Filmmaker Rudolf Breslauer also filmed two of his children in the Westerborkfilm…
Stefan (left) & Ursula Breslauer, children of Rudolf Breslauer, the filmmaker of the Westerbork film at the farm of Camp Westerbork in 1944 – identified by the dutch photographer Sake Elzinga, who received Breslauer’s family photo albums last year when the family of Ursula – the only survivor – visited an expo on Breslauer in the Westerbork museum in the Netherlands.
Camp commander (SS-Obersturmführer) Albert Gemmeker ordered the Westerbork film , made by the German Jewish prisoner, photographer, Rudolf Breslauer in the spring of 1944.
Today 80 years ago – March 5, 1944 – the camp is an ‘Arbeitslager’ – a work camp – when Rudolf Breslauer starts filming the daily life of the Westerbork prisoners — inside : in the barracks, for example a religious service, cabaret, workshops, factories, aircraft and battery recycling, medical care, and outside the barracks : construction of a greenhouse, a football match, women working out, chopping wood, incoming transports, and eventually also the departure of a deportation train. After Breslauer films the deportation of Jews, Roma and Sinti to Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz on May 19, 1944 the filming stops. The haunting image of the 9-year-old dutch Sinti-girl Settela, standing in the closing doors of the goods train, and the unique footage of that deportation train that leaves the Westerbork camp, became iconic after the war.
Deportation Breslauer family
Werner Rudolf Breslauer , his wife Bella Weihsmann, sons Stefan and Max Michael (Mischa), and daughter Ursula were deported autumn 1944 from Westerbork to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Only Ursula survived.
Stefan & Ursula Breslauer in Westerborkfilm | 20240305 | Settela•Com | Frame 127475 from Westerbork Film 🎦 2021 | 20220302 | Settela•Com | ISSN 2949-9313 | Footage filmed by Rudolf Breslauer in 1944, courtesy of NIOD | Sound and Vision
Scene with Stefan & Ursula Breslauer, starting at 56:13 in the 1986 RVD edition of the Westerborkfilm: Stefan & Ursula Breslauer in Westerbork Film RVD | 20240305 | Settela•Com | URL https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxfNzA72JeGgVoOFp_VTI4EQQr3yTwXu6_
Settela Film | 20220630 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com
Deportation Westerbork Film | 20210719 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com
Images from the Westerborkfilm have been used countless times in documentaries and films about the Second World War. Here images screening in the virtual opera PUSH – based on the story of Simon Gronowski – an 11 year old Jewish boy who was pushed from the train – Transport XX – by his mother on the way to Auschwitz — Video clip https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxsM6Rj_HB0xEh4TksbjhIm4EzY81dc4H0
A virtual performance, during the April 2020 Corona virus lockdown, of the epilogue of the community opera PUSH , entitled : Ma Vie N’est Que Miracles | My life is only miracles – hosted by composer Howard Moody. It premiered on the night of the 19th April 2020, exactly 77 years after three Brussels resistance heroes stopped the Nazi train Transport XX, transporting 1600 Jewish deportees to Auschwitz, and more than 200 prisoners escaped from the train before the German border. Info : michelvanderburg.com/2020/04/19 .
Images from the Westerborkfilm have been used countless times in documentaries and films about the Second World War.
Here Westerborkfilm images – clips – screening semi-permanent ten years ago (Feb. 2013) in a museum introduction film (on holocaust, genocides, discrimination, diversity, rights) on one of the huge columns in the entrance hall of the Kazerne Dossin museum in Mechelen, Belgium (a few months after opening of the new Kazerne Dossin building). Note, shortly after this outbound deportation transport to Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, had left the Westerbork transit camp on May 19, 1944, the train paused at the nearby railway station of the dutch town Assen, where train cars were added from Belgian Transport XXV (25) with 508 deportees, Jews and the Roma deportee Stevo Caroli, from transit camp Kazerne Dossin (Dossin barracks) in Mechelen, and this combined transport with Jews, Sinti and Roma, including Settela Steinbach, continues to the east…to the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps. Stevo Caroli survives Auschwitz-Birkenau. After returning to Belgium, Stevo Caroli’s request for a certificate, necessary for the compensation for political deportees or work refusers, is refused by the Belgian Aliens Police for racial reasons ( kazernedossin.memorial/biografie/stevo-karoli/ ).
The new 2021 Westerbork Film is missing part of the image in every frame …
The new high quality restored Westerbork film, presented first May 2021 by the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, has numerous advantages over the previous well known first edition of the Westerborkfilm made in 1986 in 4 acts by the dutch Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst (RVD ; the Dutch National Centre for Information) .
The full 1986 film including all 4 acts , was first published in 2019 at Settela•Com (Ref 1), with annotations for the various scenes. That 1986 Westerborkfilm however does not include all of the footage shot by Rudolf Breslauer, Spring 1944 in Camp Westerbork, in the Netherlands.
Footage not used in the 1986 Westerbork film compilation was presented in a series of posts published later in 2019 at Settela•Com.
Next, a film compilation of all that known footage was posted online as the WESTERBORK FILMS COLLECTION – UNESCO ALBUM (Ref 2). That film compilation was also made available for download 20 January 2020 by Michel van der Burg | Miracles.Media via the Open Images bank of Sound & Vision (Ref 3). That compilation was prepared without checking / deleting duplicate copies of footage, and thus contains redundant footage.
The 2021 restored Westerbork film is a major upgrade from the 1986 Westerborkfilm edition. Important advantages of the 2021 Westerbork film are , (i) new high quality 4K scans were made of the footage, (ii) containing a complete selection of all known footage, (iii) using only the best copies of all footage found in the archives, (iv) based on an extensive new inventory of all known archives, with the discovery of 2 canisters with ‘camera-original’ footage, and a hitherto unknown clip, and (v) with conservative, digital, restoration applied. Details on that new restored Westerbork film were discussed July 2021 with the co-publication of an important part of the 2021 Westerbork film : the new high quality deportation footage — a film compilation of scans of the newly discovered original camera negative film used by Rudolf Breslauer 19 May 1944 in Camp Westerbork, in the Netherlands (Ref 4).
The complete Westerbork Film 2021 was published too at Settela•Com on May 7, 2022 with all scenes annotated (Ref 5), together with a short introductory film : Westerborkfilm Introduction (Ref 6).
Note that additional digital restoration has been applied by Sound & Vision for the publicly made available so-called ‘display edition’ of this new 2021 Westerbork film according to Conservator Valentine Kuypers | Sound and Vision (Ref 7) – as discussed previously at Settela•Com (Ref 4).
Missing Part Images
It should be noted that the released 2021 ‘display edition’ of the Westerbork film – due to the applied image stabilization – does show less of the actual image in each frame as compared to the 1986 edition.
Below some examples illustrating the crop in the display edition.
2021 edition | not showing ‘nazi with bike’ | 20230519 | Settela•Com
2021 edition – not showing ‘nazi with bike’ in same scene, near identical frame — though he shows up in later frames a few seconds later, walking away ) – https://youtu.be/ZiLNDziwEtc?t=882
Settela’s car (not) showing 74p•
Next a comparison of the frame displaying “74 p.” (chalked on the car with Settela). The dot is shown in the 1986 film. That dot is missing in the 2021 film due to the cropped image resulting from the image stabilization.
Of note : first news clips presented by Sound & Vision announcing the new restored film , are apparently not based on the ‘display edition’, and do show that dot in the original 4K scan.
The full image — including the dot ’74 p.” — was shown in a first news item Sep 12, 2019 on the daily dutch ‘Nieuwsuur’ national news show , on colorized high quality deportation footage, that mentioning the new original footage. Item “Iconische beelden Tweede Wereldoorlog na 75 jaar in kleur” ; URL https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2301340-iconische-beelden-tweede-wereldoorlog-na-75-jaar-in-kleur
Jan 2020 Sound & Vision publicly showed and announced the newly discovered camera original footage via the daily dutch news show NOS (Ref 8) showing the images with no crop — including the dot ’74 p.” and presented an 8 min film compilation a few days later via their Vimeo channel also (at 0021) shwoing 74 Pers • (with dot) . URL https://vimeo.com/386667241
In 2021 Sound & Vision apparently started using the ‘display edition’ for publications on the new found original Westerbork deportation footage ; such as the YouTube uploads “De Westerborkfilm 📽️🎞️” (uploaded Apr 8, 2021) – https://youtu.be/8Y-A4BkWY18?t=2 , a video presented first I believe April 18, 2021 in an online Media Café event by Sound & Vision , and May 18, 2021 on the occasion of the public release of the restored film (Ref 9), in the 20 min presentation “Gerestaureerde filmbeelden Westerbork (1944)” of a compilation of selected images from the restored film – missing again the dot at 0:47 – https://youtu.be/-zCmr6PSNcI?t=47
Missing Image Westerbork Film 2021 | 20230519 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com | ISSN 2949-9313
References
1. Westerbork Film | Full version RVD 1986 | 20190605 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com | ISSN 2949-9313
2. WESTERBORK FILMS COLLECTION – UNESCO ALBUM | 20200120 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com | ISSN 2949-9313
3. WESTERBORK FILMS COLLECTION – UNESCO ALBUM (20200120) Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com | ISSN 2949-9313 | CC BY 4.0 | Open Images – URL https://www.openimages.eu/media/1223905
5. Westerbork Film 🎦 2021 | 20220302 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com | ISSN 2949-9313 | Display edition film annotated online in CC
6. Westerborkfilm Introduction | 20220507 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com | ISSN 2949-9313 | Introduction by Michel van der Burg on the Westerborkfilm screening in METRO Kinokulturhaus , Vienna , Austria at the DOCUMENTS OF DESTRUCTION | DOKUMENTE DER VERNICHTUNG Symposium 6-7 May, 2022 curated by Florian Widegger. Presented by Filmarchiv Austria in cooperation with the Vienna Jewish Film Festival and the Mauthausen Memorial.
Eight drawings by Jim (Haïm) Kaliski, 1995-1999, indian ink on paper. Filmed April 19, 2023 in the Jewish Museum of Belgium, in Brussels, at the exhibition ‘236 – Land(es)capes from the 20th convoy’. 1) Pogrom Antwerp, 14 April 1941
2) The Summons for Mechelen “The Trap”
3) Mechelen Waiting Room of Death , 1942-1944
4) The Time of Darkness, 1942-1944
5) Razzia Rue Bara , Anderlecht (Brussels), 3 Sep 1942
6) Attack 20th Convoy, 19 April 1943
7) At the road ‘Chaussée d’Etterbeek’ (Brussels), Feb. 1944
8) Haïm from Etterbeek, Mar 1944
License info : Jim Kaliski Transport XX | 20230426 | Miracles•Media | TakeNode d3615ee4-04b9-456e-aa73-1b7056b15619
The Genocide of the Sinti and Roma. Research, Recognition and Remembrance | Karola Fings and Bas Kortholt | The Memory of Kamp Westerbork exhibition project
Online Lecture Feb 8, 2023 — The moving image of a young girl with a white headscarf, minutes before being deported to an unknown destination. The short clip became iconographic for the persecution of Dutch Jews. Only in the 1990s, it was discovered that the girl’s name was Settela Steinbach. She was one of 247 Sinti and Roma deported to Auschwitz from Westerbork in May 1944.
The late clarification of the identity of the victim symbolises how little the public and research were interested in the genocide of the Sinti and Roma after 1945. Yet hundreds of thousands were persecuted and expelled in Europe, locked up in camps, deported, shot, forcibly sterilised or murdered in gas chambers. In the lecture, Dr Karola Fings also looks at the pre- and post-history of the genocide. The subsequent dialogue with Bas Kortholt focusses on coming to terms with and remembering this genocide in the Netherlands.
From November 2022 to September 2023, the Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork presents a monthly online lecture as part of The Memory of Kamp Westerbork exhibition project. The online lecture series provides academic background on various parts of the exhibition and the topics concerned.
Dr. Karola Fings is a historian and Deputy Director of the NS-Documentation Center of the City of Cologne. Bas Kortholt is a researcher of the Camp Westerbork Memorial Centre
Settela•Com 