Schema of inmates, soccer, train at Camp Westerbork
See also Story 2104, Film ID 2241 for duplicate footage of farming scenes, soccer match, and vaudeville scenes. See also Story 2102, Film ID 2240 for duplicate footage of deportation.
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.
Schema with camps and numbers of inmates. (**This most likely refers to where Jews were deported to from Westerbork. The numbers closely correspond to those in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1646): EINGANG 103.376; BERGEN BELS 3029; THERESIENSTADT 2470; NACH DEM OSTEN 91.545; INTERNIERURG 350; LAGER VUGHT 897. 03:02:30 Horse-pulled plowing tool, farm animals, preparing soil for seeding. 03:03:12 Slate: ...ALSO JETZT KOMMT...AH...SCHAUN SIE SICH'S MAL AN! Man and woman carrying large wooden board, unfinished barrack in BG. 03:03:35 Soccer match. [VQ deteriorates: jumpy, unstable"doubl" images] 03:04:45 Vaudeville style performance. 03:09:36 Horse-pulled wagon arriving through gate. Man in uniform talking. People standing in front of train [VQ: very unstable picture, unclear]. Solders in Nazi uniforms getting on the train. These are deportation scenes, from Westerbork. Hands can be seen through boxcar windows. LS of train leaving the station, CU of train wheels slowly turning, bare landscape. CU of train tracks.