Historical Context
Historical Context
During the Nazi occupation, people in the so-called Jewish transit camp Westerbork made a distinction between the different types of concentration camps. Mauthausen was feared as an extermination camp. Auschwitz was seen as a forced labour camp. The gas chambers there were a state secret. Two camps were considered the ‘best’ camps: the ghetto for elderly Jews in Theresienstadt and the Bergen-Belsen exchange camp, where no gas chambers existed. The Jews that were held in Bergen-Belsen were referred to as ‘Austauschjuden’ – literally ‘exchange Jews’ – by the Nazis because they could potentially be exchanged against German citizens held captive abroad or against hard currencies. These prisoners were initially well-fed, wore civilian clothes, were not tattooed and only occasionally subjected to forced labour. An actual exchange of prisoners took place only a few times. Towards the end of the war, conditions in Bergen-Belsen became increasingly degrading and the Nazis began to move groups of prisoners.
A few days before the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was to be liberated on 15 April, the Nazis hurriedly organised a transport of select group of Jewish prisoners with the aim to transfer them to Theresienstadt. During the deportation of these prisoners, between 6 and 11 April, three trains were loaded with some 6,800 people in total. The first transport was liberated by American troops in the vicinity of Magdeburg on 13 April. A second train with mainly Hungarian Jews on board arrived in Theresienstadt on 26 April 1945. It is unknown what become of those deported. After wandering the parts of Germany as yet unoccupied by the Allies for over two weeks, the last of these trains was stranded on an open track in Tröbitz, a tiny village in the state of Brandenburg and abandoned by the retreating German soldiers. On 23 April, advancing Soviet troops came across the train. They liberated the prisoners, including 1,500 Dutch nationals who had been classified as Jews by the German occupation.
Initially, the Russian occupying forces evicted the German inhabitants who had not fled the village – mostly women and children – from their homes to make room for the people from the train. But after spending a night in the nearby forest, many of them returned to their village, which had been completely ransacked. The Red Army ordered them to provide shelter for the survivors and care for the sick, quickly seeing itself forced to take precautions to stop an epidemic of typhoid fever that had broken out on the train from spreading. The village was quarantined, which meant that no one was allowed in or out. It took eight weeks before the epidemic was under control. The field hospital was led by Soviet medics and Jewish doctors from the train. Women and girls from the village were recruited as nurses. Meanwhile, Moscow sent a delegation to the village to “enthuse” the former Jewish prisoners for possible emigration to the Soviet Union.
Despite the quarantine measures, on 13 May 1945, two former Jewish resistance fighters, Mirjam en Menachem Pinkhof, managed to leave Tröbitz by bike, cross the river Elbe and, on 18 May, hand over a memorandum to the Americans that was intended for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague. It contained a report about this third train and the circumstances of those rescued. The American liaison officers then contacted the Soviet army camps and travelled to Tröbitz to verify what was in the memorandum and commence repatriation. On 16 June 1945, even before the quarantine was lifted, the Americans began repatriating the survivors. Ultimately, over 550 people died during the train journey and in the weeks that followed. Among them a number of inhabitants of Tröbitz and several Russian doctors who had contracted typhoid fever.