“To discover that there was any semblance of art in a concentration camp must be surprise enough for an outsider, but he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor there as well; of course only the faint trace of one, and then only for a few seconds or minutes. Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation.”
– Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), p. 43.
At Westerbork, in Holland, many of the artists were from vibrant artistic Berlin — they had tried to escape to Holland, but were arrested. The Nazi commander at Westerbork transit camp, A.K. Gemmeker, was proud of the highly talented celebrities. He also saw to it that there were classical music concerts, recitals and the widely popular cabaret shows, but every Tuesday Jews were deported to the gas chambers. The cabaret called “Humor and Melody,” premiered on Sept. 4, 1943 with 18 different skits, satirizing the daily life in the camp. The experienced German theater director Max Ehrlich created it with composers Willy Rosen and Erich Ziegler, and the Dutch Jewish stage designer Leo Kok. Dancers were part of the cabaret.
One of the tabs on the Herrineringscentrum Kamp Westerbork website is, in Dutch, is “Jodenvervolging”. Their English version website translates this a “Persecution of the Jews.” Joden means “Jews”; Vervolging means “persecuting” or “pursuing”. Google Translate translates the compound words as “Jew-Baiting”.
No comment, just curious.
This blog is meant to reflect an ongoing learning process, for the next year, in fulfillment of the requirements of the Gideon Klein Fellowship through Northeastern University. I will be doing ongoing research to find out about the Camp Westerbork cabaret. Here, I will report on my findings as I find them — in other parts of the site I will organize my information in a systematic way.
I have already uploaded a number of external sites on my Resources page. I will continue to mark external online resources and print resources on that page.
Please do be in touch if you have more information or references!
Westerbork Cabaret 