The diary of a middle-aged Dutch Jewish man in Westerbork, the Nazi transit camp for Dutch Jews en route to the East. Philip Mechanicus, a journalist by profession, deliberately recorded in detail all aspects of camp life, and his diary is one of the major sources for Westerbork.

The camp sounds fairly okay, as Nazi camps go. Food appears to have been fairly sufficient, for example, there was recreation, and families were allowed considerable contact with one another. Mechanicus notes: "The great multitude live on as they did at home, in the midst of all their suffering. They eat and drink and make love. The food is frugal, the drink is ersatz [artificial] and the love is unnatural. There is music... Artists, usually dilettantes, exercise their talent... Men and women play bridge together or skate... Men and women go visiting, just as at home, and have tea with one another." But there was the terrible overcrowding and resultant noise, filth and disease, and the ever-present threat of being put on a transport to Poland. Everyone knew that to be put on such a transport was bad, but no one seemed to realize that it was synonymous with death. Mechanicus managed to remain in Westerbork for a year and a half, an extraordinarily long length of stay, but eventually he too was sent to Auschwitz and killed.

The diary was difficult for me to read and took a long time, given its length. I wish it had been broken up by the month. There isn't even a demarcation for the year; the entries for December 1943 and January 1944 are on the same page without any comment on the turning of the year, besides the change in dates. I wish also that the introduction had provided more information about Mechanicus. I know from the diary that he had an Aryan ex-wife and at least one child by her, but nothing whatsoever is said about his personal life in the intro.

I learned a lot about Westerbork from this diary. I would recommend it, especially for comparison with diaries from other camps and ghettos like Theresienstadt, Lodz, Vught, etc. ( )

I got this book as a present, but somehow I never got to read it. Just didn't attrack me very much, and WWII is not always a theme that is fit for all times of reading.
Now it is going on a journey, looking for new readers.