Between March and July 1943, 19 trains left from Westerbork to the Sobibor extermination camp in the east of Poland. In total, more than 34,000 Jews were
deported from the Netherlands to Sobibor. There were practically no selections for labour; almost everyone was murdered in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival.
Transports to Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt also left from Westerbork. For many people Theresienstadt turned out to be only
a stop-over on their way to Auschwitz. In February 1941, the Netherlands learnt of what went on in the prison camp of Mauthausen. Unlike in other concentration camps,
the atrocities that took place there were common knowledge.