Respite

A documentary film using unique archive material from 1944 filmed by a Jewish prisoner at the transfer concentration camp at Westerbork in the Netherlands – Rudolf Breslauer. All prisoners of the Westerbork camp – created in 1939 by the Dutch authorities, with the aim of interning German Jews – were later gassed in Auschwitz; including the man who filmed them. Harun Farocki equips this rediscovered film material with a sparing commentary, identifying some of the victims and presenting their likeness while still alive alongside information about the number of the transport, the date when they left Westerbork, and the date of their death in Auschwitz. The film shows the camp – with no elements of violence, full of calm and day-to-day activities – are transferred by the director into our collective memory, in which completely different icons of the camps have been recorded – showing the piles of dead bodies discovered in them at their liberation