The Night the Names Were Called
On the night of September 2, 1944, the air in the Westerbork transit camp was heavy with dread. In the punishment barracks, an OD (Ordedienst) officer and a German official began to read a list of names aloud, a list that would seal the fate of more than a thousand people. The names were called in alphabetical order: 498 men, 442 women, and 79 children—1,019 names in all.
Among them were the eight people who had lived in the Secret Annex: Otto, Edith, Margot, and Anne Frank, Hermann, Auguste, and Peter van Pels, and Fritz Pfeffer.
They were not told their destination, only that they could take with them the possessions they had been forced to surrender upon their arrival at the camp. Otto Frank, in a final, desperate act, made yet another attempt to keep his family in Westerbork, but his pleas were in vain. They had no choice but to pack their rucksacks and suitcases, preparing for a journey into the unknown.
This night was the last time the eight people from the Annex would be together in the relative safety of Westerbork. It was a night of silent packing, of whispered goodbyes, and of an overwhelming sense of dread. The reading of their names was not just an act of bureaucracy; it was a final, chilling countdown to a destination from which most would never return.