The six booklets which are the Netherlands Red Cross report entitled Auschwitz are actually about the approximately 100 transports of Jews which left the Netherlands, the first leaving on July 15, 1942, and the last on September 13, 1944. Auschwitz was the immediate destination of about two-thirds of the deported Jews, although large numbers were also sent to Sobibor, and some were sent to Theresienstadt, Bergen-Belsen, and Ravensbrück. The Netherlands Red Cross (NRC) data is exhaustive in regard to all matters pertaining to the transports while they were in the Netherlands; the dates of departure, the destinations of the transports, and the numbers of people in each transport, with breakdowns of the numbers according to sex and age. The authors assume that all Jews whom they are unable to account for, after the Jews reached their immediate destination, were gassed or perished in some other manner. Thus, they conclude that a majority of the approximately 100,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands perished, since, obviously, their study is very short on data regarding what happened at the camps when these people reached them. There are, however, exceptions to those statements; there is data regarding the evacuation of Auschwitz in 1945 and there are other bits, e.g., data from the Monowitz hospital. The most significant data, however, is what is said to be the registration and death record from the Birkenau men's camp for the period July 16 to August 19, 1942, which is presented in volume two of the report. Because the NRC also provides detailed data regarding the Jewish transports from Westerbork (transit camp in the Netherlands) during this period, a comparison can be made, and the comparison (as Reitlinger admits) contradicts the claim that a majority or even a significant number of the Jews were immediately gassed on arrival at Auschwitz. There were thirteen transports from Westerbork in July and August, 1942, and they were composed as follows:

The data said to be from the Birkenau men's camp is now presented, in order to be compared with the preceding Westerbork data. Column 1, below, gives the times (morning, M, and evening, E) of the roll-calls at Birkenau, column 2 gives the date of the roll call, column 3 gives the total number counted in the roll call, column 4 gives the number who died between roll calls, column 5 gives the number of new arrivals registered between roll calls, and column 6 gives the number lost between roll-calls on account of release or escape. In column 7 are comments on the origins of the various transports to the camps, and the transports from Westerbork are indicated. Pithiviers, Drancy, and Beaune la Rolande were assembly points in France for Jewish transports, and Mechelen had the same function in Belgium. The transports from Slovakia were probably Jewish transports, but the composition of those from Poland is rather problematical. Where "various nationalities" (var. nat.) are indicated, the transports were most probably composed predominantly of political prisoners and ordinary criminals. Column 8 gives registration numbers assigned to the people indicated in column 5.

To give an example of interpretation of these figures, we see that between the evening of July 16 and the morning of July 17, 1942, the Westerbork transport of July 15 arrived at Auschwitz, and that 601 men from this transport were registered in the Birkenau men's camp and assigned registration numbers 47087-47687. During this period, 30 men also died in the camp, so the net change in the roll-call figure is 601-30 = 16848-16277 = 571. Note that the 601 men from the Westerbork transport of July 15 are approximately the total men that started out on that transport, if one subtracts boys through 15 years of age. Since the table of Westerbork deportations has a separate column for "Women with children to 15 years," it is most probable that such children went with the women.

We have taken the liberty of making two corrections of obvious errors in the Birkenau men's camp data. The NRC report specified that 43 died between the evening of August 5 and 6, but a figure of 44 deaths brings agreement with the roll-call figures and the total of column 4. Also, the NRC report specifies that the Mechelen transport of August 15 received registration numbers 59345-59699, an obvious error which has been corrected.

The increments in registration numbers in column 8 do not agree in all cases with the numbers reported in column 5. Indeed, this is the case with the majority of transports, which arrived between July 17 and July 24, and it is also true of the transports, which received registration numbers 56856-57308. However, in all other cases the registration numbers in column 8 agree with the figures in column 5.

When boys through 15 years of age are subtracted from the total of men in the various deportations from Westerbork, the resulting figures are in good general agreement with the numbers reported registered in the Birkenau men's camp, although for reasons that one can probably guess, the agreement is not perfect. There were probably small numbers who either joined the incoming transports and are not listed as such or numbers who were not accepted into Birkenau for various reasons and sent to another destination. The largest unaccounted differences are in connection with the Westerbork transports of August 7 and August 10, where about 100 men are missing in each case in the registration at Birkenau.

This data, plus the one volume of the Birkenau Death Book (which is also discussed in vol. 1 of the NRC reports, except that it is referred to as the Auschwitz Death Book there), confirm the WRB report claim that there was a great epidemic at Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, forcing work there to stop. We know of no data covering a substantially later period, which reports comparably high death rates at Auschwitz, although, as explained in the text, the death rate there was always deplorably high from 1942 on.[446]

Notes

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