Amersfoort concentration camp

Kamp Amersfoort ( nl, Kamp Amersfoort, german: Durchgangslager Amersfoort) was a Nazi concentration camp near the city of Amersfoort, the Netherlands. The official name was "Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Amersfoort", P.D.A. or Amersfoort Police Transit Camp. 37,000 prisoners were held there between 1941 to 1945. The camp was situated in the northern part of the municipality of Leusden, on the municipal boundary between Leusden and Amersfoort in the central Netherlands.

Early history

In 1939, Kamp Amersfoort was still a complex of barracks that supported army artillery exercises on the nearby Leusderheide. From 1941 onwards, it did not merely function as a transit camp, as the name suggests. The terms "penal camp" or "work camp" would also be fitting. During the existence of the camp, many prisoners were put to work in work units. In total, around 37,000 prisoners were registered at Amersfoort.

To get to the camp, prisoners had to walk from the railway sidings through the town and through residential neighborhoods:

Visible in the windows, above and below, of most residences and behind closed lace curtains, were numerous silhouettes, especially those of children. Usually, the silhouettes did not move. Sometimes, feebly and furtively, they waved. Children who waved were very quickly pulled back. It was a farewell from the inhabited world – now a realm of shades.

1941–1943

The history of the camp can be separated into two periods. The first period began on August 18, 1941, and ended in March 1943. In March 1943 all but eight of the surviving first prisoners in Amersfoort were transferred to Kamp Vught concentration camp. The prisoner transfer to Kamp Vught allowed for the completion of an expansion of Kamp Amersfoort. Maintaining the camp, despite Kamp Vught becoming operational in January 1943, still appeared necessary to the Nazis.

Following the invasion of the USSR in June 1941, the camp held Soviet prisoners of war. These included 101 Uzbek prisoners brought to display to the Dutch for propaganda purposes, all either dying in the winter of 1941 or executed in woods near the camp in April 1942. 865 Soviet prisoners are buried in nearby Rusthof cemetery.

Amersfoort was a transit camp, whence prisoners were sent to places like Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Neuengamme concentration camps. It was on July 15, 1942, that the Germans began deporting Dutch Jews from Amersfoort, Vught, and Westerbork to concentration camps and death camps such as Auschwitz, Sobibor and Theresienstadt.

1943 to 1945

The remaining watchtower, as can be seen on the memorial, was built around April/May 1943, when the expansion of Kamp Amersfoort was completed and prisoners could be held there again. In many ways, Kamp Amersfoort had changed relative to the first period. The most important changes were the much larger 'housing capacity', and the faster 'turnover'. What stayed the same, were the anarchy, the lack of hygiene, the lack of food, lack of medical attention, and the cruelty of the guards. A point of light for the prisoners was the presence of the Dutch Red Cross. The second period ended on April 19, 1945, when control of the camp was transferred to Loes van Overeem