Westerbork scrip on rectangular white paper with purple text and images and a pink basket weave background. The face has 4 corner squares and 2 center rectangles outlined in purple. The denomination 50 CENT is in the upper left and lower right squares. The upper rectangle has the camp logo and the lower rectangle has a drawing of the camp featuring the tall laundry chimneys. The reverse has the pink weave background with 2 outlined squares in the upper corners. In the center is an underprint of the denomination 50. Across the top center is a narrow silhouetted image of the camp landscape inserted through the center of a toothed gear wheel, with German text, an issue date, and a signature below. The serial letter and number are stamped across the center. reverse, center, stamped, black ink : Serie AA No 0641
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The scrip was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1988 by Kenneth and Ellen Goldsmith, on behalf of the Estate of Harry Goldsmith.
overall: Height: 2.000 inches (5.08 cm) | Width: 4.125 inches (10.478 cm)
Westerbork voucher, value 50 cents, acquired by Harry Goldsmith. This scrip was issued in Westerbork transit camp beginning February 15, 1944. Inmates were not allowed to have currency, which was confiscated. The vouchers [gutschein] were distributed as an incentive for doing work. Netherlands was occupied by Germany in May 1940. The camp, in northeast Holland, was originally set up by the Dutch in 1939 to intern Jewish refugees. In July 1942, the German security police and the SS turned it into a transit camp to hold prisoners before deporting them to concentration camps in the east, where most perished. From July 1942 - September 3, 1944. nearly 200,000 Jews were deported from the camp. Most inmates had short stays at the camp. However, there were about 2000 longterm detainees who helped run the camp or were exempt from deportation. The vouchers were used with this population, most of whom were deported before the camp was liberated on April 12, 1945.
Westerbork transit camp voucher, 50 cent note