The Westerborkfilm

In the spring of 1944, camp prisoner Rudolf Breslauer made film recordings in Camp Westerbork at a large scale. He did this at the assignment of German camp authorities. Commander Albert Gemmeker in particular appeared a major proponent of making a film about life in the camp. The intention was to edit together a professional film with the recordings. It didn’t get that far, though. After a couple of months, they stopped filming and a definitive final version was never made. A lot of raw material has been preserved, and many aspects of Camp Westerbork are visible on it.

The ‘Westerborkfilm’ is rightly considered as an irreplacable, unique illustrative document that has been given a special place amid all sources about the Second World War. Rightfully so, because there is no similar film footage of any Nazi concentration camp. The film and production documents have been included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Subsequently, the unique footage has been researched, selected, and carefully restored.

Fundamental objection
The first recordings of the Westerborkfilm took place on 5 March 1944. The set was the registration barrack, where a Christian church service for converted Jews was taking place. It led to a riot: two pastors of the Gruppe Protestanten, Srul Tabaksblat and Max Enker, appeared to have fundamental objections to the recordings. Furious, they left the space. Gemmeker responded fiercely: both men were locked into the punishment barracks for weeks and removed from all positions. Only the interference of the Protestant Church prevented them from being deported.
The footage shot by Breslauer showed the daily life in the camp: an outgoing transport, an incoming transport, the registration and a cabaret performance, working on the greenhouse in the camp commander’s garden, morning gymnastics, working in the toy factory and working in the airplane wreck yard.

After Rudolf Breslauer was taken away in September 1944, his colleague Wim Loeb made it his task to finish editing the film. Thanks to a marriage to a non-Jewish woman, he was exempted from deportation. In a makeshift studio in his camp residence, Loeb made two draft versions of the Westerborkfilm: an ‘official’ one and a ‘rest version’. The first montage was intended for Gemmeker. The ‘rest version’ was smuggled out of the camp as evidence and housed with a notary in Amsterdam.
Briefly before and after the liberation, the other recordings of the Westerborkfilm found their way outside of the camp. After a long journey, they arrived at the archives of Beeld en Geluid (together with the ‘rest version’), where they were restored masterfully.

Symbol of the Holocaust
In the years after the liberation, the Westerborkfilm was an important source for historical research and imaging. It was used as evidence during the trials of the Nazis, added to documentaries and exhibitions, and it was the subject of academic discissions. The images of the departing transport in particular became a symbol of the Holocaust the world over. The most famous image was the girl looking out from between the wagon doors. Only in the nineties would it become clear to whom this ‘face of the past’ belonged.

Liberation

On 12 April 1945, the Canadian army liberated over 850 Jewish prisoners in Camp Westerbork. In the camp, they waited anxiously for the liberators. The prisoners had asked civil servant Aad van As to take charge as soon as the SS had left. Van As belonged to one of the few Dutch citizens who held a position in the camp. Once, he was asked to become the assistant by Dutch camp commander Schol, but the Germans had prevented that. Since, he was the head of distribution – later serving the municipality of Westerbork – and had many prisoners’ confidence from the outset. When the liberators were approaching, he sent the Jewish head of field service, Zielke, to meet the Canadians. The people living in the camps gathered in the Great Hall to discuss what was to happen next. But when they heard ‘The Tommies are here’, everyone ran out to meet the liberators.

No man’s land
The day before the liberation, the camp was abandoned by commander Gemmeker and staff. The camp was in no man’s land, between two front lines. That night, the last soldiers of the Grenzschütz left the camp. They guarded more than 100 non-Jewish political prisoners, who had to be evacuated. They were all women. A number of them had been imprisoned in the punishment barracks of the camp for several weeks.

When Van As greeted the commanding officer Captain Morris and was talking to him about ‘wrong elements’ that might be present in the camp, he was called outside by a cheering crowd, which had an orange and Dutch flag. It was an unforgettable moment for him: 'When I came out, they asked me if I wanted to raise the flags. This has been one of the most beautiful moments of my life. It was done while singing the Wilhelmus anthem, and suddenly I no longer felt ground underneath my feet. They lifted me up and went around with me while dancing. For me, there could not have been a better conclusion to the liberation.'

The sadness of the liberation
After the liberation, the more than 850 Jews that remained had to stay in the camp for months longer. This was a security measure in the first place. The entirety of the Netherlands hadn’t been liberated yet. There was still fighting further up north. In addition, the Canadian and Dutch authorities first wanted to investigate why these Jewish prisoners hadn’t been deported: were there people amongst them who had worked with the Nazis and had to be imprisoned (again)? It would end up taking until July 1945 before the last prisoners were allowed to leave Camp Westerbork. In the meantime, most people had received the unimaginable news that their deported family members, friends, and acquaintances who went to ‘the East’ were murdered there by the Nazis and would not return.

False hope

In the period of 1943-1944, camp commander Gemmeker stimulated all kinds of recreational facilities to make life in the camp run as normally as possible. This also served his own amusement. Camp Westerbork had the best cabaret of the Netherlands, both when it came to decoration as the quality of the programming and the artists’ skill level. The Bühne-gruppe was granted the facilities to organise variety shows with cabaret, choir, orchestra, and ballet. Additionally, there were theatre performances and music recitals. There also were sports matches: soccer, athletics, and boxing. Taking part in such activities didn’t offer all kinds of privileges. The most essential one was that one was provisionally exempted from deportation.

The hard ‘East’
In Camp Westerbork, everything was arranged to give prisoners the impression that they would be sent to working camps in Eastern Europe. Life there would be heavy, hard, and monotonous, but it would be liveable. In any case, children and families would be together. That was the information provided at the time. Occasionally, letters arrived from camps like Auschwitz, in which it was stated that there was hard work to be done, but they were doing well. The doubt and suspicion arose when trains departed that only contained the elderly, sick, and children. There also were rumours in the camp that the Nazis were up to no good. It was generally the German and Austrian Jews who had escaped who knew, mostly from their own experience, the direction in which things could go. Yet, early on, few believed that the worst was waiting for them there. Mostly because nobody knew anything concrete about ‘the East’.

Still, there was a permanent fear of being deported. There was definitely an awareness of approaching doom. This dread for an ominous future explains the desperate attempts to escape the deportations. By latching onto work in and around the camp, they hoped to make themselves indispensable. Particular positions exempted one of being put on transport.

Bis auf Weiteteres gesperrt
However, there were other ways to get an exemption as well. Over the course of 1942, the Nazis implemented a system of distinctions by giving the Jews stamps on their identification papers. These stamps provided ‘bis auf Weiteres’ exemption of deportation. Some lists also seemed to offer an outlook. All kinds of institutions – German and Tuch ones – and private individuals, who may know of a way out, were clung onto. One could get onto certain lists by making a substantial payment, the ‘Stamliste’ were adorned with names of those (and mostly their family members) who held important functions in the camp, like organisation, the hospital, and the cabaret. Especially on days before the transport, there were many desperate attempts to become ‘gesperrt’ in one way or another.

System of false hope
The small number of escapees from Camp Westerbork (around 300) is a result of the system that was kept up meticulously by the Nazis. Because there were definitely opportunities to escape. Not only did many of them work mostly for farmers in the surroundings, where there was hardly any security, but one could also be sent to places outside the camp for all kinds of assignments. There would always be a few family members who remained in the camp, though. In the case of escape, they or people from the escapee’s barrack were put on transport as a punishment. That kept most from fleeing, as well as the thought that they weren’t sure where they should go.

The ‘decent’ treatment by the Nazis, the system of exemptions, the hospital, and the cabaret served only one purpose: the creation of illusions. After all, eventually, everyone had to be put on transport. The system only ended up providing false hope.

Divide and conquer

After the camp was overtaken, barbed wire fences and seven watchtowers were put in place. The SS-Wachbataillon company took care of outdoor surveillance until early 1943. The Jewish Ordedienst (OD) and the Dutch military police kept things in order inside the camp, and were later put in charge of outside security as well. In the summer of 1944, they were replaced by a company of the Police Batallion Amsterdam. This police power was made up mostly out of officers trained in Schalkhaar.

In Abel J. Herzberg’s words, Westerbork was a symbol of the day of ‘the Last Judgement’. As of October 1942, the organisation of ‘this day’ was in the hands of SS-Obersturmführer Albert Konrad Gemmeker. His predecessors didn’t meet the demands the Nazis had set for the camp’s functioning. They wanted for the Jews to be deported as quickly and quietly as possible. The way the first commanders had cracked down caused a lot of resistance and unrest in the camp. Gemmeker appeared to be better suited for spotlessly executing the plans. He was honoured to make sure the Durchgangslager functioned perfectly, without friction, without incidents. Hence, one wouldn’t encounter screaming and murdering SS members in the camp. Gemmeker was generally perceived as ‘a perfect gentleman’ who treated the Jews correctly.

Camp organisation by prisoners
In the daily routine, the absolute ruler rarely had to intervene. His main concern was meeting the weekly amount of Jews to be supplied. The organisation for doing so was left up to the prisoners. When Camp Westerbork still functioned as a refugee camp, a camp organisation had already been founded by German and Austrian Jews. Many of them had already been imprisoned in concentration camps in the thirties. They knew that the circumstances in the camp were better if they tried to arrange as much as possible by themselves instead of leaving it up to the Nazis. Schlesinger functioned at the ruler within the camp. He was the first Dienstleiter, because he was in charge of the most important Dienst: administration, where lists for transportation were put together.

For as long as the Jewish camp staff adhered to the number of to-be-deported people that Gemmeker had passed on, their power over fellow prisoners was considerable. Because of this and the sometimes ‘extravagant and distasteful lifestyle’ the leaders were not popular and mostly hated. They were able to protect others. There was a high degree of distance between those who occupied a function and the mass. People felt this and behaved accordingly: ‘camp aristocracy’ versus ‘transport material’.

Essential peace keepers
For internal organisation and security, the Jewish Ordedienst was founded. Dressed in (green_ overalls, the OD members were essential peace keepers in the camp, for which mostly former military and youth were eligible. The German leadership was constantly supported by OD members, which made them known as ‘Jewish SS’ throughout the camp. They also had to prevent attempts at escape and inform camp leadership of everything that wasn’t permitted. Sometimes, OD was deployed for actions outside of the camp. They were involved in the evacuation of ‘Het Apeldoornsche Bosch’ and the big razzias in Amsterdam in 1943. Because there were barely enough trains to transfer the Jews to Westerbork, the Ordedienst was occasionally tasked with arranging transportation by themselves. In Amsterdam in particular, there was a continuous shortage of trains.

Louis de Wijze realised how the Jews were humiliated by the German system: 'That has to have been a very bitter sensation for the Amsterdam Jews. You shouldn’t forget that you were picked up by your own people, then you have to process a lot before you can understand that there was no other option for these people. Since, if they refused, they were put on transport themselves. That was a strong inner battle. It may have been one of the most horrible cruelties of the SS to do things this way. It increased the controversy with the Alte Lagerinsassen as well.'

This organisation ended up working wonderfully for the Nazis. Thanks to the refined and cunning divide-and-conquer system, very few Nazis were needed to arrange the disposal of Jews.