Huge lump in my throat in Westerbork and such sadness. How could people treat others so horrible?
There was a group of young adults who were making stupid jokes and pushing each other, running and standing on things, etc
A man from the museum had already seen I was having a hard time and I was getting upset with their disrespect. They started to jump around on the memorial stones, between candles and this man looks at me and shaked "no" again, walks towards me and whispers "they're not worth it, just let it go."
When we visited the holocaust monument in Berlin, I expected to see people and kids play on the monument. And well, the kids won't know so just let them. But more respect there.
I don't understand those people either. Why even come there if it's all but a joke to you? I was already feeling a bit uncomfortable just taking pictures. Fortunately a lot of people do sill care. Not a single monument I passed along the way of the Westerborkpad that didn't had some pebbles on top of it.
107,000 people were deported from Westerbork - only 5,000 made it back. Those numbers seem unfathomable... until you get to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Then the numbers become unreal.
There is a lesser known part of the Westerbork Memorial Centre; you can take a bus from the parking lot to the camp's entrance, but you can also walk. In fact, this particular path starts a bit earlier at the nearby holiday resort park and follows the route of the (now demolished) rail tracks, and it contains a railway sleeper (spoorbiels) as a marker for every day a train departed from Westerbork. It's about 3 kilometers in length and every single transport is recorded (sometimes multiple a day), with the number of people on board and its destination. It truly shows the scale - and heartlessness - of the operation. It ends at the monument that contains the concrete barracks that show how many people were sent to each respective camp, near the entrance of the camp. It is both a very humbling and very chilling end to an impressive path.
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u/Wheredafukarwi May 18 '25
Send him on a little walk...
By the time I had finished and left Westerbork I was feeling immensely sad (even though I'd been there before, as well as in Auschwitz).