One-Way Ticket from Westerbork - Gardiner, Jonathan

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Résumé :
Westerbork, the Nazi transit camp in the north of occupied the Netherlands, is unlike any other camp in WWII. This is a unique story of the lives and fates of over 105,000 Jews who went through Westerbork, on their way to concentration camps in eastern Europe during the Holocaust. The camp was overseen by Albert Gemmeker, a commander who duped thousands into boarding the trains to take them to their deaths. He was so impressed with his own work that he had it filmed. Camp Westerbork had one of the largest hospitals in Europe, a dental practice, numerous workshops producing furniture and even toy elephants. It had its own narrow-gauge railway and farm, a theatre, a church and even the Best Cabaret in Europe, to entertain Adolf Eichmann. One-Way Ticket from Westerbork relates the human stories held within those trains, presented for the reader to reflect upon. This is not an historical tome but the author's reflection on what happened to people who had just became numbers and an attempt to restore their identity.

Biographie:
Jonathan Gardiner was born in England in 1953, to parents who had both taken part in World War II but had not witnessed the full horrors. He was educated at his local Grammar School in middle England and then went to College in London to train as a teacher. He taught in primary schools for nearly 40 years and ended his career as a well-known headteacher. He is married with two children. In the past 10 years Jonathan has become interested in Jewish Performers in Weimar Germany. He has helped to research the life of Willy Rosen, a famous Jewish composer and song lyricist, imprisoned at Westerbork. One-way Ticket from Westerbork is a culmination of a life-time's reading and interest in the Holocaust. A story that he felt needed to be told.