Imprisoned in Detention Centre I (Weteringschans)

Little is known about the experiences of the eight people in hiding in the Detention Centre.^[1] In the description of Jacob Swart, another prisoner who ended up in the Detention Centre on Weteringschans after his arrest on 26 May 1944, this holding cell was: "a large bare room with three rough wooden tables and a few benches in the middle, on the left side ten beds and on top of a balustrade another ten beds (iron cots with straw sack); on the wall regulations and a mirror, and peepholes in all the walls, known as 'eyes', through which we were stared at from time to time."^[2]

Once the cells were full - totalling about 40 men and 40 women - a transport to Westerbork followed. Jacob Swart describes, for example, that seven to eight new prisoners - mostly rounded up Jewish people in hiding - were added daily in the initially almost empty holding cell. In the end, there were so many that there were no longer enough beds and the new arrivals had to sleep on straw sacks on the ground. Once a day, the prisoners (men and women separately) were allowed to exercise in the courtyard for 15 minutes. The prisoners were given slices of bread in the morning and evening, coffee substitute and a 'hot snack' at lunchtime. Some witnesses report that there was contact between the men's and women's holding cells through the wall.^[3]

On Tuesday 8 August 1944, the eight people in hiding were taken to Westerbork along with about eighty other 'criminal cases'.