\'Presumably transported\'. 1

‘Presumably transported’.1 The Jewish Council and its limited access to information from Lager Westerbork By Raymund Schütz, 2016 Lager Westerbork was the gate to hell. The moment that defined the destiny of many victims was the date of deportation. On every Jewish Council registration card of a deported person the date of the transport with which he or she left Lager Westerbork is noted in red pencil handwriting. These registration cards were the main information system that the Jewish council depended on. It was in fact a large paper database. The Jewish Council cards enable us to reconstruct the procedures and to analyse the information-position of the Jewish council. It is important to understand how the communication between Amsterdam, where the head-office of the JC was seated, and Lager Westerbork was organised and how efficient it was. Soon after the first deportation of 15 July 1942 a special office of the JC was set up in Westerbork. It appeared to the Jews who worked in the Westerbork administration that many people who were deported in July 1942 could have been eligible for a temporary protection of deportation (Sperre). The Sperres were adjudged by the German authorities to Jews after recommendation by the Jewish Council on the grounds of indispensability as a functionary, emigration requests, military distinctions and many more. I have tread this subject extensively in chapter 3 of my thesis (in Dutch, not included here). For the purpose of this chapter it suffices to understand that emigration was a basis or protection. At the same time, if all formalities for the Sperre were not yet completed, the person concerned was vulnerable and could still be deported at short notice. After the first deportations in the summer of 1942 a special (and in the beginning informal) Antragstelle was set up in Lager Westerbork as a last safety-net. To dot its work properly it was very important to have short and fast lines of communication with the consultant who worked in Amsterdam for the General Information department (Algemene Voorlichting (AV), ook wel: Centrale voorlichting (CV)). Antragstelle became a separate department of the JC on 12 December 1942. As argued in chapter 4 of my thesis (also not included here), the information position of the Jewish Council was relatively weak. There were three administrative systems operating in Lager Westerbork. First the Zentralkartei, which was under the direct order of the German camp-commander. It is in this system that the deportation lists were compiled and where the fate of individuals was sealed. The system facilitated the primary process of deportation. After the transports had left the Lager, the cards of the deportees were destroyed. Only the cards of the people who survived the war in Lager Westerbork were left untouched and are still available in the Red Cross Archives. The second major administrative system was the deputy town-office in Lager Westerbork. This office, which was separated from the main town-office in the town of Westerbork, operated since the end of 1942 and registered all the Jews who were taken into the camp, stayed there and were deported. It is with these two informationsystems that we compare the JC-card index-system. From internal correspondence of the Jewish Council it becomes clears that the German camp-commander could cut off all communication lines of the Jewish Council Antragstelle at any time and he did that regularly. There were very strict limitations to the use of telephone in Westerbork. Functionaries of the Jewish Council in many cases travelled from Amsterdam to Lager Westerbork, but access was also strictly limited. In order to improve the contacts with the department in Westerbork, a special courier service was set up by the JC. So most of the exchange of information was done on paper, by forms, letters and requests. This meant that 1

This short article is based on my master-thesis ‘Vermoedelijk op transport’, chapter 5. https://www.academia.edu/602303/Vermoedelijk_op_transport 1

there was a time gap between the observance of an administrative fact in Lager Westerbork and the moment this information reached the seat of the JC in Amsterdam. The Sperreprocesses were time-critical, so any delay in information was to the detriment of the JC and the Jews whose interests it represented. This will be illustrated by the following case and this enables us to evaluate the quality of the information that the JC gathered in Westerbork. In post-war criticism the Jewish Council is always portrayed as an inefficient and bureaucratic organisation. 5.1. The case of Frieda Herzenberg-Ettlinger Frieda Herzenberg-Ettlinger was born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1885. In November 1914 she emigrated with her husband Elias to Rotterdam. They had two children, Henriëtte (1915) and Leo (1921).2 Rotterdam was bombarded by the German Luftwaffe on 14 May 1940 and the Dutch military surrendered the next day. On that same day, Frieda was transferred from a hospital in Rotterdam to Gouda, where she was admitted to the central home for the Jewish in the city centre, Oosthaven 31 (this information was provided to the Information Bureau of the Netherlands Red Cross in 1946).3 It is not known if her condition was in any way related to the war related violence in Rotterdam. Two years later while she still stayed in Gouda, her husband Elias and both children were deported from Lager Westerbork to Auschwitz on 2 October 1942. They were murdered immediately after arrival in Auschwitz on 5 October 1942.4 It is not known if Frieda was ever informed about this. Frieda was alone in Gouda, but her brother Jacob lived in Sweden. He had managed to get an Ecuadorian passport for her, which would enable her to journey out to Sweden. But that never happened. The JC-cards tell us how and why.

Picture 1. The JC registration card of Frieda Herzenberg-Ettlinger. Source: The Netherlands Red Cross Information Bureau Archives.

2

Gezinskaart Herzenberg, gemeente Rotterdam. Rotterdam.digitalestamboom.nl. Personal file of Frieda Herzenberg-Ettlinger, EU 17.693. NL-HaNRK 4 Personal files of Elias, Henriëtte and Leo Herzenberger; NL-HaNRK EU 131.395, EU 131.195 and EU 131.196. 3

2

This JC-registration card contains her personal data, her address in Gouda (‘Centraal Tehuis voor Israëlieten’) and the number of her request: 30.905. It contains no detailed procedural data, but tells us that she was in Lager Westerbork (‘wbk’, upper right corner), but no exactly when. But there is a striking anomaly on this card. On 27 April 1943 a blue stamp was placed on the card, with a handwritten note: ‘presumably transported’. But there is also a diagonal note in red pencil: ‘tr. 20.4.43’. This tells us that it took the JC a week to understand that Frieda was not in Lager Westerbork anymore. It was not known when she had left and what her destination was. The red pencil note of the exact deportation date was written on the card after the war when the card-system was used by the Red Cross for tracing purposes. So even the relatively spars information on the registration card has an anomaly, that can only be explained on the basis of the provenance of the card, and its use by different institutions with different functions in time. The JC-card provides the personal data of Frieda, gives an indication that she was at some time before 27 April 1943 in Lager Westerbork and that she was presumably was on a transport that left Lager Westerbork.

Picture 2. The Westerbork ‘persoonskaart’ of Frieda Ettlinger deputy-municipal register Westerbork. Source: The Netherlands Red Cross Information Bureau Archives.

The next official record we investigate is Frieda’s personal record from the deputy townoffice in Lager Westerbork. It gives the exact personal data of Frieda: her address in Gouda and it mentions the exact date that she was registered in Lager Westerbork: 10 April 1943. It confirms that she was removed from the register on 20 April 1943 and she her destination was a foreign country (‘buitenland’). It does not mention that she was deported to Sobibor, in fact, administratively this was an ‘ordinary’ case of emigration. The record is clear about the date she came into Lager Westerbork and when she left: no presumptions. There was an exchange between the municipal register and the Zentralkartei, but the JC was excluded. The last Westerbork information system we want to investigate is the Zentralkartei. Unfortunately the card of Frieda was destroyed at some time after her deportation. We have to resort to the card of a survivor of Westerbork, since only the cards of the survivors were kept. I have chosen the card of Josephine Awerbach-Katz This is a neatly typed red card, which contains her personal data, the names of her husband and children, the exact dates she entered and left Lager Westerbork, it mentions the barracks she stayed in. On the backside of the card 3

there is information about requests to the camp commander to stay (Zurückstellung or Lagersperre). That brings us back to the JC-records. Apart from the JC-registration card we investigated before, there are JC-cards with procedural information of the Frieda’s case.

Picture 3: the Zentralkartei card of Josephine Auerbach-Katz. Source: The Netherlands Red Cross Information Bureau Archives.

Picture 4: JC-card (1) with procedural information concerning Frieda Herzenberg-Ettlinger. Source: The Netherlands Red Cross Information Bureau Archives. 4

The card mentions that on 12 April 1943 a (medical) attestation was sent from Lager Westerbork to Franz Stargardter (1887-1945, a consultant for the JC-department Algemene Voorlichting (AV) in Amsterdam). It was his job to try to get an exemption for Frieda on the basis of her medical condition. This attestation was received in Amsterdam the next day, possibly via the JC courier service. On 27 April 1943 all the documents were returned via mail to the JC office in Gouda. The case was closed, the documents returned, further steps were purposeless, the applicant had presumably been transported (‘vermoedelijk transport’). On 7 May 1943 a telegram from Jacob Ettlinger was received by the JC’s Emigration department: ‘bestätige dass Einreise Schweden georderd und weitere Dokumente unterwegs’. The case was handled by Mathieu van Leeuwen, a consultant of the JC-emigration department in Amsterdam. He sent a request (‘exposé’) to the Antragstelle Westerbork: since a telegram was received from Stockholm, would it be useful to send the documents to Westerbork? On 11 May 1943 he received the answer dated 10 May 1943: further steps were purposeless, applicant was presumably on transport.

Picture 5: JC-card (2) with procedural information. Source: The Netherlands Red Cross Information Bureau Archives.

However, on 21 May 1943 the head of AV-department Kindler (1892-1944) send the Ecuadorian passport of Frieda, which was issued on 17 January 1942 by the General Ecuadorian consulate in Stockholm, to the Antragstelle Westerbork, probably just in case she was still in Lager Westerbork. This is again proof of the fact that the JC did not have direct access to the municipal Westerbork registers or Zentralkartei. On 25 May 1943 a letter dated 17 May 1943 was received from Jacob Ettlinger. He asked the current address of his sister. This was an impossible question for the JC, and Van Leeuwen answered immediately that it was not possible to give an address. This case shows us that the consultant Van Leeuwen of the Emigration department of the Jewish Council acted 5

promptly, but that he did not have the disposal of the right information. Even if the JC would have had access to the registers in Westerbork, it could only be established that the applicant had left for a foreign country. But even that information could not be called up by the JC.

Picture 6: JC-card (3) with procedural information. Source: The Netherlands Red Cross Information Bureau Archives.

On 28 May 1943 the Antragstelle sent Frieda’s passport to Amsterdam and we recognise the euphemisms: ‘further steps were purposeless’. The letter was received in Amsterdam on 30 May 1943, but the passport was not enclosed, that was probably the only administrative mistake that the JC made in this case. The message went out to the Antragstelle on 1 June 1943 and on 4 June the passport was duly sent to the Emigration Department in Amsterdam. But Jakob Ettlinger in Sweden was still pressing for an answer: on 12 June 1943 a letter was received by Emigration from Jakob: where was my sister taken to? Van Leeuwen answered immediately: she left for an unknown destination. That was all he knew and all could say. On 26 June 1943 the case was finally closed and the passport of Frieda was sent to the archive. Mathieu van Leeuwen was deported from Westerbork to Sobibor on 20 July 1943 where he was immediately murdered after arriving on 23 July 1943. Conclusion The case shows that the administrative organisation of the Jewish Council departments (Emigration, Algemene Voorlichting and Antragstelle Westerbork) was quite efficient even according to today’s standards. Letters were answered almost immediately. A request from Westerbork was received in Amsterdam the next day. The root of the problem was a fundamental lack of information, which was the direct and intended result of the policies of the German authorities.

6