Belhamel: The Podcast

Episode Six:

Westerbork

Eddy had been arrested by the Jewish Affairs Division of the Amsterdam Police, for the crime of not wearing the Jewish star in public. Just three years earlier, Eddy had played in a charity match for the Committee for Jewish Refugees, to raise money to build a refugee camp for Jews, in the northeast of Holland, in a place called Westerbork. Now, Eddy and his family were put on a train at gunpoint to that same camp, which the Nazis had converted into a detention camp for Jews being sent east.

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Eddy Hamel's Registration Card with the Jewish Council of Amsterdam

The Jewish Council registration card of Eddy Hamel, which includes his address on Rijnstraat, his birthplace in New York, and his nationality, which is typed as "ned." (Netherlands) but updated by hand as "amerik." (American). The fact that "ned." is not crossed out indicates that he was considered to be a dual-national. His profession is listed as "Sportleraar," or sports trainer.

On the right is his wife's name, Johanna, and the names and birthdate of his twin sons, Paul and Robert.

At top right is the date of his deportation to Westerbork: 30 October 1942. And scrawled in red is the date of his deportation to Auschwitz: 29 January 1943.

Source: City Archives Amsterdam

Kamp Westerbork

Today, the remnants of Kamp Westerbork are maintained as a testimonial to the suffering of more than 100,000 imprisoned and deported Jews, and to the atrocities of the Nazi regime. The original barracks were demolished in the decades following the war.

Since then, the camp's footprints have been recreated in an adjacent site, as the Westerbork Visitors' Center, providing a brutally clear indication of its size, shape and purpose. The Center also features several compelling monuments and installations.

In May 1970, the Dutch artist Ralph Prins, himself a former camp inmate, created a set of railroad tracks heading east, but ending in broken and upward pointing fragments. (See the above photo.) It represents the artist's determination that such tracks should never again be used to carry people to their deaths.

In 1992, an ambitious monument was created on the former site of the Appelplatz, or main square of the camp. It pays tribute to each person from the Netherlands who was murdered by the Nazi regime. The monument consists of 102,000 stones, each of which represents one victim. Most of the stones are adorned with a star, in memory of Jewish victims. 213 have a flame, to symbolize the murdered Sinti and Roma people. A few dozen have no symbol; those commemorate the resistance fighters who were imprisoned in the camp and later deported to their deaths. The stones are arranged in a pattern that represents a map of the Netherlands.

In 2014, Barrack 56 and several guard towers were reconstructed. In 2015, the home of Kamp Commandant Albert Gemmeker, the only remaining original structure, was encased in glass. And that same year, two restored rail cars were placed at the site of 'De Rampe', where deportation trains left each week for the extermination camps.

The Westerbork Film

In 1944, Commandant Gemmeker instructed a Jewish inmate, Rudolf Breslauer, to create film footage of everyday life in and around the camp. In 2017, this historical footage was published by NIOD and - as of 2021 - can be viewed in its entirety (~ 2.5 hours) on Youtube. At 01:52:45, the film shows a well-attended football game on the Appelplatz.

Schlesinger, Westerbork's 'King of the Jews'

Kamp Westerbork's daily activities were overseen by Kurt Schlesinger, a German Jew who had fled his native country after the Kristallnacht pogroms of 1939. Schlesinger served as the Chief Administrator of the camp. He wore a handmade military style uniform of his own design, with a peaked cap and black leather boots, as well as a Hitler style mustache. Among his duties was the composition of the weekly deportation list, giving him the power of life and death over his fellow inmates, who often referred to him as Westerbork’s “King of the Jews.” He regularly accepted money, valuables and sexual favors in exchange for promises of protection against deportation.

Schlesinger and his wife Thea survived the war. They emigrated to New York in January 1951. His location was discovered by war crimes investigators in 1973, but according to his wife, Schlesinger had died in 1964.

Schlesinger is considered to be among the worst collaborators during the war, having been directly involved in the deportation and murder of more than 100,000 of his fellow Jews.

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