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Media Essay

The Netherlands: Maps

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The Netherlands occupation camps deportations Anne Frank

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Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940 and established a civilian administration dominated by the SS.

Low Countries, 1933 [LCID: ben19010] — Item View

Occupied western Europe, 1940 [LCID: fra86130] — Item View

Amsterdam environs, 1942 [LCID: ams49020] — Item View

Amsterdam, 1942 [LCID: ams39040] — Item View

Nazi camps in the Low Countries, 1940-1945 [LCID: ben72030] — Item View

Westerbork environs, 1942 [LCID: wes42040] — Item View

Westerbork transit camp, 1942 [LCID: wes22030] — Item View

Anne Frank: Amsterdam and deportation [LCID: ams78050] — After the Nazis came to power in January 1933, Otto Frank (Anne Frank’s father) left Frankfurt, Germany, for Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. The rest of the Frank family soon followed. Anne was the last family member to arrive in Amsterdam in February 1934. In July 1942, German authorities began systematically deporting Jews from throughout the Netherlands to concentration camps and killing centers in the east. That same month, the Frank family went into hiding. They remained in hiding for the next two years. The German SS and police discovered the Frank family in 1944 and deported them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Later that year, Anne and her sister Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Anne and Margot died in Bergen-Belsen in February or March 1945.
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Major deportations to killing centers, 1942-1944 [LCID: eur78940] — At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942, the SS (the elite guard of the Nazi state) and representatives of German government ministries estimated that the "Final Solution," the Nazi plan to kill the Jews of Europe, would involve 11 million European Jews, including those from non-occupied countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Turkey, and Great Britain. Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe were deported by rail to the killing centers (sometimes referred to as "extermination camps”) in occupied Poland, where they were killed. The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions, referring to deportations as "resettlement to the east." The victims were told they were to be taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942 onward, deportation for most Jews meant transit to killing centers and then death.

On this map, the Majdanek camp is marked as a killing center. In the past, many scholars counted the Majdanek camp (located just outside the city of Lublin) as a sixth killing center. However, based on newer research, Lublin-Majdanek is usually classified as a concentration camp. According to this research, German authorities used Majdanek primarily as a place to concentrate Jews who were being temporarily spared for use as forced laborers. Occasionally, especially after Belzec ceased operating in late 1942, Jews were sent to Majdanek as part of Operation Reinhard to undergo selection. Jews selected as unfit for labor were murdered at Lublin-Majdanek either by shooting or in the camp's gas chambers.
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Major deportations from the Low Countries, 1942-1944 [LCID: ben78040] — Item View

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