Westerborkfilm

1950 Documentary Directed by Rudolf Breslauer

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About Westerborkfilm

In the spring of 1944, prisoners at the Westerbork transit camp in the occupied Netherlands filmed the camp on orders from commander Albert Gemmeker. The reels show work barracks, trains arriving from Amsterdam, a train leaving for Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, a soccer match, a cabaret, logging, the farm, a Christian Sunday service, and the clinic. On the deportation platform of May 19, 1944, a Sinti girl in a headscarf, later identified as Settela Steinbach, looks out of a boxcar. The film was never finished.

Cast & crew

More about Westerborkfilm

Gemmeker commissioned the filming and took the reels when he fled Canadian troops on April 12, 1945. Hans Ottenstein found them in 1946 or 1947 at the Dutch ministry of justice. They were used as evidence in the trials of Gemmeker and Hanns Albin Rauter. The English Wikipedia says the usual credit to prisoner Rudolf Breslauer rests on limited evidence, and that several inmates ran the camera under SS watch.

Themes

  • A camp filmed on the commander's order
  • A train on May 19, 1944
  • An unfinished reel
  • Westerbork
  • Albert Gemmeker
  • Settela Steinbach
  • Auschwitz
  • deportation train
  • 1944

Background

Westerbork was the transit camp from which trains left the occupied Netherlands for Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. The May 19, 1944 transport is the one in which Settela Steinbach was filmed.

Making

Gemmeker wanted a record of the camp. The prisoners shot work, sport, and the trains under guard. The project stopped before a finished film was cut.

Look

The camera stays on daily work and on the platform. The shot of Settela at the boxcar door is the frame later used to identify her.

Preservation

The material was held by RIOD, later NIOD, until 1986, then moved to the Dutch RVD archive, now part of Beeld en Geluid. Eye also holds film. A copy of one reel is on Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

  • Max Kannewasser and Nol van Wesel, the duo Johnny and Jones, appear in the camp cabaret footage.
  • Footage was used in a 1948 re-enactment, in the 1950 Dutch short De Vlag, and in a passage of Nuit et Brouillard (1956).
  • What remains is four reels of edited material, cut down from nine, plus two reels of original negative and two reels of outtakes.
  • A 2019 comparison turned up rolls that had been set aside.

Scenes

  • A train is loaded for Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
  • Settela Steinbach looks out from the boxcar in a headscarf.
  • Prisoners play soccer and stage a cabaret between the transports.

Influenced

  • Nuit et Brouillard (1956)

Also available

  • Wikimedia Commons (Westerbork 1944 (Acte 1).webm)
  • Beeld en Geluid
  • Eye Filmmuseum