Large diazo print of Westerbork transit camp

Arthur Heiman was born in October 1920 in Wuerzburg, Germany. His father owned a general hardware store that sold metal building material. In 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. Policies persecuting the Jews were immediatley enacted. Germans were urgerd to boycott Jewish owned businesses, and his father's store lost many customers. Arthur's two older married sisters immigrated to Enlgland. Arthur tried to get a visa for England or the United States, but was unsuccessful. He was able to get to Amsterdam with the aid of a cousin. In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the Netherlands. In 1941, the Germans began sending foreign Jews to Westerbork transit camp. Arthur was sent there and he remained in the camp for nearly four years, until the end of the war. He and a group of approximately twenty other Jewish men managed to meet daily for prayers. Arthur secretly wore his tallit under his work clothes. He worked in the camp maintenance and refrigeration departments. These areas were vital to the operation of the camp and he believes this is why he was not deported to the concentration camps in Poland as were nearly all the other inmates. In early April 1945, as Allied forces neared the camp, the German guards abandoned it. On April 12, Westerbork was liberated by Canadian troops. Arthur emigrated to the United States. He was reunited with Lillian Rotschild, who had left Germany for the United States in 1940, and the couple married.