Kamp Westerbork
Memorial centre in Hooghalen that tells the personal stories of the 102,000 victims who were deported via Kamp Westerbork. The former camp site is three kilometres away.
Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork, the Westerbork memorial centre, is in Hooghalen, south of Assen. It tells of the Jews, Sinti and Roma who during the Second World War were deported from the Netherlands via Westerbork to concentration and extermination camps and murdered. The centre focuses on the stories of individual people, so that it does not stop at numbers. It is also a knowledge centre on war heritage, with an emphasis on the persecution of the Jews.
The Dutch government opened the camp in 1939 for Jewish refugees from Germany. From 1942 the German occupiers used it as a Durchgangslager, a transit camp: from here the trains left for Auschwitz, Sobibor and other camps.
The museum
The exhibition Durchgangslager Westerbork tells the story of the camp from different sides: that of the prisoners, but also that of the guards, the train drivers, the neighbours and the people who helped others to hide and escape. It shows how many people were connected with the camp in one way or another.
Children aged six and over have their own route, to walk with their parents or grandparents. At listening posts you hear passages from the book Kinderen met een ster (Children with a Star) by Martine Letterie. Throughout the year there are also eyewitness talks, in which people tell what they went through in the war.
The camp site
The former camp site is three kilometres from the museum. After the war the camp had other uses: from 1951, for twenty years, several thousand Moluccans lived there, in the Schattenberg residential camp. In 1971 the last barracks were demolished. In the early 1990s the site was laid out again. Embankments and reconstructions show where some of the barracks stood and how big they were, and the original paths and roads have been put back. The commandant's house is still standing, and there are several memorials on the site.
Visiting
The memorial centre is at Oosthalen 8 in Hooghalen. A visit can affect you deeply; if you find it hard, you can turn to the centre for support. Opening times, admission prices and how to get to the camp site are on kampwesterbork.nl.
