Westerbork Deportation
To Use This Document
With Your Students
Date
May 19, 1944
Description
Video depicting the preparations for the departure of the weekly deportation train from Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands. This temporary incarceration site was used as a staging area from which tens of thousands of Jews, Roma, and Sinti were sent off to concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz-Birkenau. A number of figures in the video have been identified, such as Lenie Nijstad Cohen, Frouwke Kroon, Sophia de Groot, Hans Margules, Albert Gemmeker, and most notably, Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach (shown at 8:21-8:26). Steinbach, long simply known as "The girl with the headscarf," has been a famous symbol of the Holocaust for decades, however only in 1994 were her name and story revealed. Due to this research, it is now known that Steinbach was a nine year old girl of Sinti origin born in the Netherlands who would tragically die in gas chamber V at Auschwitz just months after this video. The film was created by Jewish photographer Rudolf Breslauer at the orders of the commander of Westerbork. In October 1944, Breslauer would similarly be deported to Auschwitz where he would also perish.
Type
Video
Region
Global
Era
The Great Depression and WW II
Topic
Dutch, Genocide, Global History and Geography, Jewish History, Transportation, World War II
Repository
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Identifier
1999.323.1
Source
Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid
Rights
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