War Diaries (January 25) (nonfiction)
War Diary quotations for January 25.
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Diaries
Philip Mechanicus: January 25, 1943
A transport of a thousand people left for Auschwitz in a howling storm and pouring rain. In animal wagons, yet again. The majority was from the S barracks: 590 people. The rest, young men of the Aliyah, old men from the hospital and 31 young, nameless children from the orphanage whose parents are either absent or have already been sent to Poland. Amongst them was a 10-year-old boy with a temperature of 39.9°C [103.82°F]: one-tenth of a degree short to be one of the lucky ones who are categorized (by the Germans) as Untransportfähig [untransportable]. The removal of punished or unproductive elements who were just a burden on the camp budget.
People still don’t know what happens to the deported Jews in Poland. They curse the National Socialists and try to find terms to express their feelings of disdain, disgust, horror, and hate, but no one finds the right words.
‘When, oh when will the war be over? When will this misery of the weekly transports come to an end?’ the women lament. ‘The war is going well! But there’s a transport every week,’ the men say, mocking them, trusting the war will soon end in victory for the Allies. Winter is progressing, and people fear that if there’s no decisive battle this winter, the war will drag on all summer, and there won’t be a single Jew left on Dutch soil. Hope alternates with fear: Where are we heading? What is our fate? What is our future?
Philip Mechanicus, a journalist in his 50s, was arrested in September 1942 for not wearing a Star of David on a tram, and sent to Westerbork, a transit camp in the northeast Netherlands where many Jews were brought. Most were then sent on to Nazi concentration and extermination camps farther east in Poland, Germany and Austria. The diary of Mechanicus, published in English in 1968, documented camp life with precision. He often spoke of the transports, which left every Tuesday, carrying 1,000 to 3,000 people, to even harsher fates.
- Dutch War Diaries @ NY Times
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- Dutch War Diaries @ NY Times