Sewing, laundry, dentist, carpentry, trains at Camp Westerbork
CU, wooden table covered with buttons. CU of man's and woman's hands covering buttons in leather, putting it through a press. 02:04:05 Pan of a large working hall with people sewing. Laundry room: MS of women in white overcoats putting white sheets through a press and folding sheets. Men pulling out clean laundry from large washing machines and separating them into tall wooden crates. Row of women behind table ironing. 02:06:38 MS, chemical lab. Men and women in white coats mixing chemicals. Shelves with bottles filled with chemicals. CU of man looking through microscope. 02:07:40 MS, sign on barrack: ZAHNSTATION-EINGANG UM DIE ECKE. Camp's dentist office: row of people in dentist's chairs are examined. Male dentists working with female nurses. Men and women getting wood planks from train wagon. Piles of boards. Small hand-pulled wagon filled with bricks. MS, carpenter shop. CU, cutting glass and inserting on greenhouse roof. CU, planting bulbs. 02:14:50 LS, moving train interiors, train passing by bare landscape and small farms, water canal (shot from engine room). Train approaching canal docks. 02:16:50 MS, small boat going down a canal. Larger steamboat in canal dock. Pan of group of men and women in dark uniforms unloading bricks from the steamboat. Men hammering with large wooden pool. Wagons filled with bricks pulling away from the boat and canal. WS, man sitting on top of brick pile, train steam. LS, train passing farms, farm animals. Hog farm, feeding chickens. Child playing with calf. MS, milking can, goats.
This film was commissioned by camp commander Konrad Gemmeker to convince the Gestapo headquarters of Westerbork's vital production value. The Jewish prisoner Werner (Rudolf) Breslauer documented activities at the transit camp with a 16mm film camera. Discovered after liberation, the footage contains some of the most famous and often reproduced images of deportation. The Westerbork-film was nominated for inclusion in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register of documentary heritage in 2017.
Lagerkommandantur Westerbork Rudolf Breslauer (1903-1944) was a photographer and lithographer by trade, educated at the Academy for Art Photography in Germany. He was married to Bella Weihsmann and had three children: Stephan, Mischa, and Ursula. They fled Leipzig and settled in the Netherlands in 1938. In the summer of 1940, non-Dutch Jews were forced to leave Leiden because the city was near the sea. The Breslauers moved to a boarding house in Alphen aan de Rijn and left for Utrecht shortly thereafter. On February 11, 1942, they were sent to Westerbork, where Rudolf Breslauer was ordered to make passport photos of incoming camp prisoners and film daily life in Westerbork. In the spring of 1944, the camp commander commissioned Breslauer to make what would later be known as the Westerbork-film. In September 1944, Breslauer and his family were deported to Theresienstadt with other privileged prisoners and subsequently deported to Auschwitz in October 1944. Only Ursula survived the camp.