them in concentration cams so that the Boer Commandos had no support throughout the land. The casualties from disease in the camps were horrendous.

Inhumane but, unfortunately effective...

That can also be said about the industrial destruction of millions of people under Hitler. I prefer a moral judgement.

I'm on the email list of Phaidon books. I can't remember why. Today an article of refugee pictures from Magnum. Among many photo's of Seymoure, a fellow photographer of Robert Cape and Gerda Tarot. All of them died "during duty". I don't know why there's a reference to an exhibition in Londen last year.
http://de.phaidon.com/agenda/photogr...s-of-refugees/

Back to Westerbork. Looking for more info I found something very strange. http://www.holocaust-lestweforget.co...dicalcare.html

The house of the camp commandant.


George

[rpcrowe]

I have been doing some research on the later stages of the Second Anglo Boer War and found some very disturbing images. At first, I was not at all certain that this image had been taken (as purported) in a British Concentration camp for Boer, women, children and old folks but, this image appears again and again (even in a BBC documentary regarding the horrors of the Boer War). That seems to give some validity to the claim that this dying little girl was a British captive, not an inmate of Auschwitz or Buchenwald...

Lizzie van Zyl Image deleted as too graphic - can be seen along with her horrendous story at: http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/wo...-war-1900-1902

At about the same time, the Spanish had been guilty of similar cruelty in Cuba and the Americans treated the indigenous Filipinos horribly during the so called, "Pacification of the Philippine Islands" after the Spanish American War ended and the USA took over the Philippines. However, this certainly doesn't justify the treatment of the Boer women and children in order to get back at their fathers and husbands who were fighting...