Westerbork Holocaust memorial to get WWII-era transport carts

Relics purchased for permanent display date back to the 1940s, but may not have been used to deport Jews

The Westerbork Holocaust memorial museum in the Netherlands bought two World War II-era cargo carts in Germany for its permanent display.

The carts are due to arrive at the Memorial Center Camp Westerbork this week, the Dutch public broadcaster NOS reported Monday, and will be opened to the public in 2015.

NOS did not say what the museum paid for the carts, which date back to the 1940s, though it is unknown whether they had ever been used to transport Jews or their property during the Holocaust.

According to NOS, the Westerbork museum is adding the carts to its display to give visitors a better feel and a visual impression of the conditions in which approximately 100,000 Dutch Jews were shipped from Westerbork – a transit camp for Jews and Roma during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands – to death camps in Eastern Europe.

A similar cart is on display at the Dutch Railway Museum in Utrecht.