Westerbork transit camp

Kamp Westerbork Judendurchgangslager Westerbork
Concentration camp
Location of the camp in the Netherlands
Coordinates	52°55′3″N 6°36′26″E / 52.91750°N 6.60722°E / 52.91750; 6.60722Coordinates: 52°55′3″N 6°36′26″E / 52.91750°N 6.60722°E / 52.91750; 6.60722
Other names	Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Westerbork
Location	Westerbork, the Netherlands
Operated by	SS
Operational	1 July 1942 12 April 1945
Liberated by	Canadian 2nd Infantry Division
Notable inmates	Anne Frank, Dora Gerson, Etty Hillesum, Philip Slier, Edith Stein, Selma Wijnberg-Engel, Max Ehrlich, Wilhelm Mautner, Ellen Burka
Notable books	The night of the Girondins by Jacques Presser
Website	www.westerbork.nl

The Westerbork transit camp (Dutch: Kamp Westerbork, German: Durchgangslager Westerbork) was a World War II Nazi refugee, detention and transit camp in Hooghalen, ten kilometres (6.2 miles) north of Westerbork, in the northeastern Netherlands. Its function during the Second World War was to assemble Romani and Dutch Jews for transport to Nazi extermination camps and other concentration camps.

Since the establishment of the National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany in 1933, the Netherlands had been managing a steady flow of Jewish refugees across its border with Germany. On 15 December 1938, the Dutch government closed its border to refugees; there had been a substantial increase in the refugee flow from Germany following the Kristallnacht pogrom there on 9–10 November. In 1939, the Dutch government erected a Central Refugee Camp (Dutch: Centraal Vluchtelingenkamp) near Westerbork. The Committee for Jewish Refugees (Dutch: Comité voor Joodsche Vluchtelingen), which had been managing the support of the German refugees since 1933, had been required to underwrite the Camp's expenses with a one million guilder fund. The first 22 refugees took up residence at the Camp in October 1939.

Following the German invasion of the Netherlands, the Nazis took over the camp and turned it into a deportation camp. From this camp, 101,000 Dutch Jews and about 5,000 German Jews were deported to their deaths in Occupied Poland. In addition, there were about 400 Gypsies in the camp and, at the very end of the War, some 400 women from the resistance movement.