In 1939, Kamp Amersfoort was still a complex of barracks that supported army artillery exercises on the nearby Leusderheide.

[1] To get to the camp, prisoners had to walk from the railway sidings through the town and through residential neighborhoods: Visible in the windows, above and below, of most residences and behind closed lace curtains, were numerous silhouettes, especially those of children.

These included 101 Uzbek prisoners brought to display to the Dutch for propaganda purposes, all either dying in the winter of 1941 or executed in woods near the camp in April 1942.

The second period ended on April 19, 1945, when control of the camp was transferred to Loes van Overeem of the Red Cross following the sudden flight of the German camp staff, who took 70 odd prisoners with them to the "Oranje Hotel", a jail in Scheveningen used by the Germans to house opponents to their regime.

[7] Soldiers of I Canadian Corps fighting north from Arnhem were halted about a mile from Amersfoort before the end of the war, and liberation came on the day the German forces laid down their arms in the Netherlands.

[9] The fluctuating prisoner population consisted of an eclectic group of people from all over the Netherlands: Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, members of the resistance, communists, hostages, clergy, alleged black marketeers, clandestine butchers, and smugglers.

They were joined by contract breakers of the German Arbeitseinsatz (forced labour program), deserting Waffen SS soldiers, deserting German truck drivers of the Nationalsozialistische Kraftfahr-Korps, and lawbreaking members of the NSB (the Dutch National Socialist Movement).

Despite their relatively short stay, many prisoners died from deprivations and violence at a camp where "rumour has it that one can hear the screams of people being beaten up there for miles over the heath.

[12] Edith and Rosa Stein, two ethnic Jewish Catholics arrested by the SS, described what it was like arriving at Amersfoort at 3:00 in the morning on August 3, 1942: When the vans reached the camp, they emptied their passengers who were taken over by the S.S. guards.

These began to drive them, cursing and swearing, beating them on their backs with their truncheons, into a hut where they were to pass the night without having had a meal.

Weakened physical conditions from overwork, very little food and poor hygiene in camp made illness and disease another frightening and lonely way to die.

Yehudit Harris, a young boy in Amersfoort remembers screaming from the pain as his mother washed him with snow in the winter to rid them of lice and to protect against illness.

During roll call he loved to sneak about unnoticed behind the rows of men and catch someone in some violation, such as talking or not following orders properly.

"[15] Another camp leader was SS-Unter-Schutzhaftlagerführer Josef Johann Kotalla,[16] a notorious sadist who often replaced Stöver during his absence.

And as an extra punishment on Christmas morning he kept the men standing on the parade ground, which was covered with thick snow, from their roll-call at seven till half past midday.

The NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies has many resources concerning the guards of Amersfoort and their trials.

The NIOD has dossiers on the following Amersfoort guards and personnel: Berg, Brahm, Dohmen, Fernau, Helle, Kotalla, May, van der Neut, Oberle, Stöver, Voight, Westerveld and Wolf.

Court records for the trial of these guards are also available, the following being an example of what is available: Media related to Kamp Amersfoort at Wikimedia Commons